18 months

John turned 18 months yesterday and is climbing *everywhere*. If I leave the living room for a minute with the curtains raised, he climbs on top of the arm of the sofa so he can have a better view of the back yard. He can climb out of the bathtub and also into the the driver's seat of the car directly from the ground. Our entryway contains a full flight of stairs and I usually let him climb up it while following behind. John would rather not have me follow, it appears, so he sort of runs in place at the bottom of the stairs until I go upstairs, after which he quickly climbs up the stairs. (I'm not so sure I'll be letting him do that again for a bit...) He looks really cute at the bottom of the stairs, though, sort of like Road Runner spinning his feet before racing after Wiley Cyote (if I am remembering my childhood cartoons correctly). He's happiest on days he runs around a lot and gets clingy on days we stay inside.

He loves to be read to and we often read 10+ books a day, a couple of times each. He'll sit through Dr. Seuss's ABCs (the unabridged version) once or twice a day. I think it is a good ABC book because the letters are used in a variety of ways (for example, "Camel on the ceiling"). I also like that uses of "x" are listed instead of the word "x-ray". "X is very useful if your name is Nixie Knox. It also comes in handy spelling ax and extra fox." (My MIL is a reading teacher and has given me criteria for evaluating ABC books!) John also likes looking through a Proverbs for Boys book which has oil paintings on each spread depicting a boy, his dog, and his frog doing a wise or gracious thing. Last night, the two of us looked through the book for twenty-five minutes. John doesn't appreciate the rhymes yet, but points out the dog, frog, and maybe a ball, apple or pumpkin on each page. I name the objects for him and then he turns to the next page. When we get to the end, he starts all over again.

Taking after his father, my uncles, my cousin, and other male relatives, John hasn't started talking yet. I would have been rather surprised if he had, and given the family history, the pediatrician thought waiting until John's second birthday before taking any other steps was reasonable. He also noted that while everyone nowadays is worried about autism, John was way too clingy and involved with other people for that to be a concern right now. (Dan's first word, sometime after the age of two, was "Awesome." He said it in response to some skateboarding kids nearby. He didn't even bother with "mama" or "dada" first! My father's cousin didn't talk til after three, at which point he said his first words to his mother, "Stupid ---, you shouldn't have done that" in response to his mother breaking something or stubbing her toe.)

As we expected, the pediatrician was concerned about John's lack of weight gain. He's now 90% in height and 10% in weight, so he gave some suggestions of how to increase John's food intake. I'll be ordering some Ellyn Satter books online after our trip (I think I'd like to own the resource - I just got it through interlibrary loan before). The two things I'm implementing now are an extra snack during the day (John naps so much that while I want to do two snacks a day, he usually only gets one - Ellyn suggests two) as well as taking a short break (~5 minutes) between when he rejects food at a meal and offering it again. The doctor suggested that John may not be full but may just need time off. Also, I'll be making our hot breakfast cereal with whole milk instead of water!