18 months!

On March 17th Grant turned 18 months old!  My little baby is all grown up...and attending nursery!  Jeff took him in for his first official day in nursery, and Grant cried and clung on to him for a bit.  Then Jeff took him over to the table where they were putting stickers on a paper, and was able to slowly sneak away.  When he peeked through the window, Grant seemed to be doing just fine.

When Jeff went to pick Tochan up at the end of church, Grant looked up from the paper he was coloring on, signed "all done!" and raced out of the door!  One of the nursery workers said Grant had a lot of fun during snack time...he took his little cup of water, swished it around, and then dumped it into his container of snacks!  Perhaps we should send him in with a sippy cup this Sunday.

We celebrated St. Patty's Day Thomas style!  It's crazy to think that this was the fourth year I've joined in to celebrate with the Thomas clan since Jeff and I have been a couple.  Two years ago we heard Grant's heartbeat for the first time.  And now that he's born, lucky Grant will always have a great celebration on his half-birthday!   

My happy boy!

We ate some DELICIOUS Irish stew (that Liz made) with mashed potatoes, yummy Irish scones, and Applebeer (which I choked on after taking a tiny sip and coughed on for ages after...it's been a while since I've had carbonation!).  

 

Some folks started putting together an awesome Irish puzzle.

Cousin coloring time.  Grant kept dropping crayons onto the floor and Laura would say, "Uh oh, Grant! Uh oh, Grant!"  He was more interested in dropping the crayons than coloring.

We played a fun Irish trivia game that Liz made up.  Too bad I was starting to feel really yucky during the game...I didn't contribute much to our team.

Now on to some fun Grantisms to help commemorate his 18-month birthday:

• Grant LOVES to be outside.  Now that the weather is warmer, outside is his favorite place to be!  When Jeff does yard work, Grant likes to try and help.

•  He knows a plethora of signs and is trying to talk more.  He's doing a great job trying to mimic us and say the names of all the people in our family...though he still struggles with some.  In the car the other day we went through the long list, and part of it sounded like this: 

"Say, 'Amy'!" 
"Mah-meh!"  
"Say, 'GramMi'!" 
"Ummm Mah!" 
"Say, 'Jonathan'!"
*Pause*
"Say, 'Jonathan'!"
"Pah Pah!"

Not quite there yet, Buddy!

• The other day I stepped outside after one of my bathroom trips to see my boys.  Grant started signing 'fire,' and we quickly looked around but couldn't see anything. Then we realized that we could smell a fire.  What a smart kid!
• He has started to chatter away on the phone when people call, or he will chatter away and show things to people when we video chat with them.
• He likes to hug, kiss, carry around, and feed toy dolls or his stuffed animals.  He is going to to be such a good big brother!   

• A few weeks ago, Jeff was carrying Grant and helping me walk.  When Grant saw our hands clasped, he wanted to hold our hands, too!  Now sometimes he will just reach out to us like he wants something, and grab onto our hand and hold it.  I just love it!  When he was a baby he didn't really cling onto our fingers when we put them in his palm, and I was a bit sad about that. But now I love having his chubby fingers in my hand!

• Grant is a very curious fellow and loves to explore.  He goes from one thing to the next and to the next.  He won't sit still and do one thing for very long, unless it challenges him mechanically and he wants to figure out how it works.  Once he does figure it out, he will do it over and over again.  However, most things he finds interesting are expensive, potentially dangerous, or require an adult to undo what he put together (over and over again), so they aren't often in his reach to play with.  The result is that he will get into thing after thing and go from place to place finding different ways to amuse himself.  This is why PawPaw calls him "The One-Man Demolition Crew."
• He loves to take baths, jump on the trampoline (and every other surface), Cookie Monster (and cookies!), ice cream, chocolate, cheese, pizza, marshmallows, books, dancing, music, dogs, shoes, fire, bubbles, spatulas, horses, cars, buttons, airplanes...he loves life and is learning more every day!

 

We love our Tochan boy so much!!