George turned nineteen months on Cinco de Mayo. We celebrated with sopapilla cheesecake bars. Mmm... those are good.
George has mastered walking and running. He's even started walking backwards within the last week. His feet touch the ground when he sits on his train, and he can push himself both forward and backward.
He's very vocal. He is gaining one or two new words a day. Yesterday he learned "cookie" because I wouldn't share mine with him unless he said the word. He babbles a lot, and can also put together two word sentences like "Car go" or "bye-bye go". He gets shy around people that he doesn't recognize. I took him to work today and he hid under my long skirt for most of our visit. When I finally got him coaxed out, he would smile at everyone, but wouldn't say a word.
He's got teeth and he knows how to use them. He teethed all through March and a good part of April, and he's now got a mouth full of teeth. He loves to gnaw on foods and use his chompers to bite off bits. No more cutting up food into little pieces, he likes sizes that he can hold and chew on. He eats graham crackers like a little typewriter, down one end and then back.
He is having more purposeful play these days. He "cooks" things with the spoons and bowls I give him. He carries on conversations on his play phones starting with "hi", filling in with babble, and then ending with "bye" before hanging up. He also uses other objects as a phone, sometimes putting potato chips or waffles up to his ear and "talking" into them as if they were phone receivers.
He remembers and puts things together. My parents have a cuckoo clock with a bird that pops out and chirps on the hour. Whenever we go visit, my dad will pick up George and run to the clock so that he can watch the bird pop out and make its noise. George hasn't seen that clock in over six months. But he's started associating clocks with my parents' clock. We have an old fashioned grandfather clock that chimes on the hour. When George hears our clock chime he runs over to it, looks for the bird, and yells "Cuckoo!". I bought George a telling time board book that has movable clock hands on it and he'll pick up the book, move the clock hands, and cry "Cuckoo!".
Another example, George has a remote control car that he received for Christmas. We rotate his toys to keep down on some of the clutter, and to keep him interested in all of his things. Bringing them out of rotation makes them "new" again and keeps him from losing interest in them. The car had been out of rotation for about a month. Last week he found the remote control for the car in one toy bin and immediately ran to a toy bin in another room to find the car. Then he brought them both to DH for assistance in turning on and driving the car. It was amazing to us that George could find the remote and know that it went with the car, especially when he hadn't seen them for awhile.
It's so much fun to see him develop into a little person. Each stage seems funner than the last.