15 months

Our little monkey is 15 months old today!

At 15 months, Jamie can:

• say several words: momma, dadda, no no, banana (sounds a lot like no no), yuck. He also has said "dart" and possibly "grandma" when we were staying in Kirksville.
• sign many more words! These include milk, more, food, all done, rabbit, dog, mouse, bath, ball, rain, book, swing, please, tree, glasses, momma (he doesn't do that one anymore but he used to), bear, swim, fan, light, baby, butterfly, phone, walk, pig, fish, brushing teeth, wash, shoe, hat, car, and key. There are probably more that I'm not thinking of right now. Some are his own version that doesn't really match the ASL one, but I know what he means. And some look very similar when he does them (like walk, rain, all done, and car, or ball, more, and shoe) but I can usually tell which one he means. 
• identify numerous body parts: nose, ears, mouth, tongue, teeth, eyes, hair, head, hands, feet, toes, fingers, tummy, belly button (but usually only on other people), etc. Some of them he points to, and others he uses (he'll click his tongue if you ask where it is). There are others he's still a little shaky on -- if you ask him where his chin is, he'll point to his neck. We have a few to work on :)
• make animal noises: elephant, monkey, lion, cat, dog (he thinks they make a panting noise), snake, sheep, cow. He also has funny bird and horse sounds that don't actually sound much like a bird or horse, but I know that's what he's trying to do! He refers to animals by their sound. When we were in New Orleans, the people we stayed with had 2 cats, and he was constantly pointing to them and saying "mow!" 
• hold up 1 finger if you ask him how old he is.
• "sing" along if you ask him to. He just makes a lot of noise. Except if you're singing John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, in which case he will actually say "na na na" along with the chorus. 
• "count." Okay, not really, but if we're reading a book and I ask him to count something, he will poke the page over and over the way I do if we're actually counting something. It's one of my favorite things he does right now.

Jamie's current favorite activities include

• stories! He loves stories. He has favorite books and wants to hear them over and over. If you start saying the words to a book, he'll go find that particular one. He also has favorite pages in some of the books, which is too cute. One of his favorite books, The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear, has a page with the words "Boom! Boom! Boom!" that is his favorite. He will bring the book to me and say "boom boom." He is adorable.
• pointing out trash and saying "yuck" over and over everywhere we go (it sounds more like "uck"). He will also throw something out if you tell him it goes in the trash.
• going to the park to swing, go down the slide, play in the rocks, pull bark off trees, etc. There's also a little playground at our apartment complex that has sand, and he LOVES using a stick to write in the sand.

• watching ants. He notices so many tiny things!
• helping with laundry. He will grab clothes out of the basket and have me hold him up to throw them in the washer, or he'll stand by the dryer and I'll hand him clothes to put in. He sometimes gets tired of it before we're all the way done, but it's really cute while it lasts! He also loves putting clothes in laundry baskets, which is sometimes a problem because he does not discriminate between dirty and clean clothes.
• coloring, but sometimes he gets too distracted by the prospect of taking all of the crayons out of the box and putting them back in over and over. He does better if he only has a couple to choose from. He also has a problem with wanting to eat the crayons.
• playing with fridge magnets and pots and pans and anything else he can get his hands on in the kitchen.
• going to story time at the library. If it's not too crowded, he'll go over and stand right in front of the story lady, but if it's too busy (last week there were probably 40 some kids there. It was a zoo!), he gets a little shy and comes and sits on my lap the whole time. But he still gets very excited about the stories, particularly if they involve animal noises. 
• tickles. Usually when I stop tickling him, he asks for more. 
• playing on our bed and getting flopped down onto the pillows.
• smelling things. If I ask him what you do with a flower, he'll start sniffing, and he'll also start sniffing if he sees the spice jars in the kitchen because he knows that they're fun to smell.
• anything involving shoes! He is obsessed. He loves to try and put shoes on himself and other people. If he notices other people not wearing shoes, he will bring them some to put on. For some reason, he really likes trying on my rain boots, even though they go all the way up his leg!

I could go on forever about all the cute things Jamie does, but these are some of our favorites right now. In the past 3 or 4 months, he has just gotten more and more fun! Though he is also more stubborn now and more capable of getting into mischief, I couldn't be happier with him overall. We think he's the best boy in the whole world (and we're pretty sure we're right!) :)