21 Months

I figured I needed at least one current picture to do a post, so I snapped this one today.  He's usually all smiles, but this cute stink face captures his "expressive eyebrows," which Cameron says he inherited from me.

As Andy gets older, I feel like it gets increasingly difficult to describe his mannerisms, personality, interests, etc. because he has developed so much as a person!  I mean--when he was 3 months old, he pretty much liked to scream, eat, and (very rarely) sleep.  The end.  Now, I feel like I could spend pages and pages trying to capture what he's really like at 21 months.  But alas, I don't have the time or the patience for that.  This post was actually due at 20 months, but became 21 months as we got so busy moving and everything.  And here I am at 21 months and 7 days!  I figured I'd better post something, even if it doesn't capture him 100%, before I abandon the whole idea.  Andy is just the sweetest, funniest, smiliest, most handsome, little stinker around! He is an absolute joy.  An absolute handfull, but an absolute joy.  He's overflowing with personality.  We love him to pieces and are so grateful to have this vibrant little person in our family!

• Andy's vocabulary has exploded over the past few weeks!  Before that he said maybe ten words?  Now, he tries to copy most things we say and seems to pick up multiple new words each day.  Some of his newest words: Andy (he says Ah-dy), fan (he loves pointing them out wherever we go), oh toodles! (from mickey's clubhouse...cutest thing I've ever heard), hot dog (also from mickey's clubhouse), amen (after prayers), breakfast, thank you, and no no no no no (while shaking his finger).  
• I love reading books with him.  He loves pointing to things he knows when I ask him where they are on the pages: animals, flowers, cars, etc.  "Hop On Pop," is still a favorite of his.  I don't know why he loves that book so much?  I think I can recite the entire thing.  
• He is a constant bundle of energy!  He runs around all day and never stops.  He's incredibly curious and gets into everything.  Have him over to your house, and he will dismantle everything in record time.  I have a few friends who can attest to this.  
• Andy is a person of intense highs and intense lows.  He's either really happy or screaming on the floor. 
• His new favorite show is, "Yo Gabba Gabba."  It's a really weird show, but he loves it.  "Mickey's Clubhouse" is a close second.  
• He loves to sing songs.  He does all the actions to the "Wheels on the Bus."  I need to record it, because it's adorable.  He also loves "If You're Happy and You Know It," "Itsy Bitsy Spider," the ABC song (because I always tickle him during "L-M-N-O-P").  He also loves when we sing "This is the way the Gentleman Ride/The Grand old Duke of York" (picked up from his Amsterdam music class) because he loves bouncing on my knee.  
• He loves to carry around spoons and toothbrushes.  He always manages to get ahold of our toothbrushes and sucks on them.  Gross and strange, I know.  
• He loves to throw things off our balcony.  
• He giggles when he finds something or recognizes something.  Like if he can't find the dog on the page in a book and then suddenly finds it.  It's adorable.  
• He had a 3 week stint where he absolutely hated baths and screamed the whole time and then randomly started loving them again.  Crazy kid.  
• His favorite thing in the world right now is to go on a walk on the path in our apartment complex.  He either runs really fast or stops and throws rocks for an hour.  
• When I catch him with something he knows he shouldn't have, he throws it and takes off running.  
• He's learning a lot more animals and animal sounds.  My favorites are his pig noise (clears his throat) and his kitty-cat noise (a really high screech).  Again, I need to record them.  Hilarious.  
• He's a big boy!  30 lbs now.  He's in the 90th percentile for both height and weight.  
• He gives the sweetest kisses.  He likes to give sloppy kisses on the lips.  Too cute.  He's also an excellent kiss blower, always with a "Mah!"  
• He loves his "music time" with me, which I try to do every day.  Basically this means that I pull up a youtube video of a professional pianist playing something. He's mesmerized and will sit and watch very still for up to 20 minutes. I'm convinced he's a talented musician, because he otherwise won't sit still for 20 seconds.  
• He loves to play on our piano.  
• He is a master sorter and organizer.  His preferred activities of choice usually include moving things from one place to another.  
• He throws everything!  Things that aren't meant to be thrown. And often at people's heads. It's the worst. I feel like we've made slight headway correcting this, but we have a ways to go.  
• He loves to be praised.  That's his big motivator in life.  Saying "no" does nothing for him.  He loves to clap for himself and say "yay!" We finally got him to set his cup down softly instead of throwing it by praising him incessantly whenever he does it right.  He still claps for himself whenever he sets down his cup.  
• I think I say this every time?  Worst. Eater. Ever. One of our go-to foods was PB&Js and he won't even eat those anymore.  Heaven help us.  His favorite foods lately are blocks of cheese and yogurt with honey.  He's also gladly rediscovered the american graham cracker since we returned from Amsterdam.  Any type of meat or veggie are a definite "no" for him.  We recently went to an adorable St. Patrick's Day party where all the food was green.  He wouldn't touch any of it, even breads he would have loved, because he was sure they were all veggies. Stubborn kid.    
• He has the cutest friends here.  We have loved watching him spend more time with little friends since we moved back to Texas!  He's definitely bossy and is definitely the worst sharer around (help!), but he loves playing with his little buddies.  (Unless they're playing with his toys! Or his mom is giving any other little ones attention! He tends to be pretty possessive at home.) 

Running low on pictures!  I've been bad about taking pictures the last month.  And I hate his mullet pictures before that.  So I promise his mullet was chopped off within two days of our US arrival, but I don't have many pictures to document it.  He won't sit still these days! 

A good mullet shot.

A typical, adorable Andy smile.

It doesn't look like it, but Andy was so excited to go back inside a car once we got back to Texas!