Cooper Milestones: 22 Months

I've missed several months of Cooper's milestone posts, so we'll just skip to the last one. He's already 22 months--only 2 months until he's 2! Some noteable milestones of the last few months:

• He's talking, talking, talking. His teachers at school comment often about how vocal he is and how wide a vocabulary he has. If he's awake, he's pretty much talking. He's also quite the little parrot, so we're learning to watch what we say around him.


• He's used the big boy potty a few times (see my prior post for details).


• He's learning to dress himself. I ask him where articles of clothing belong, and purposely put them on wrong, which always cracks him up. A side note from this is that in doing so, he has decided that sock puppets are awesome, and that putting pajama pants on his head and pretending he's puppy is one of the greatest games ever.


• He's getting better at feeding himself. Sometimes I'll even forget to put a bib on him. Well, he's getting better most of the time...


• 
  
  The song I find him singing to himself most often is "Are You Sleeping," which I find strange because I hardly ever sing that song to him. His favorite bedtime song remains "Baa Baa Blacksheep" followed by "I Know You" (a children's church song). He also asks me to sing "Summertime," which is really "Oh What do You do in the Summertime."


• 
  
  He continues to be obsessed with fans and lights. It's really getting old.


• 
  
  He'll picture-read stories to himself. He won't do it if he knows I'm watching, but he'll tell the story to himself if he thinks I'm not listening.


• 
  
  His favorite book at bed time is Good Night Moon. He cracks up at the "Good night nobody" part, which I laughed about only once. He seems so pleased with himself that he knows it's something funny, and he's in on the joke.


• 
  
  He has started doing things just to make us laugh. I mean, silly "look what I can do!" type stuff.


• 
  
  He's mastered drinking from a cup, but still can't resist the urge to play in the water or purposely splash it all over. So he's still limited to sippy cups most of the time. But when he gets a big boy cup, he's elated.


• 
  
  He's started calling us "Mom" and "Dad" sometimes, instead of "Mommy" and "Daddy." It really caught me off guard the first time. I was like, "Oh, my baby is growing up!"


• 
  
  I'm finally able to negotiate with him. This is really nice when needing to give incentives for behavior. Tonight at dinner he didn't like what I made, and wanted some lemonade in his glass, not water. I relented on the lemonade, but negotiated that he had to take a bite of his dinner before every sip. It was so nice to be able to communicate something like that!


• 
  
  He can follow multi-step directions. The other day I was folding laundry and forgot a pair of socks on the dryer. When I found them I said, "Cooper, please go put these in the laundry basket on the stairs." I didn't follow to be sure he did what I'd asked. I half expected to find them in some random place days later. But sure enough, about a half hour later when I went to carry the laundry basket upstairs I was pleased and surprised to find the socks right there on top!


• 
  
  Lastly, before we moved, Cooper had decided the crib was no longer a suitable bed for him. He would scream and throw tantrums when put in it awake. For awhile he just had his crib mattress on the floor in our new house. Last week he graduated to a twin mattress. Still no bed because he rolls around and off too much, but here he is on his new "big boy bed."