Jameisms

James is finally 18 months old. I feel like he's been this old for awhile now, but he finally hit the mark yesterday.

Here are some of my favorite things he says and does:

The kid loves lawn mowers. LOVES them. He calls them "lawn mows" and gets really excited when he sees or hears one. I have a feeling he won't like these so much when he's older and we make him use a real one.

Whenever he gets out of the tub or gets undressed he yells "I'm naked!" No idea where he learned that.

"Honk!" to noses. An older couple in our ward took a liking to James when we first moved here. To make him laugh at church, whenever he would touch their noses they would blurt out "Honk!" Ever since, James says that when he touches our noses.

"Come heeeeere" to animals, stuffed animals, etc., which actually sounds more like "Comemeeeeer!" in a really concerned, sweet voice. It cracks me up every time. After he started saying it, I realized I must say it to him a lot during the day, like when he gets hurt (which happens a lot).

"Fumble!" He'll pick up a football and run around spiking it and yelling "fumble!"

Lately when I pick him up from a nap he'll lay his head on my shoulder and I'll rub his back. So then he'll start rubbing mine, too. It's so sweet.

He's really into kissing "owies" lately. This week he started pointing to the freckles on my arms and saying "Owie? Kiss?" and then bending over and kissing them.

He's really proud of himself when he does something he knows is hard and he'll always complete it with clapping for himself and pronouncing "Good job!" (like figuring out the right key to put in the car's ignition. Uh-oh!)

Somehow he has remarkable language skills. He even usually gets his pronouns right (like "I" and "me" and "you"--he uses them appropriately almost always.). It amazes me. Brian and I have nicknames for his binkie and blanket, which we usually call "bink" or "blank." Despite what we call them, James still names them correctly (unfortunately, he's still very much addicted to his dang binkies. I keep telling myself "this is the week" we'll get rid of them and then I chicken out).

His run. Oh, his run. He kicks his little legs to the side as he runs, so it's kind of like a waddle run. I love it. If I could figure out how to post video to blogger I would post a video of it.

He knows the names and sounds of about 20 different animals. His favorite varies each week. This week he likes horses.

I've been trying to teach him the alphabet, numbers, etc. He has counted to five before, but most of the time he just randomly recites numbers. The alphabet has been trickier. So far he only really knows the letter "T."

Just last week he interrupted me in the middle of reading him a story, grabbed the book, shut it and started over reading it again himself. I guess I wasn't reading it to his liking. He didn't do half bad either. I was impressed.

He can complete our sentences. Example, If we say "What the . . . " he'll blurt out "Heck!" if I say "Oh my . . ." he'll finish with "gosh!"

Around tax season we received a random magnet in the mail with the photo and name of a local CPA named "Loren Krowkowski." James knows his name. Whenever we walk by he'll point and say "Krowkowski?" So random.

He still doesn't have a ton of hair, although it is finally filling in somewhat. He's also still behind in the teething department, which stinks since right now he's going through what most 6 month old babies go through. Thus, he's not sleeping well at all.

Also, last week he came down with a nasty case of the croup. We should have taken him in much earlier but finally decided Sunday night that we were worried about his breathing. So we took him into the ER and they treated him, declared it croup, and sent us home. We had to force some nasty steroids down his throat to alleviate the swollen vocal cords and James was not having it. He gritted his teeth and fought with every muscle he had. It was that moment that I discovered that he definitely inherited my stubbornness. After he thought he had won he yelled "All done! Let's go!" and pointed to the door. I felt so bad for him but even the nurses had a good laugh over that one.

Needless to say, we've had a very tiring few weeks.

Even so, I adore my little boy. I don't know what we ever did without him. I'm relieved it's finally time for nursery but I'll also miss my little church buddy.