Finn! You’re 21 months old today Little Love!! Finn developments: What a fun and FUNNY little boy you are, Finn. I haven’t done an update on you since you turned 1 (9 months ago…eek!). We’ve been busy and so have you, Little One. Here are some things you’re been up to these days… 

• The first thing I have to say about you is that you’re hilarious. You crack me up all day every day with the funniest little things and the best part is that you KNOW you’re funny and you crack yourself up too! I asked your dad what is the one thing I should be sure to include in this update and he responded, “Finn has found his sense of humor.” And what a good one it is!
  • One silly example of you being funny is that you like to pretend that you can’t see. You will do this while you’re eating, walking around or even coloring. You’ll close your eyes and keep doing whatever you were doing and eventually crack up. (Our babysitter said, “I’m not sure if he does this very often but Finn kept pretending that he was blind and then laughing about it!” haha)
  • You also like to put puzzle pieces in the wrong places. Then you look up at me and I say, “No, Finn, that isn’t right!” and you just giggle!
  • You also like to pretend that you’re trying to say something that we can’t understand. You will say “Bah!” and I’ll say, “Bath?” You shake your head and say “Noooo. Bah!” I’ll ask, “Bug? Book? Button? Back? Banana?” etc. etc. and every time you will just giggle and repeat “Noooo. Bah!” I’m positive that this is all a hilarious joke to you.
• You are pretty independent. You’ve just now started to acquiesce and hold my hand when we’re walking near the road but generally you prefer to do things on your own.
• At home you will play independently a little but you also LOVE attention and will often shout “MAMA MAMA MAMA” to make sure I’m all-eyes on you when you’re doing something like running or jumping or falling on purpose or being funny.
• You seem to have some type of a musical bend. You respond to music more strongly than your brother – as in, you dance like crazy with the most amazing hip shakes and you can catch a tune and sing it back really well. You are often singing (the tune at least) to the ABCs, “Are You Sleeping?”, and you love to sing “Bless the Lord, Oh My Soul” with me.
• You like books but aren’t quite as much of a bookworm as Colt was. Your favorite books are lift-flap ones (Dear Zoo, Where’s Spot? and a couple of Elmo books we have). And like your brother did, you have “Moo, Baa, La La La” memorized and love to “read” it with me and fill in the blanks.
• You really like trains these days and will often scoot down to the basement on your own, pull out the train bin, build out a track and connect some trains together. You call them “choo-choos” and are always so happy and proud to show off what you have built.
• You love to jump! You can jump well in your crib or on the couch but lately you’re getting good at just jumping from the floor. And you like to go to the fireplace hearth to jump too.
• You really like going to parks or playing in the yard but one of your favorite “activities” is visiting the local nature center. They have turtles, snakes, frogs, fish, some random toys and a great outdoor creek + trail. When we’re driving there, you start to get excited as soon as you begin to recognize the area and you start shouting, “Tuh-tle! Tuh-tle! Sssssssss!!” (For turtles and snakes, of course.) Then you are borderline combusting the whole time that we’re there, running from animal to animal. And last time, when we went with Colt, you were in heaven throwing rocks in the creek at the end. I swear, you must have stood in the same spot throwing rocks for 45 minutes.
• I would describe you as pretty obedient and I think you’re getting better at this all the time. If you’re acting out or I need your attention, I always ask you to look at me or look at my eyes. In the past if you were misbehaving, you would absolutely REFUSE to look me in the eyes and would just cut your eyes to the side and give a little defiant side smile. (Making it impossible for me not to burst out laughing!) But the past couple months you’ve been better at giving me your attention and then becoming more obedient. Related but different: you follow instructions great!
• You are talking quite a bit, although your enunciation leaves a little something to be desired. It’s funny because of course your dad, brother and I all understand you perfectly but when we’re with other people I find myself translating for you a lot. For your 18 month checkup I made a list of 70 words that you were saying then. Now there would be no way for me to try to count as your vocabulary grows each day. You’re speaking in “sentences” like “Moe hehe-le pees,” (“More cereal please.”) or “Bye bye, Mama,” or “Tee here!!” (“Treat here!! – while pointing to your tray.) But you sometimes also just huff out syllables instead of trying to say the real words. You do this a lot for “thank you” and instead say “hmm hmm” to the tune of “thank you” or will say “buhbuhbuh” for “banana bread.” You say “Tuh” for “Colt” and “puhpuh” for “purple” and for “paper.” For “sit” you say, “hit” and “juice, cheese, Gigi and Jesus” all sound pretty similar.
• You basically know the colors yellow, blue and purple although we’re not 100%.
• I have not been as dedicated to “teaching” you things like letters, colors, etc. as I was with Colt so the only letter of the alphabet which you know solidly is “O.” It’s easy for you to recognize and say so this one stuck easily. Now just 25 to go! Speaking of numbers, you can kind of count to 3 but that is probably being generous… (If I say “one,” you say “two,” and sometimes say three next.)
• Your favorite thing to do is to play with your brother. You and Colt are officially each other’s best friends and have so much fun together. You guys totally get each other’s wacky, goofy, little boy sense of humor and are always laughing up a storm. You immediately ask for him whenever you wake up in the morning or from a nap.
  You guys love to have little races where Colt sweetly runs beside you. You dance together, put your dishes on your head and call them “hats,” you jump on the couch in the basement for days, take turns playing t-ball in the yard, go down slides at the park together, splash and pour water in the bath together… you just play great together! It has been such a blessing to have you two close enough in age to see this genuine friendship blossoming already.

