Ben at 22 Months

Photo courtesy of Tommy

You turned 22 months on December 1st; that's just two months away from your 2nd birthday!  You are developing quite a little personality and your vocabulary has exploded in the past few days.


Some of your favorites:
Color - Green.  Everything is green to you, and if I ask you what color you want in something, you'll say "Bean!"

Book - Goodnight Moon.  This has been your favorite book for months now. You also like the Gossie series by Olivier Dunrea. You won't sit through too many other books. 
Food - You still love all things meat, but you are starting to eat some vegetables. Just today at lunch you ate all the sliced baby tomatoes on your plate!
Shows - Bambi.  You only watch about 30 minutes of TV a day, a few times a week, but you are in love with Bambi right now.
Toys - Anything that builds. You enjoy Legos, wooden blocks, and anything you can stack otherwise.  Daddy thinks you're going to be an architect when you grow up.


Some new words/phrases:
"No, no, Mommy!" (I'm not liking this new phrase)
"This?" - as in, "What is this?"
"No, mine!"
"Hi, Mo-mo!" - Hi, Nemo


You are cruising slowly into the Terrific Twos and I'm happy to say that this time, I'm one step ahead of the game!  I remember from my Terrific Experience with Tommy that this is a relatively short phase that we both have to get through, so that you can be a joyful and obedient child by the time you reach your third birthday.


You are generally obedient (thanks to early training), but a few times a day you'll decide you want to do things your own way and will throw a fit, complete with red-faced kicking, screaming, and rolling around on the floor.  Case in point: The other day we were at a friend's house and you purposely spilled your juice on the floor because you didn't want to sit down on the chair to drink it like I asked.  I did what I normally do when you spill and handed you a towel to clean it up, but you refused. I gave you a few chances and minor chastisement, but still you resisted.  So we paid a visit to the bathroom for a formal chastisement and then returned to the spill. Still you resisted.  We went back to the bathroom and again returned to the spill. Finally you wiped the spill!  It was a ten minute ordeal, but well worth the effort if it meant that you learned that tantrums don't get you anywhere.


Back to happy things...you are "all boy", as some like to say.  You love to climb as high as you dare and you dare to jump off of things as high as 3 feet tall.  You are also learning to climb more challenging venues - just this morning I found you sitting on top of counter in the kitchen and I have no clue how you got there.  You can climb things on the playground that your big brother doesn't dare do yet.  You like to wrestle, though you have a hard time finding a willing partner.


You are a very social boy. You are attracted to other children, even if they are considerably older than you, and you try to talk to them and get them to play with you.  You make me smile and laugh about 128 times a day.  :)


Some boring stuff, so Mommy can reference in the future: 
Shoe size: 6.5
Shirt size: 3T
Pants size: 2T