Spud 1.5

Benjamin rolled up his 18th month last week. This seems like the stage where you stop reporting a child's age in months and start using "a year and a half", and later, "almost two". We went to the doctor for his last scheduled, age-related checkup until her turns two. He got (another) shot (flu..both swine and seasonal flavors all in one shot) and also had (another) illness from daycare and (another) ear infection. He's better now.

The stats: weight 25 lbs. 15 oz (50-75%); height 32.5" (50-75%)

I filled out an autism questionnaire at the doctor's office while we were waiting for Dr. Brian Adams to appear (he was probably off somewhere singing "Cuts Like a Knife" or "Summer of '69" while we languished in the waiting room). Most kids that have autism are showing signs by 18 months. There were about 25 questions and there was only one that I had to answer "wrong". He doesn't seem to "pretend" much yet (e.g. he doesn't pretend to have a conversation on the toy phone or pretend he's actually driving a car when he rolls his toy car around). He mimics all of those activities, but he doesn't seem to be pretending. Anyway, he doesn't have autism.

The doctor said he should know "about 12-15" words at this point. I just chuckled. Our little dude is Vocabulicious. Here's an attempt to list his current vocabulary:

all gone
apple
balloon "monon"
banana "nana"
Baxter "Datter"
book
box
broccoli "bocky"
butterfly
cookie
Daddy
dirty
door
ear
elbow
eye
flower
go
hair
heater
hot tea "ot tea"
help "up"
juice "duice"
knee
light
Mommy
moon
more
movie
nose
outside "owside"
paper
please "pease"
poopy
pumpkin "pompy"
read
rice "wice"
shirt
shoe
shovel
slide
sock
Sophie "Sushie"
stars
stick
sticker "sicka"
sun
tree
umbrella "ubbaga"
waffle
wall
walk
watch
water
window
wire

And in just the past couple of weeks, he's started putting words together in little mini-sentences. He's said two words for a while (like "hot tea" and "all gone"), but those he treats like single words. These, however, are individual ideas strung together to make more complicated ones.

"eww dirty"
"messy mommy"
"peeboo I see you!"
"watch movie"
"bye Mommy's shoes"
"Datter eat water"
"twickle twickle star"

The one word he most notably has not said yet? Benjamin (or even Ben). He refers to himself as "Baby" in pictures (but all other babies are also "Baby"), or just looks confused when you point at his and say "who's that". Identifying oneself as just another discrete piece of the universe is apparently hard to do.