Matt, Christen, Derek & Rylie

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

21 Month Highlights
I wanted to make sure to write down some highlights from this month prior to the arrival of our baby girl! I am sure that I will get behind on blogging, but hopefully at some point I'll catch up.

Derek now says his name, "Derr-Derr." It is the cutest thing! Sometimes he will refer to a toy or food by saying his name before the object. His verbal skills have really taken off this past month and he is saying many two word phrases. He has also started saying thank you instead of signing it. For the longest time he had invented his own sign for thank you (a double fist pump) and just this month he began to use the words!! He absolutely LOVES talking about all the animals he knows (especially owls and turtles). One of his favorite games is making the sounds for the animals and having us guess. We just LOVE hearing his cute little voice communicate his thoughts to us. He has also started calling me Mommy instead of Mama (which is totally fine by me, but funny since we always referred to me as Mama).

Derek is such a happy boy. We love him so much!

This past week I took Derek to his last two MyGym classes (at least for a while). We attended the older class with 2 - 3 year olds. Each child took turns introducing themselves (instead of the parents doing the introductions) and when it was Derek's turn he proudly said "Derr-Derr." It just melted my heart!! He also did all the warm up exercises by himself and the balancing skill. It is so neat to see how much he is learning and what he is capable of.

Here is the new stool we bought, which allows Derek to be more independent. Now we can ask him to wash his hands and he drags the stool over to the sink and washes his hands (with some help of course). He still LOVES to help me make my cappuccino each morning!