Connor-17 months

I love this age! Connor is constantly learning new things and is VERY curious!! He listens very well and we don't have to spank him or put him in time out very often. He has so many new words he has learned over the last two months. He can say: class, sock, car, tootsies, cat, shoe, cheerios, cracker, sit, sausage, corn, Sue (my good friend Bobbi-Sue), KK (my good friend Kari) i love you ( no one else would know this unless we pointed it out, but he makes the same sound every time we say this to him so it's not an "exact" word for word, but he knows what we are saying). We are working on grandparent names with him too. Cary's dad and step-mom will be Pepaw and Granny D and my mom and step-dad will be Grammy and Gramps. We know that granny and grammy are very similar, but those are the names we all liked.

He still sleeps very well. We put him down at 7:30pm and he usually wakes up between 7 and 7:30am, but he will let us sleep until 8am before he really starts fussing about being hungry. Once he wakes up, he will just sit up and talk to himself and walk around in his crib. As for naps, most of the time he only takes one nap a day, but sometime he will take two. He naps in the morning from 10am to 12 or 12:30pm (sometime even 1pm, if I'm lucky!) In the afternoons, around 2:30 or 3pm, I put him down in his crib for an hour or so of quiet time. Sometimes he will go to sleep and sometimes he will just talk to himself and play around. It's just a time for him to rest and sleep if he wants to and also for me to have some time to myself to clean or finish up chores I may not have finished during his morning nap time. I also want to get him used to it, so that when we have another child and they are taking naps in the afternoons, he knows it's time to be quiet and rest or play quietly in his room.
He is also a very good eater. He LOVES corn. It is by far his favorite food. He would eat corn and only corn for every meal if we would let him! He is not very picky and will eat just about anything we give him. Sometimes, we give him a new food and he will reject it and then we try again a day or two later and he will eat it. We are still staying away from nuts and seafood until he is two, just to be sure he is not allergic, but I may ask Dr. Dirk about it at his 18 month appointment next month just to see what he says about it. As for drinks, he only drinks milk and water. We use apple juice to make his oatmeal and that is all he gets. We don't eat or drink a lot of sugar and if I'm not putting it in my body, why would I put it in his? He gets milk during his meals and water the rest of the time. He is getting so much better about feeding himself. We started giving him a spoon when he was about 14 months and he mostly played with it and we would help guide it to his mouth with his hand on it so he could start to get the motion down. Since then he usually feeds himself a few bites, but we still have to help him most of the time. The other day Cary fixed his oatmeal and got him in his chair and ready to eat. He set his oatmeal on the try with the usual two spoons (one for Cary to feed him with and one for Connor to use) and then got up to turn on the radio. He turned around and Connor had already started feeding himself! Cary just let him do it and he fed himself about 2/3 of his bowl! I was at work so I didn't get to see this, but I was so proud of my boy!!

This past weekend, my mom and step-dad came to visit and be here for Connor's baby dedication at church. Here are a few pictures from our weekend.