18 Months with "Baby"

It occurred to me...just a couple weeks late...that I ought to write an 18 month update on Cyrus.

(This was the photo I took on for the day he officially turned 18 months, a year and a half, old. Only half of his body is in motion, so hey, not too bad...)

How big? 26 lbs and 32 in. Which, from the online calculator, appears to be something like 70th percentile for weight and 25th percentile for height. He's been wearing mostly 18 month size clothes for about half a year. We often get told how "tall" he is but I don't think he's actually tall, I think it's because we don't often run into Caucasian kids, who would probably average taller.

Words? In the last month he's started saying a few more words. I love it! Being from a girl-heavy family, I was a lot more used to toddlers who were big talkers and his silent observation worried me a little. This morning, as we were sitting in the dark waking up, he turned to me and said "Ball!" and pointed to the room where his ball is...then he said "Keys!" (this kid loves to use keys to try and unlock things...all the time)...and then he said "Papa!" and went to climb on top of Angel. He is definitely understanding a lot more of what we say, to the point where we've realized that we can't casually mention going outside or going swimming or milk unless we are prepared to follow through on our statements. His understanding of English is a little wider, I can tell, but he is following more of Angel's commands in Spanish (and I'm gradually getting more comfortable with the command form and attached pronouns...the bane of my existence in college Spanish classes).

Schedule?

A normal day looks like:

6-7 Wake up, and Cyrus immediately eats breakfast and takes a shower

7-9 Storytime, sometimes going on a walk or a swim with Angel while I get morning housework done, sometimes just playing at home.

9 Angel leaves for work, and Cyrus and I head over to join the homeschool crew.

9-12 Morning homeschool hours, so I'm mostly focused on the big kids,. My sister takes care of a little boy who is Cyrus's age during the day, so he has a buddy he can play with in the morning. Cyrus usually tries to interrupt and steal pencils and erasers. He loves to sit at the table with the kids doing schoolwork and scribble in an old school book, but usually gets kicked out after a while due to stealing too many writing utensils and calculators. He'll have a morning snack, play with blocks, usually do an art activity with gluesticks (his FAVE) or watercolor, and usually goes outside to play with my teenage sister or hangs out on the balcony with her and colors with chalk.

12-2 Cyrus and I head home for naptime (for him), and I eat lunch, write, hang up laundry, work on various sewing projects, or whatever is on the agenda for my quiet time of the day. Sometimes, I nap too, because pregnancy. His naps are actually really varied these days, sometimes 1 hour, sometimes 3 hours, but usually closer to 2.

2-2:30 If Cyrus is awake, I'll give him a cup of milk and we'll read stories.

2:30-4:30 I guide Mandarin lessons followed up by English lessons, and Cyrus usually gets passed around between whichever sister isn't in class. 

4:30-6 is the time that's really just for Cyrus and me, and has become "baby school" time at home. I sing the songs I'm teaching him with him, we read a couple stories, and then do some sort of activity, like playing with stickers or play-doh. Still working on NOT eating play-doh. Then I make dinner.

6 Angel's home! We eat dinner, and then I clean up while many evenings, Angel heads out with Cyrus and sometimes my littlest sister--to swim, to the playground, to the beach, for a quick little adventure before bedtime.

7:30 Shower, milk, brush teeth, bed!

Loves?

-Still loves birds. He has a fondness for books with birds in them. The books don't have to be about birds, there just has to be a random bird somewhere in the illustration on the page, and he will find it, and he will say, "Bee!" "Bee!" very distinctly means "Bird!" There was one evening Angel was making all sorts of crazy sounds for him to imitate, and he was mimicking everything perfectly, including random words like "Hola" and "Door" and "knock-knock". Angel said, "Bird!" and Cyrus said right back, "Bee!" We need to be careful or we'll find ourselves talking about Bees in public and everyone will be confused because they're actually birds.

- Kitchen utensils. One day a few weeks ago, he took the whole can of kitchen utensils while I was cooking, said "Bye!" to me, and simply left the room. He often asks for some spoon or ladle or pair of tongs to play with. 

- Grandpa. My dad is probably the person in my close-by family that he sees least often, due to work and traveling, but he is always amazed when he does see him, and instantly runs for the bookshelf, because he thinks Grandpa equals automatic storytime.

- Helping. (The activity that all moms hopes will last forever...but probably won't). He'll go grocery shopping with Angel and help carry the groceries all the way back to the apartment, and then he'll unload the bags from the kitchen floor and hand everything to me (which, at this point, is a legitimate help, because I don't want to bend my very pregnant self down to the floor a million times to grab all the groceries). He'll carry the trash down the hallway to the room with the dumpster. He'll throw trash away in the kitchen trash can and he'll take clean, folded laundry off of the ironing board and throw it into the washing machine (yeah...we're still working on that one...and I've learned to get laundry put away real fast!)

- Keys. In order to avoid him playing with our real sets of house keys, we've given him the little keys that go to the drawers in our built-in cupboards (because when have those ever needed to be locked). He will try them on every door in the house...dragging a chair up to the bedroom door and working really hard to try to get the key in the lock. He shut my bedroom door while I was doing makeup the other day, and he ran to me excitedly. "Keys?" he asked. He thinks if a door is shut, you'll likely need keys to open it. I've taken him down the hallway in our apartment complex and he's tried his keys in every utility door and roof access door. I gave him my old purse when I switched purses lately, and the first thing he did was run and get all of his keys and put them in the purse. It's so funny how much they are watching you!

- Visitors. He LOVES it when people come over and is very disappointed when they inevitably leave. He does love to say "Bye!" and wave, but he much prefers to be the person leaving, not the person left behind. My sisters stayed with us for a few nights while my parents were away and he was thrilled with the idea, other than the fact that it necessitated going to bed while his buddies were over. 

- Having ideas. This kid is full of ideas. He's recently been putting on two different shoes when we leave the house. When he hears the real phone ring, he'll have an imaginary phone in his hand and he'll answer it. He'll suddenly get an evil gleam in his eye and turn the balcony hose on one of my sisters, soaking them (it's true, I saw the evil gleam and everything). I've taught him different motions for some of our books. I.e., the picture shows a sun, we point to the sky outside. The picture shows a watermelon, we pretend to eat it. Mostly, he loves doing the motions do go with the words, but sometimes he'll purposely do the wrong motion, and then laugh. He occasionally tried to trick me by saying "cicak" and pointing somewhere where there is clearly no cicak (gecko), and then laughing hysterically when he "made me look." I had no idea that toddlers had this much innate concept of mischief, that pranks could begin at 18 months old. He is a constant adventure!