Dear Baby Jack: 16 Months

16 months! I feel like I turned around one day and you must have had a growth spurt because all of a sudden you looked like such a BIG kid. I mean you aren't driving a car or paying taxes, but you definitely are a tiny little person who has his own thoughts and his own mind made up about all kinds of things. I would say this past month you've been understanding a lot more of what we've been asking you to do. You get excited when I ask you if you want a snack or to go get the mail, you know what to do when I ask you to recycle something, and you have started bringing items to people when we tell you to. There are more and more people who's names you recognize, mostly the grandparents who spoil you (and give you Cheetos...). You were VERY upset with me over Thanksgiving that you weren't with Grandpa 24/7 so that he could give you some Cheetos Puffs.

You have become a dancing machine. You've taken me multiple times into the computer room to point at the computer and will do your classic "throw back the head and fuss" maneuver if I don't oblige immediately. Every time I have tried to get a video of you dancing, you seem to know what is going on and will stop immediately. I would say it is a lot of foot stomping, a little reminiscent of the dancing in this Flashdance video below.

You and Oliver are still going strong, maybe even more so now that you've started walking up to him and laying your head on his back in a semi-hug. He almost always looks at me like "THE TREAT I WILL GET FOR ENDURING THIS HAD BETTER BE DELICIOUS". He acts like he's suffering through it, but I think we all know deep down he loves it.

You've become quite the militant about the rest of us leaving drawers and doors open. In the mornings you will go around our bathroom and close any drawers before we have even had the chance to get our toothbrushes out. The only door that you're okay with being open is the pantry so you can get those sticky jam hands on the lower levels where the crackers are. Any time one of us says either "yogurt" or "crackers" you get SO excited and ready for your snack. If I would let you, you'd live off crackers, yogurt, and yogurt melts. We've finally moved your dinner back a little bit so we can all eat dinner at the same time. This has been great, except you've seen some of the things I do when I eat and now you insist that any bread you have is dipped in something. I even tried to fake dip it in my chili once and you handed it back to me. "NICE TRY, MOM". It seems like you've been less interested in meats of any kind except turkey sausage, but you eat a lot of fruits and veggies so I think at this point I should count my blessings. Your favorite so far seems to be a mashed sweet potato with butter. I'm pretty sure your mind was blown at Thanksgiving when you realized you could eat sweet potatoes with butter, brown sugar, and marshmallows on top.

Lately you've really picked up the head shaking of yes and no. For awhile you would just randomly shake your head even if no one had posed a question to you. Now you understand when someone's inflection is a question and will shake your head after. I'm not sure if you always are answering your true feelings, but it's nice to see that you're understanding that we're asking questions. We've noticed that when you're really concentrating on something you'll stick your tongue out like it will help the process along. This is especially true when you're focusing on opening something or getting into something/into trouble...

We had Thanksgiving down in San Antonio with your cousins and you had a blast watching them run around and getting to try all of their toys. I'm pretty sure it was like someone being released into a toy store with all new stuff to play with. You were opening every bin and pulling out things left and right. You had a great time getting to see everyone and it seems like you've finally put together who all these crazies are and that they aren't TOO scary. I think you especially liked the food on Thanksgiving, your Aunt Jill (at 36 weeks pregnant, God bless her) prepared a huge meal with tons of good food. (Thank y'all so much for hosting this year!! I can promise that if y'all come visit us when I'm 9 months pregnant, we will be eating frozen pizza every day). We also stopped on the way down to visit with your great Gram, and I think you won her over by helping her push her walker. I'm not sure what it is about that thing, but it seems like every child wants to push it all over her house. You "helped" her decorate her house for Christmas by trying to run off with every single ceramic/glass nativity you could get your paws on.

We're all looking forward to having Christmas with you this year, although I'm not sure if our Christmas tree will survive.... Fingers crossed that at least some of our ornaments stay on our tree.

Here are a couple of videos that were hanging out on my phone:

I realize this seems like a strange video, but he really loves this chair (which used to be his Dad's when he was small) and was having a hard time figuring out how to back into it to sit down. I was trying to get a video of him backing up like a dump truck, but he figured it out while I was taping. Ignore my shrill voice...

He started to dance, but quickly was over it.