Gabbling With The Gersts: 19 Months!

Ok little man. Here's your 19 month post, just a few days late. I decided to focus this one on things you love and things you hate. Not too much has changed since last month, so I came up with this idea because you are just like your mama- passionate- as I call it. You can either be REALLY happy/giggly/lovable... OR you can be REALLY angry/grumpy/stubborn and it all depends on your mood. :-) You're still a blast and we wouldn't take you any other way. Although I have thought to myself, I wonder if G2 will be a more laid back personality kid.... because E, you really haven't been. We still love ya though! :)

You LOVE:

*Music- You are seriously obsessed with it. Almost to the point it annoys us at times, but we love that you love it so much. Every time we wake you up you pop up in your crib and do your sign for music/dance. You will literally whine incessantly till we put music on. You'll often go to the kitchen and whine until we play the CD in there too. You even ask to get in your crib. You started going to the crib, signing music/dance, and asking "uuhh" which is up. We put you in there and you'll sit/dance in there forever with your music playing. What kid ASKS to go to bed? Apparently, you do, as long as we put music on for you. This love of music has helped us in church. You look forward to worship and love dancing along to the music. You even get sad when the music part is done and we have to pray! haha! But you've become such a joy in church and people around love watching you. You're doing so good at sitting or standing by Mama and Dada and make it to the sermon time where you then go to sunday school. We love watching you dance and sometimes you'll even sing for us. Music brings you so much joy, and we pray that you'll continue to love it, and maybe be a musician someday bringing glory to God through your love of music.

*Dada- You can't get enough of him. I used to say you were a mama's boy. Well, thats has CLEARLY changed. You could kind of care less about Mama most days. You run to dada. When mama is changing you or bathing you, you ask for dada. You cling to dada's legs and pull his finger to lead him around the house to where you want to go. You wrestle and play rough with dada. You prefer dada to read to you over mama reading to you any day. You'll cry for dada if mama is having to discipline you. You've got your daddy wrapped around your little finger. Not sure what's going to happen when G2 comes.... maybe mama will get another mama's boy or girl! At least you will occasionally give mama kisses and according to dada you ask for me when I'm at work or when I'm sleeping after working all night. That makes me feel a little better. I love that you adore your daddy more than anyone.

*Fruit- You love your berries and have recently taken a liking to Nana's (bananas). You ask for them almost every morning, but rarely do you actually finish the whole banana before being all done. You love little clementines too. You love apples, but only when you're sharing with dada and he lets you take bites of his. If we give you your own slices, you'll refuse to eat them. Lately you decided squishing your fruit is way more fun. We have to have an eye on while eating any kind of berries anymore.

*Dogs- this one was a give-away. For some reason, son, you are obsessed with dogs. I see other little boys about your age who love Elmo, Thomas the train, balls, or even cars. Not you. Nope, all you care about is your dogs. You have quite a collection of stuffed dogs, but the truth is, you ALWAYS go for the same one. The huge Rex dog. You carry/drag him around with you everywhere and insist on having him in the crib with you sometimes. We still go to the pet store in the mall quite often and you could spend hours in there if we let you. You go up to the windows and even try to kiss the dogs through the window. Cute, but gross. Ha! You have started liking other animals too. Daddy showed you all the fish at the pet store and you though those were cool too. And you love any animal/dog books that we'll read to you.

*Outdoors- After the snow and your adventures out there, you've decided you want to always be outside. We love that you've found a love for the outdoors and we want to show you more! We hope you'll always want to explore and be active. But, mama does hope the weather gets nicer because taking you to the park on a sunny day is WAY more fun then bundling up to go walk around the snow! :)

You DISLIKE:

Not sure you hate all these things but you surely don't like them. Mostly due to your stubborn attitude. :)

*Coming inside- we mentioned how much you love the outdoors. But, it really becomes an issue when you have a huge breakdown whenever we come INSIDE. It's slightly a pain, but still worth it so you can spend some time outside.

*Sitting in your highchair. You don't necessarily hate this, but you don't enjoy it much either. You'd rather sit on dada's lap when he lets you. (He gives in WAY easier than Mama does). You want to be independent as possible, which causes issues when we put you in the highchair. You are also SO busy that making you stop for 10 minutes just to eat is not fun. You'd rather run around and randomly stop for .2 seconds to take a bite of whatever food we're offering you!

*Getting changed- You've never liked getting your diaper changed or getting dressed. Somedays you'd think we were torturing you. About 80% of the time you put up a fight. Like I said earlier, you're just way too busy and would rather keep running around than stopping for 2 minutes to change your clothes. We've found that it helps if we sing to you while changing or, better yet, play music!

*Being told what to do- this one is pretty typical for any boy your age. But I tell you what, you'd think it was the end of the world when we take you away from something you're wanting to do. You can really bring on the crocodile tears and your head turns SO red its sad. You've got quite the cry. Those tantrums aren't fun but we're sticking to our guns on discipline so that *hopefully* you turn out to be a well behaved boy.

*Talking- now don't get me wrong, you love to babble. But I mean, actually saying words. At 19 months I just assumed you'd be saying WAY more. And, well, you're not. You don't have very many words at all. This becomes a problem when you want something and whine constantly while trying to use your sign for please. This is handy, but not when we don't understand what you want. We read to you, talk to you, sing to you, and play with you. We're really hoping one of these days you'll pick up some words because fussing to get your way just isn't working out so well. We need to pick it up because apparently a kid is supposed to have 20 word vocabulary but 21 months. Well, son, that gives us 2 months for you to learn at LEAST 10-15 more words. (depending on if you count the few signs you know) YIKES!

Well, sweet E, I think that sums it up for now. You are such a blessing to us. Your smile is SO contagious and we love you to pieces. Can't believe how much you're growing up. Here are some photos to mark this month:

I was going to add how you hate wearing your glasses. We stopped trying them on you because it was causing temper tantrums EVERY time we put them on. Then, out of the blue, we put them on for church today and you kept them on for a few hours! And, you are SO handsome!