Nicolas at 17 Months - Acting Like a 5 Year Old!

For the last few weeks Nicolas has been more and more brave. He climbs on everything and his co-ordination has improved a lot too. He climbs onto the stools at the counter from the dining chairs so I just decided that instead of trying to stop him I would teach him to be safe. When I cook he sits at the counter and draws with his crayons, plays with jigsaws (he can't do jigsaws yet but we are practicing), and puts the kids markers in and out of the tub we store them in.

Now that the kids are here for the summer he sees them drawing with the markers and he wants to draw too. Yesterday he learned to take the tops off the markers so now I have to watch him in case he eats them or draws all over himself. At the moment all he wants to do is put the tops back on once he's taken them off, but often he's turned the top around in his hand so it won't go on and he gets very frustrated.

He can also use his legs to move himself on his firetruck and he drags it everywhere with him. He will put his feet on the pegs on his trike so we can push him on that as well now. He has definately discovered his strength. I was unpacking the diswasher yesterday when he ran up behind me and grabbed hold of the cutlery draw and pulled as hard as he could. He managed to pull the draw off it's runners and out of the cabinet. We were both horrified and it really scared him.

He babbles all the time but his only real words are still Mama, Dadda, dog, duck, goose and now bye. It was so funny because if we leave somewhere he says "ba ba ba", but with me being English I say "bye" so it never occured to me that he was actully saying bye properly, but with a southern accent. Adam doesn't say 'bye', he says 'ba', so that's what Nicolas says. He had his hearing tested again and everything is fine. I'm still working hard with him on his speech and he can point to lots of body parts and who people and animals are, but he just isn't saying them. He also understands everything I say to him but I'm just going to wait until September and he sees the speach therapist to see if he needs any additional therapy.

Nicolas' bottom molars are through and his top ones are almost through so he now has 11 teeth and can eat anything. Before he couldn't chew meat so I still had to puree it for him, so life is much easier now as he really does eat just what we eat. He still can't load his spoon but he can get the food in his mouth pretty easily once it's on his spoon. I discovered a couple of days ago that he's great with a fork. As the video below from this morning shows he feed himself french toast very easily with a fork. With practice he should be feeding himself very soon with no help. I love every minute I spend with him and I love how adventurous and brave his is. He's always covered in bruises and as my friend Katrina said "he's all boy!"