John at 22 months

John's 22-month birthday on November 8th came at such a busy time that I don't think we even remembered it, let alone celebrated it. But in the days leading up to us bringing Lila home from the hospital on the 4th, we tried to spend as much time with John as possible. Daddy LOVED hanging out with his little buddy outside.

On the back porch at Grandma Kay's house.....

Throwing leaves in the air.....

Looking good at Central Park in downtown Naperville.....

Steering the jeep at the park.....

Riding on a bumblebee together.....

Going down the big-boy slide.....

During the month of November, John went through some amazing changes, the biggest of which was his HUGE growth spurt. I wouldn't be surprised at all if John grew two inches in that time. All of a sudden, his shirts weren't long enough, and I didn't need to roll up his pant legs anymore to keep them from dragging on the floor. And his HANDS!!! Wow. His hands seemed to double in size. My baby boy no longer had baby hands!

Other amazing changes for John at 22 months related to his intellectual development. When Ross first came home in late October, John counted from 1 to 3 and could identify a dozen or so letters of the alphabet in random order. By the time Ross left a month later, John was counting from 1 to 13 (13 because there are 13 steps from the ground floor to the second floor of Grandma Kay's house) and was singing nearly the entire ABC song. John also began using two- and three-word phrases (mostly imperatives, of course) on a regular, rather than occasional, basis -- for example, "up pease!" or "up pease, Mommy!" The highest frequency verbs in his vocabulary included: color, do, draw, eat, feed, fix, go, open, play, push, and shut.

Once it started getting colder outside, we started spending more time in the house, which meant we had to come up with new ways to entertain John. Some of his favorite new obsessions that month were coloring, "fixing" things, and singing while "playing" guitar. John got interested in fixing things one morning while he was watching Daddy put together Lila's lamb chair. Daddy let John use some tools to practice, and when John wanted to continue carrying the tools around the house later on, Grandma Bonnie decided (for obvious safety reasons) that it was time to get him some tools of his own. John loves to "fix" his toys now, especially his Radio Flyer bike. He asks, "Mommy fix bike?," and then I sit down next to him and pretend to tinker around. Sometimes he asks me to flip the bike over so we can work on the undercarriage. While John uses all the tools in his toy set, he prizes his "boo-biber" (screwdriver) above them all. It is a bad day when we can't find the "boo-biber."

As for his other new obsession, let this video speak for itself:

Singing with the guitar from Sarah Schuchard on Vimeo.

I've always made a point of singing to John, especially at night before bed, but it's been so fun singing with him. He just plain LOVES to sing! John's vocal repertoire includes the ABC song, "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," " Jingle Bells," "Old McDonald," "Peanut butter and jelly" (see next video), "Three Blind Mice," and "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." Ask him to sing you one of these songs, and he'll belt it out at the top of his lungs. You're really in for a treat if he's got the "tar" in front of him too.

So those are the highlights of 22 months.....I will hopefully have the chance to do a 23-month post in the next week or so. It's got to get done before John turns 2!