Levi at 17 months

What a kid Levi is becoming. He's so funny and full of spirit. He full on runs around the house now, in his own little toddler way. It's adorable.

His vocabulary grew by leaps and bounds this month. New words include: waffle (waff), shoe, Santa (ho ho), mouth, eyes, phone (ho), apple (bapple), car, spoon, cheese, rocks, blocks, and off (usually referring to his socks). He also says couch, which sounds exactly like "ass".

Levi and Isaac love to walk around the house holding hands. They both truly enjoy it and it keeps them entertained for long periods of time. This month Levi started also enjoying holding my hand or Rodney's hand.

My boy loves his crib, it's his comfort place. He willingly goes to his room when it's time for sleep, and actually leans from my arms toward his crib. He is perfectly content to hang out in there after he wakes up. I'm hoping this means we can keep him in the crib as long as possible, many more months.

Levi started singing this month. He will totally "sing" Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The words are typically not intelligible, but you can definitely tell which tune he is singing.

He can now names all the features of a face (eyes, nose, mouth, and sometimes ears), and enjoys doing so, but only on his terms. He'll usually do it to me when I'm sitting close to him at the table, but if I ask him at any other point in the day he will shake his head furiously as if to say, "Silly mom, I'm so not in the mood for that right now!"

He saw the camera pointed at him and smiled and said cheese.

He discovered spinning in circles this month, and thinks it's hilarious to spin until he's so dizzy that he falls over, and does it over and over again. He'll often do it when he hears music, like he's dancing. One of Levi's silly nicknames has been Lenny for a while now, so when he spins we call him Spinny Lenny.

Levi's second Christmas was a hit. He LOVED Santa Claus, and pointed out "Ho Ho" every time we saw his picture on tv, in a store, in a book, around our house. However, he was totally unsure about Ho Ho when he met him in person. Levi barely noticed our Christmas tree at all and never tried to destroy any ornaments. He loved the small Christmas tree in his bedroom and every night we would sit and watch the lights fade off and on as we relaxed in the glider.

Levi experienced his first cold of the fall/winter season last month. He had a full-blown cold for about 10 days, plus several more days of snotty nose. After almost 2 full weeks he got a goopy, runny eye and that finally brought us to the doctor. It was just a weird infection that went along with the cold, but one of his ears was slightly red (the other looked "perfect"). This cold was the first test for his ear tubes since he got them in July, and I was kind of disappointed that he still got an infection (or at least was on his way to an infection), but I realized that without the tubes we would have been to the doctor much sooner with a raging double ear infection. Since he has tubes we are able to use antibiotic drops since they go straight to the middle ear. I was excited about this and being able to skip the yucky side effects of oral antibiotics, but it was not as easy as I was expecting. Holding him down for drops 4 times a day was awful (plus eye drops at the same time). I'm just praying for no more infections and therefore no more ear drops.

Levi graduated from the high chair to a booster seat at the table (still with a tray, not actually at the table). I had no problem with the high chair, but Levi had started standing up in the high chair and I couldn't turn my back for a second when he was in it, so it had to go. The booster is working fine and he is much more contained.

We took Levi for his second haircut about a week ago. The first one went so well and I wasn't nervous at all. It was horrible! He fought and screamed the whole time. I love our hair lady and she does an amazing job working quickly and efficiently and his hair still looked great even through all the fighting. We tip her well ;)

Time is flying by!