18 months old!

Dear Leo,

Today you are 18 months old. That's a whole year and a half of you in our lives!

Your vocabulary is a pretty amazing 35+ words (the exact count seems to depend on which grown-up in the house you ask). There are even a few common two-word phrases that show up. (For a full list of both, see the post appendix.)

You've recently started waking up in the middle of the night again, and it usually seems like you want to play. You get pretty upset when Mama & Papa won't get you out of bed. It's pretty rare for us to bring you back to our room anymore, but you'll sometimes go back to sleep if we leave you a book and turn out a night-light.


Some (one or two, maybe three) of those wake-ups have been night terrors. These incidents are really tough all-around, because it turns out that you're not really awake when they happen. (One of the pediatricians told us that night terrors are akin to sleepwalking, in that you're not really awake.) It typically requires that one of us take you out to the "reading chair" and fall asleep ourselves while your brain settles back to normal.

None of the sleep situation is helped by you having suddenly decided that you don't want to go to bed at what used to be your normal bedtime. If we try to put you to bed when you used to go, you're up again 10-15 minutes later, and we have to repeat the cycle two or three times before you're down for the night. If we let you stay up until you run down, we don't have a routine to let you know it's bedtime anymore. I've got an idea that I'll try while Mama's gone next week, and we'll see how it works.

Speaking of books, you love to have us read to you, although you only let the book get finished about half the time. You're good at turning pages if we get it started, and now only occasionally go the "wrong" way. You're less good at turning pages all by yourself, but that doesn't stop you from trying.


We've already mentioned that you've now met the full complement of grandparents, and everybody adores you (but that was a given.)

Mama & I are trying to work more agressively at working some sign language into our communication routine, and you will usually sit still for most of an episode of Signing Time.
It seems to be hard to find good parent-kid classes around here, so we may have to break down an order one or more of the episodes.

The major reason for all of this thought about sign language is that you've become a full-blown toddler, complete with public meltdowns and tantrums. We haven't worked out yet what the signal that we need to leave is, but if we combine that with being able to communicate better, we hope to keep the number of instances to a minimum.


I have also recently decided that we have a baby from Ork, because you are referring to your pacifier as your "nanu."

Until your Mama & I can decide which pictures to add and whether there's anything else of significance I've missed, that's all for now.

We love you,

Mama & Papa.

Appendix: Leo's vocabulary at 18 months

• Food
• apple
• gacker (cracker)
• milk
• juice
• cheese
• nana
• Body Parts
• eye
• ear
• nose
• elmo (elbow)
• knee
• Things
• bus
• girl
• ball
• lion
• fish
• guck (truck)
• duckie
• book
• woof-woof
• meow
• baby
• shoe
• box
• sock
• Other
• down
• up
• outside
• bye-bye
• hello
• me
• more
• no
• mama
• papa
• all-gone
• uh-oh