EIGHTEEN months

This will probably be my last monthly update on Sal. I just feel like at some point, the monthly updates lose their luster, and I have no intention of making my readers suffer through a blog post titled "Thirty nine months" (c'mon, after 24 months, let's just say two, three, four years old) anywhere down the line. At some point, I have to call it quits, so I've decided  that this will be it. I will probably switch to quarterly updates instead. We shall see. 

At eighteen months, Sal can finally call himself "bottle free". Yes. It's true. No more bottles! I admit, it took nothing more than effort from me to make the change. I can't even claim that he protested it at all. Now he drinks his milk in a sippy cup with meals, and we've started reading 2 stories before he goes to sleep. About the same time we retired the bottle, Sal's 3 hour afternoon siestas came to a screeching halt, and he now naps just 1.5-2 hours per afternoon. Still nothing to complain about, but now that I've had a taste of 3 daylight hours to myself, I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the longer naps. 

Our favorite thing about Sal at 18 months is his growing vocabulary. He cracks us up with his pronunciation of kitty "titty" and fox "fawk", but we continue to work on annunciation the "kuh" sound for kitty and "ox" sound at the end of fox so that no one thinks we've taught him dirty words. He can quite clearly say, "cat", "bye", "dad", "apple", and "ball" amongst others already mentioned. 

We've spent some hot afternoons inside (it has been over 32c the past week and super high humidity) and I've found that he really likes basic gymnastics. He's able to put his head on the floor between his arms and do a somersault with assistance. We are working on tuck, pike and straddle positions, and he thoroughly enjoys turning any mattress or couch cushion into a trampoline. He also likes to hold onto Nick and hang upside down like a monkey on a tree.  

We have new pantry shelves that he scales like Spiderman (leaving me gasping for air every time I walk in to find him three shelves high). I would pay pretty much anything for a decent mommy and me gymnastics class around here, but Gymboree is the only thing we've got available and its across town, in mandarin and über expensive. For now, instructions from his mama will have to do. 

I found out our gym memberships include free swimming for babies, so we spent one morning before lunch in the baby pool at the gym. He didn't like it as much as the outdoor pool in Bali, but I think if I take a little raft or some balls next time, he will find that it is actually quite fun and refreshing to spend the morning in the pool. 

One of the biggest milestones for month 18 is that Sal took his first ride on our electric scooter. He's a professional floorboard rider now, riding between NZ's legs, manning the horn when need be. I see this becoming a favorite activity of his in the next few months. He lights up when we tell him to get his helmet. He will even put it on in our apartment and wear it down twenty five flights to our parking area in the heat.

I can't believe in six short months, he will be a full fledged two year old. I'm going to have to brace myself for endless days, but the saying is so true.....The days are long, but the years fly by.