Health: Praise God, you continue to be healthy and grow beautifully.
Clothing size: 2T.
Diaper size: 5
Shoe size: 5-6 (although your feet are so chubby it can be hard to stuff them in to certain types of shoes!)
Height/Weight: Your last appointment was a few months ago but at that time you registered in the 61% for weight and 81% for height. Could have had me fooled though, you’re such a little beefcake with the best tummy ever!
Teeth: You have all of your baby teeth with the exception of your two-year-molars (so 16 right now).
Sicknesses: You showed signs of a possible ear infection once, right around last Thanksgiving. We followed our doctor’s recommendation and gave you antibiotics. A couple days after we finished the antibiotics you broke out into a full body rash that took about a week to clear up. We’re not sure if you have an allergy to the penicillin (if so then it’s not a terribly strong reaction since it took so many days to appear) or if the rash was unrelated but so far that was your only incident with antibiotics. (Colt has yet to have them so not sure how he would react…)

Eating: You’re a good eater – very different style than Colt is/was. You basically like to feed yourself everything and are pretty coordinated with utensils. You are happy to bite into anything and like most things we offer. Green beans and broccoli are your favorite veggies, you like bananas, apples, strawberries, oranges, grapes, pasta, chicken, cheese, oatmeal, eggs, pizza, sweet potatoes, turkey, peas, raisins and one of your favorite foods is a bowl of cereal with milk (Colt still won’t eat cereal with milk on it!).
You love “treats” and get so excited whenever you hear that word (like, you start raising the roof, saying, “Woohoo! Treats!”).

Sleeping: You are an all-star sleeper and have been since you were a baby. We literally never have problems with you in this area. You go to bed between 7:30 and 8pm (closer to 7:30 if we’re going out somewhere but typically more like 8:00). We do the Tot-Clock with you and your clock changes to yellow at 8am and usually we don’t have to rush to get you. If you wake up before 8am then you normally just play around or sing in your crib until you notice the clock is yellow.
You nap every day in the afternoon. Tue-Thur we pick Colt up from preschool at 12:50pm so your typical nap doesn’t start until around 1:30pm. Your nap clock is set for 2.5 hours but 2 hrs 45 min or 3 hours is a more typical stretch for you. This means that it’s a challenge for us to be very adventurous in the afternoons but it’s nice for me to get some alone time with your big bro and I use this time to get some chores done, start dinner, etc.
Your only sleep deficiency is sleeping on the go. You do NOT fall asleep on airplanes (you don’t even get drowsy, you just get nuttier and nuttier!!). You will sleep in the car but not for too long so all of our long travels are a little interesting with you, Little Finn.
You’re also a little bit of a light sleeper. Not terrible and you put yourself back to sleep fine if you do get woken up but it makes me a little nervous for the day when we move you into Colt’s room. I think we are still about a year out from that but on our most recent visit to SC you and Colt shared a room and you both surprised me by doing great!

Schedule:
8:00 am Wake up, drink milk
8:45 am Breakfast (banana, oatmeal, cereal, pancakes, strawberries, yogurt)
Morning Errands, adventures, parks or just playing with mom.
12:30 pm Lunch
1:30-4:00 pm Nap
4:15 pm Wake up, drink milk
4:30-6:15 pm Afternoon playing with Colt, neighborhood walks, etc.
6:30 pm Dinner
7:15 pm Bath with Colt. (Dad-duty)
7:45-8:00 pm Bedtime!

Mama: Finn, you are the sweetest treasure and such a blessing. You shine joy and light into our home and our family. It is SO much fun to be your mom and I enjoy you more each day. Thank you, Lord, for bringing this precious soul into my world. I couldn’t be happier.

(**For comparison: Colt at 20.5 months**)