Wow, 21 months old!  Nathan is growing into quite the little independent boy, wanting to do everything himself and gets very grumpy/upset if he’s not allowed to.  He wants to drive the car, walk by himself, push the pram if I have it out rather than get in it, do the housework (I won’t discourage that one!), etc.  He also has a terrible fascination of running tap water, and constantly wants to wash his hands or one of his toys.  I have a hard time getting him to stay away from the taps, and have tried to explain that we don’t want to waste water, but it’s a hard concept to grasp.

Nathan is getting his numbers all worked out.  He can count to 13 without any problems, then gets a little mixed up but knows that after 19 is 20, and from there he can get to 39 (after which he generally jumps to 100).  He recognises the numbers up to 10 and points them out everywhere we go.  He’s also going great guns on his letters.  There are many letters that he can recognise, and he can say most of the alphabet, though he gets a little mixed up towards the end.  Today in the car he was pointing and saying “em, em, em”.  It took me a while to realise he was pointing to the Macdonalds big yellow ‘M’!!  Hmmm…..

Nathan’s language skills are also getting better, though he is still a bit hard to understand at times.  He is almost saying sentences, though he misses out the little words like ‘in’ and ‘the’ etc.  Yesterday while we were in the pool he wanted me to go under water like Daddy does, so he said to me “Mummy under, like Daddy do”.  🙂  Talking about swimming, he’s also doing really well and is now able to swim by himself if he has a back float with 3 pieces of foam in it.  It is such hard work for him, so if we plan to be in the pool for a while I give him his pool noodle as well and he can kick and paddle laps of the pool with the back float and the noodle.

And, of course to finish off, here are some photos of things we’ve been doing this month.

Nathan is starting to enjoy the swing!!  Helping to keep him swinging (instead of sitting there for 10 seconds and then asking to get off) is counting the number of swings.  We now often swing to the count of 100!

Picking and then eating all our cherry tomatoes.

Going on 2 trains, 2 buses and 2 ferries within the space of 3 hours (and not achieving anything because it was heavily raining when we got where we were going).

Painting, drawing and playing with playdough.

Enjoying his first Sushi Train experience.

Sleeping in his new bed.

Waiting in the lobby for Daddy to come home.  When I tell him that Daddy is nearly home he gets very excited, demands me to help him put clothes on (if he’s running around without or only half dressed), gets a cushion to sit on because the floor is very cold, and then waits, watching and waiting for the lift to open.  When I tell him that Daddy is nearly home it goes something like this:

Nathan: pants, pants, pants on, pants on, pants on!
Me: help Nathan to put pants on
Nathan: get cushion, get cushion!
Me: watch Nathan run to the couch and grab a cushion, then run to the front door saying…
Nathan: wait Daddy!  wait Daddy!!!

And I can’t forget the biggest excitement of the month…hearing the baby’s heartbeat!