Six more months and my little tot will be turning TWO. Gasp!

But until then, this bumbling 18 month old toddler loves scrambling over the sofa and bouncing around in anything that is soft, including plush animals which he absolutely loves. He loves all those plushy toys so much that he is sleeping with at least 6 of them – and he would just KNOW if one of them is missing from his bed!

He loves music and is now able to mouth off words, albeit incoherently, from the songs he knew.  One of his favourite happens to be the good, old Twinkle, Twinkle Little Stars. It is amazing how he responds to that song –  the moment we start the tune, his eyes would light up and he starts his swaying,  jiggling his butt and smiling away as he attempts to finish off bits of the song.

Squirt is not really talking yet, although at some point, I thought I heard him strung a few sentences together. I have heard sounds that are almost similar to “Put me down”, “I want that”, “Mine” , “No,no, no” or otherwise mixed in with “Nee, Nee, Nee” (Dutch for ‘NO”) and my recent discovery being “Wower” (i.e shower). He is chattering a lot to himself and if I don’t know any better, I would think that he is able to do some real speeches there!

There is just something comical about this little boy – one time, when we said, “Look, Squirt! Monkey, monkey, monkey!” and he would go “Ah! Ah! Ah!” just like a monkey would. He is a very animated little child and just looking at him smiling away is enough to make you want to grin from ear to ear and laugh your heart out. He loves buttons and switches, and it has been really hard to peel him away from the fan, the remote control and our cordless phone at home. It has been THE cause of one, big great wrath that sends him screaming his head off if we ever dare to take it away from him (which we do without feeling any remorse; he’ll just have to get over it). That being said, it also requires us a lot of effort to repeat it several times in a span of 30 seconds every time.

Squirt’s a busy, busy, busy little child and like his sister, is not able to sit still. The more he tires, the more active he becomes and the more he tumbles over like a coconut falling off the tree. He recently took a nasty tumble not too long ago at an indoor playground, falling from a height of about half a meter. He was a little out of my reach by mere inches and the way he fell – head first – really scared the crap out of me. I could not cushion him in time, but I SAW how he tripped, bounced and fell …and my heart skipped a few beats. Naturally, the fall looked worse than it actually was, and Squirt quickly bounced back to his old, happy self after a good cry.

Silver Bullet has accidentally captured the fall on video, but it is not something I would post here. It had caused me some grave nightmares thereafter.The fall had seemed so bad that I could not put the scene out of my mind.  I just have to come to a conclusion that a little toddler is quite a hardy creature!

Squirt has a mind and opinions of his own these days. I can tell that he is trying hard to exert his independence and when he has decided that it was going to be a “No”, it was going to be a “No” come hell or high water.  He is, for sure, testing his boundaries. While he seems to understand the limits that surround his little tiny world, he doesn’t always follow them.

Squirt is still that affectionate little boy…although these days, he is also taking a strong stance that he doesn’t really want to go to bed at night. And, because he associates his Nanny to playtime, he has time and again refused to be peeled away from his Nanny when it is time for bed. He would be kicking, screaming and contorting his body and if there is a small chance that we have to put him down because he was getting too heavy when he struggles in your arm, he would, very quickly, run away!

Otherwise, Squirt is quite an easy tot to please.

Well…at least for now.

And oh! He has also just started attempts to climb in and out of his cot. Oh boy!

Related post(s):

Spud’s 18 months update