Kent at 17 months!

This month, Kent has decided he doesn't need as much sleep at night. He's been waking at 5, sometimes 4:30, 4:45, 5:15, you get the idea. Luckily, he still naps at noon, but with these early waking times, he's a cranky monster by mid-morning and he's fallen asleep while we run errands. Today, I'm going to try going back to two naps to see if that changes anything. At dawn, he's wide awake and ready to go, so all of my "go back to sleep" soothing efforts have been a waste of time. Needless to say, I've had a lot of coffee this month.

Even he knows he's tired because he'll find his "doudou" (blanket) and "tetine" (pacifier) and carry them around with him all day. We've had to hide them.

Matt's best guess explanation is because of his tremendous cognitive development. I have to agree. It's incredible to see the changes in him - daily! He understands everything and he's talking so much and he wants to learn! He picked up an "I Spy" book and he found all of the objects in the picture in the first two times we went through the book. It amazes me.

He is adding words to his vocabulary daily. On Thursday it was "wind," on Friday it was "rocks," on Saturday it was "woof woof," on Sunday it was "bath" (bah), and on Monday it was "um". Other new words include: up, down, stop, bus, tractor (tata), bear, bird, again (gain), wait, please (peas), stuck (tuck), uh oh (he only says uh), light, moon - he's obsessed with finding the moon!
Here's a little video of a quiz I gave him this morning at 7 am. You think that's early, but he had been awake for 90 minutes already. I'll take your pity, peas.

The days are long but at least the weather is nicer so we've spent a lot of time outside. We're pretty much done with onesies, so he's happy to find his belly button more easily.... except that his tummy can be quite round after meals so he has to work hard to find it.

We got some sidewalk chalk and he happily colored the front of the dorm.

Here's a video of him in action. The country music you hear is blasting from the baseball fields across the street. They love their music during practices. As you can see, Kent is running and hopping now - especially when he's super excited!

One day we went to the playground next to the zoo and they were working on the elephant habitat. The trucks were awesome!

 Up and down these ramps!

 Notice we're in tee-shirts!

Aaaaannd, we're not surprised he found some older girls to flirt with. They were much obliged to play peek-a-boo with him. He gave them rocks, too!

This past weekend, we had our friends over for snacks. These boys consider Kent their brother.

It was so nice to let them play together because they look out for him and he follows them around, copying everything they do! We're pretty sure Kent wants older brothers. Can't wait for lots of cousin time this summer!