Louis: 18 Months

As of about a week ago, Louis is now closer to two than he is to one.  He's a great kid.  He has changed so much over the past six months and his baby days seems so very long ago.

He's a string bean.  He's still at the 75% for height, but is now hovering at just above 10% for weight.  He lost about two pounds when he had that awful stomach virus and hasn't seemed to be able to put it back on.  He's only about 22 pounds and doesn't have an ounce of baby fat on him anywhere.  He has enormous feet and I am buying him new shoes every month.  His hands are also big and he has super long fingers and toes.  He still wears 12 month pants because anything else just falls off him, but they are ridiculously short.  Good thing he'll be able to wear shorts here until December.

His eating is hit or miss.  If he likes something he will pack it away like there's no tomorrow.  If he doesn't, it goes straight to the floor.  That would be frustrating enough, but what he likes/doesn't like changes on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.  I would love to be able to send him to bed without dinner some nights, but when you have a skinny kid you make allowances you might not otherwise.  His table manners are atrocious.  He's a big milk drinker and has never met a cracker he did not like.

His sleep is also pretty hit or miss.  We had a long stretch of him sleeping through the night without issue, but lately he's been regressing and waking up several times a night.  He's not upset when he wakes up, he wants to play.  He's going crazy developmentally right now, so I get that his brain is on hyper-drive.  I am so not into playing cars and/or jumping down all the stairs at 2:00 am, but he sure is.  We are pretty zombie-fied around here.

He loves, loves, loves, LOVES playing with cars of all kinds.  He's also really into trains and legos and balls.  He's very physically agile and I anticipate with be a good athlete.  He is fearless and will climb and jump off just about anything.  He's a fast runner.  Really fast.  I actually have to run to keep up with him.  He loves to play hide and seek.  He loves being in the pool.  He doesn't like being in his own floaty but totally digs jumping off the side.  I have anywhere from 3 to 5 heart attacks every time he's in the pool.  He loves being outside.  After dinner most nights I take both kids out back and spray the hose at them, riot gear style.  They can't get enough of it.

We went through about a month of the worst tantrums on record.  He would get angry at anything and everything and lash out physically, either biting Norah or Reid, or scratching and hitting me.  He didn't do it all of the time, and recovered quickly, but it was really upsetting when it would happen.  He's for the most part (knock on wood) stopped getting so pissed, so quickly, and I think (knock on wood), we are passed the worst part of it.  He starts a pre-school program on Thursday and I would be lying if I said they idea of him biting another kid at school didn't keep me up at nights.

When Norah was a baby she would sit through me reading book after book after book.  That has never changed and if she had her way we would read 15 books a night (we've started doing chapter books and I have to put strict limits on how many pages we do).  Lou was the opposite and had no patience for anything except the shortest of stories.  As he got a little older he got really into those first word books (the ones that aren't actually stories, but rather sight words with pictures) and now he is obsessed with any and all books he can get his hands on.  He can't get enough of them.  Thank goodness.  His current faves are a Cars book I got him at Target and the Wheels on the Bus  one that came all they way from London.

His communication is getting better every day, which I know is directly related to the decrease in tantrums.  He's started to put together two word sentences, most notably "Mama's car!"  He wants to look at, touch, or ride in my car on an hourly basis.  He adds to his vocabulary every day.  His receptive language is off the charts and he understands just about everything we say.

He's not a huge cuddler (he won't let me rock him at all anymore), but will crawl up in your lap and cover your face with kisses.  He loves to watch Melmo (ie, Elmo) videos on my phone and knows how to sweet talk me into letting him have just one more.  He terrorizes and idolizes Norah at the same time.

He's a really funny kids and likes to do stuff to make us laugh.  He and Norah crack each other up.  He has one of the best laughs I have ever heard.  We love him a whole lot.  I think we'll keep him.