Fifteen and sixteen and seventeen months!

Fifteen months (or so) - March 11, 2015

Sixteen (almost seventeen!) months - April 14, 2015

Seventeen months (and one day) - April 22, 2015

Sam, life just continues to move faster and faster and faster...and so do you! It's hard to keep up with taking your monthly pictures and writing up your monthly updates!

It is springtime, and the weather has finally started to turn warm, and you are growing and growing up as beautifully as the spring shoots and buds that are peeking through the dirt outside.

You are so many things these day, little man.

You are talkative: You have a pretty decent list of words that you can say! And you babble to yourself and to us in complete sentences, so even when we don't know the words you are trying to say, we know that you are intentionally working to communicate with us in a verbal way. Your favorite words are ball, box, bath, brush teeth (you have a thing for "B" words), and are especially interested in the multi-syllable words, "washcloth" and "applesauce." I think that the biggest change in you these last few months is your desire to communicate - and your skill in doing so. You talk to us and expect a response. We talk to you and you respond. You listen to us and follow simple directions. In the mornings, when you are in the bathroom with me while I get ready, when I ask you to grab your boat or your fish from your basket of bath toys, you know what I'm talking about and you grab the right item! You love saying "yes" to things, with a big, dramatic head nod. You haven't quite figured out how to use the word "no." We're thankful for that. :)



A few amazing moments of communication have happened in the last week or so. Starting a few mornings ago, when you are waking up in bed with us, instead of asking to get off the bed to run into the hallway and look for the kitties, instead you have started sitting up in bed and calling out "Mahw, mahw"(the way that you say "Meow"), in hopes that the kitties will hear you calling them and come to find you.

A week or so ago, we were reading and singing through a book of nursery rhymes before bed, a book that we haven't read together all that much. We flipped to the last page - "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" - and you say the picture of a boy and a girl in a rowboat, and sang out "Row row row boat" before I'd told you which song we were about to sing! How did you figure out what song was on that page??

One morning last week, we were playing in your room together, and you started pressing your thumbs and index fingers together, twisting your wrists around, and saying "bit, bit." You were asking to sing "Itsy Bitsy Spider," a song that you do at daycare. As I sang it, you did all the hand motions with me! I thought it was adorable that you had learned the song, but amazing that you had thought to ask me to sing it for you.

Over the weekend, we discovered that you know all the motions to "The Wheels on the Bus," and that you will ask for us to sing that song over and over and over again. And of course we indulge you.



You are funny: One of your favorite ways to interact with us is to be silly and to laugh together. The other night, you kept hiding your milk cup in the seat of your high chair, and then looking up at us, doing the sign for "milk," raising up your hands in a "where did it go?" gesture, and then pulling the cup out and laughing so hard that you turned purple. You did this over and over and over again.



You like being funny...and you like cracking yourself up. You think that your own jokes are hilarious. You laugh like a maniac when we tickle you, or when you stick your fingers in my mouth so that I pretend to eat them, or when you knock over a tower of blocks, or when you splash in the bathtub. You have a distinct silly side. It's pretty endearing.

You are sweet: I keep using this word, "sweet," to describe you. It's so true. You love Emme and Hilde, and they love you because you pet them so gently and sweetly. You've figured out that the kitties say hello to you by head-butting you, and so you try to greet them by gently head-butting them and rubbing your face in their fur. You love all dogs - you aren't at all scared of them! - and you always stick your face forward in hopes that they will lick you. When you want to read books, you back yourself up to sit in our laps, and on some of your more contemplative days, you want to be sitting in our laps even when you are building things with your Duplos or playing with blocks and balls in front of you. You will give hugs and kisses to Mama and Daddy when asked. You hold our hands when we say grace. When you are tired, you snuggle up with your head on our shoulder, trying to get as much of your surface area touching us as possible.

