Dear Little Man,
You are now a big brother! Just a week before your 1.5 year birthday, your little brother, Anthony was born to us. We’ve been preparing you for months, but we had no idea how you’d actually take things. So far, the adjustment has been a bit rough on you, but we can tell you’re trying. You never take out your frustration over Mama and Dada’s distracted behavior on Anthony– instead, you are only gentle and sweet towards him, jumping at every opportunity to hug him. You love pointing out all his different body parts, and you’re always trying to rock him in his bassinet.
You’ve grown in leaps and bounds these past two months, especially in language. You now say several parts of the body (“mow”/mouth, “eee”/ears, “no”/nose and “hah”/hair) and point to them on various people. You’ve developed funny names for everyone in our family, including “Bama” for Grandma Honeycutt, “Ja” for Aunt Janelle, “Weee” for Anthony, and “Rah-el” for Aunt Rachel. More surprising, at least for Mommy, you can identify several letters of the alphabet and sound them out! Your favorites are, “T”, “F”, “S”, “E”, and “O”. You’ve started identifying one shape– a circle– only, you call it a “ball”. Everywhere we go– “ball? ball? ball?”. You can differentiate between all other kinds of balls and your favorite, the “bebe-ball” (basketball). When you wake up the morning, you often babble away for about half an hour before you will “allow” yourself to be picked up. Sometimes, we like to listen on the monitor as you talk– you often cycle through all of your favorite things, one right after another: “Momma? Dadda? Boo? (book). Doddy! (doggy). Ball. BALL. Ball.”
You love to pray, which makes Mommy and Daddy so so happy. Whenever we leave the door to our room open, we find you in there in the icon corner, babbling away while staring at the icons. You can reach a few of them, so sometimes we find you sitting next to them on the floor, talking to or kissing them. At night, when we get you ready for bed, we say, “Let’s go pray!” and you repeat excitedly, “Pay?? Pay??” and run into the room. You’ve started “censing” things around the house, usually using Claire’s chew rope or our stuffed Aflac duck on a string.
One of your cutest words/saying right now is “thank you” (which has morphed from, “Da-doo!” to “Cock-a!”….not sure why!), mostly because you say it in such a high sweet voice. You say it when you receive anything, which makes everyone and anyone’s heart melt. Your other super cute one is whenever someone is leaving. After saying, “Dye-dye” (bye bye), you follow it up with, “Duh- d00!” (love you). This one is Mommy’s favorite by a long shot, although it makes saying goodbye pretty hard! You make Mommy’s day when you pick a Dandelion on the front lawn and run up with it, saying, “Momma! Flaw!” You are so pleased with yourself afterwards!
Your favorite things to do: go outside to pet Grandma’s kitties, go down slides at the park (just yesterday, you let another little girl push you!), watch the ducks at the park, tear apart all of Grandma’s cupboards, toss a basketball around the court with Daddy (we say, “outside?” and you always respond with, “Yeah!” or “Shoes!”), and, most of all, read books over and over and over, especially when you climb up to your favorite green chair in the living room. Your basketball hoop in the living room gets a TON of use (it’s already tilted). We’ve moved it up two notches since we bought it, and you are pretty darn accurate! You love it when others participate– sometimes, you hand someone a ball and say, “Hoo! Hoo! (hoop) over and over again, excitedly, and won’t stop until they take a shot.
Mommy really MUST get a video of you reading “Goodnight Gorilla”, your absolute favorite book. You get so excited when you get to the part where the woman realizes there are a bunch of animals in her room. There’s one page with just surprised eyes, and you make your eyes really big and gasp, “OH!!” There’s another page where there are 8 or so “goodnight” speech bubbles printed out, and you point to each one and say, “Night! Night! Night!”
You had your 18 month checkup today, and did a great job. You are now in the 40th percentile for your weight, which makes sense because, well, have you seen your belly in some of these pictures? You have at least 4 molars (it’s hard for Mommy to tell, since you like to bite down on your toothbrush) and at least 5 front teeth. They are coming in faster now, but we still have yet to notice that you’re “teething”.
You still love to cuddle with Mommy and Daddy every morning when you have your morning milk. It’s especially fun when Daddy has a vacation from school, since you guys love to play hide and go seek under the covers (while Mommy tries to sneak in some extra snooze time!). Your other favorite foods are “bababa” (banana), steel cut oats with raspberries, and “chee!” (cheese). If Mommy doesn’t watch you carefully enough in the mornings, you will sometimes make your way to the bread cupboard and steal a slice or two 🙂
Mommy can see that you have such a sweet and sensitive heart. This is made evident with all of the hugs you lavish on others. We can also see it when you get chastised for something you didn’t really “mean” to do, and you either hide your face in something from embarrassment or cry, soft and sad. You care so much about your “doddy”– one of your favorite things to do is give her “tees!” (treats) from the bag in the cupboard. It makes you so happy to make the dog happy, which shows Momma what a generous and caring heart you have!
This side of you is what we hope the Holy Spirt continues to cultivate as you grow to care more and more for your little brother. You will be such a great example for him, leading the way in so many things, both intellectually and athletically. We cannot wait to see the kind of big brother you will become!
Love, Mommy