You are a good sleeper: We have a real bedtime routine these days. After dinner each night, we sometimes talk a walk, we sometimes take a bath, we sometimes just play a little bit. Then the pjs go on and we settle up in your room. We put away toys and we read a few books sitting there on the floor. Things get serious once we move to the rocking chair. There we read a few more books. Right now, your bedtime books are a touch-and-feel farm book, a book of shapes, your Dinosaur Kisses book (you love echoing "Stomp!" and "Chomp!" and "Whomp!"), one of your many children's Bibles, and the board book version of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See?, plus a lovely book that is a rhyming bedtime prayer. We've read that book so much that I have it memorized, so we usually don't bother to open up the book. Instead, after a few books, and after snuggling with your bunny, and after making sure that you are well-armed with a bedtime pacifier, we turn off the light. I recite the bedtime prayer-poem and we sit, listening to music on the radio, until you are asleep, or at least super-dozy. Then into the crib. I pull the quilt over you and shut the door behind me as I leave. You sleep from about 8:00 p.m. until 6:00 a.m., usually without much interruption. When you wake up in the morning, I bring you into bed with us. Mornings are the only time that we still nurse. And I don't suspect that we'll be doing that too much longer. The other day, I brought you to bed and you still had your pacifier, and you cuddled and fell asleep next to me immediately. And the last few mornings, you've nursed a little, but just fallen asleep and forgotten about it.

You are a good eater, when you're not a bad eater: Oh, Sammy. I think mealtimes are about the only times when you ever let it slip that you have a little terrible-toddler in you. Most of the time, you love to eat. You go through phases with your favorite foods. Over the last few months, you've had weeks where you can't get enough peas, or you can't eat enough scrambled eggs, or you get mad when we won't let you eat ALL the dried pineapple or dried cherries in one sitting. You love bread and applesauce and yogurt and rice and pasta. When we had curried cauliflower a few weeks back, you shoved it in your mouth by the handful. But then you have days at a time when there's nothing that you really feel like eating. Where you pester us for fruit snacks and don't want to eat Cheerios or eggs or bread, even though they are some of your favorites. Or there were those few weeks when you would throw all of your Cheerios on the floor and refuse to eat your oatmeal or yogurt, and instead just demanded Mama's multigrain Special K because the flakes are a little sweet and a lot crunchy. Even when you are eating well, we know that there is an order to how we feed you. If we're at Magpie, sharing eggs, sausage, and toast, I know that I have to feed you eggs and sausage first, because if you start with toast (your favorite of the three), you won't go back for the other foods. If we start with applesauce, you won't eat anything else that we're having for dinner. We have to start with dinner, follow up with applesauce. You're willing to try at least a bite of most things, but you refuse to eat fruit (except for applesauce and whole bananas in the peel - you like to point and demand "na-na!"), and you don't eat carrots these days, and you aren't a huge fan of meat.

You are a mover and a shaker: You've graduated from walking to running. Not just walking, not just running, but doing your "quick-feet" dance.



You love chasing your big blue ball around outside. And you've started begging to go outside whenever you can.  You would rather push your stroller than ride in it when we go on walks. You love taking off down the sidewalk and then looking back coyly to see if we are following you. You have gotten over your fear of grass. You love running down hills, but don't like walking back up them. You surprised us by learning (at daycare?) how to go up the steps and then down the slide at the playground.



You love sweeping with the big broom. You helped Daddy shovel our crazy spring snow - him with a shovel, you with a dustpan.You are experimenting with walking (not crawling) up and down stairs, and are so good about making sure you're holding a grown-up's hand before you do that. You build towers with your blocks and bricks, and then knock them down. You are getting better and better at snapping Duplos together and pulling them apart. You quickly mastered the art of hammering plastic balls down into the ramps of your "whack-a-mole" type toy.




You have quite an arm and love throwing things. We had to take all the real baseballs out of your toy basket, because you were too good at throwing them and we were worried about getting hit - and hurt! - when you threw them at us. Your favorite toy in the church nursery and in your daycare classroom is the pretend kitchen. You love carrying around the plastic frying pan. One time, you walked over to the pretend oven door, opened it, said "hot!" and then started blowing on the items inside of the oven to cool them off. You love brushing your teeth (it is the best way to keep you calm and happy during diaper changes).

You love reading books more than anything else. Even when we hang out in your room or in the study to play with toys, after a few minutes of blocks or balls or puzzles, you give up and instead bring over book after book for us to read.

You are loved: We are always amazed at what you are learning and accomplishing, and our hearts are warmed by your sweet, funny personality. We are overflowing with love for you, little man. Mormor has been out to visit twice, and Grammy and Pop have been here, and you've gone to Minneapolis to visit Aunt Bethany and Uncle Nick and Grandma Mary and Grandpa Chuck. Aunt Stephanie has come out to visit you, too. Everybody brings presents, usually adorable clothes for you. We take as many pictures and videos of you as we can so that we can share our love and joy with all of our families who are far away.

Keep on doing what you're doing, Sam. Keep on being who you are. Because we think that you and your curiosity are pretty fantastic. What a special little kid you are!