21 months

Our boy is sweet. He cuddles his stuffed animals, kisses them a lot, pretends to change their diapers, reads to them, and pats them to sleep. He is always trying to hug the cats.

On the emotional front, the new thing I noticed was the empathy. One day Cinnamon, one of the cats, was hacking away trying to pass a fur ball or something disgusting, and Dex just stared at him. Later, he would pretend to cough and say "Cinnamon fur ball" with a worried look on his face and I would have to spend some time reassuring him that Cinnie was okay.

And then there was that time at daycare. There was a bit of a scene down the hall because one of his friends was having a loud temper tantrum with the whole works (flailing, and squirming on the floor, etc.) while his mother spoke to him insisting he put on his coat. Dex was staring so I said by way of explanation that "Owen was having a bit of a meltdown because he was tired." Well, that must have struck a chord because he still says "Owen meltdown" quite often. When he does, we talk about how when we're very tired, sometimes, we have a bit of a meltdown. Of course, now that he knows the word, he tries to use it. One night he was in a bit of a bad mood and resisting something we asked him to do and he announced "meltdown meltdown." We had to explain to him that if he can say that he is having a meltdown, he is most likely not having one.

In general, emotional development seems to be a focus at this age. He uses words like "scared," (they were reading a lot of Halloween stories with that word), "excited," "happy" and "sad."

The only other significant change is on the language front. His vocabulary seems to expand at an exponential rate. His extensive grasp of construction vehicles and processes is astounding! He also seems to grasp grammar rules. We've heard him say sentences in the past tense and he certainly knows the singular and plural forms of words.

On the cognitive front, he continues to demonstrate that he understands concepts like "same" or "different." He likes matching things up. His memory also amazes me. I mean, I know that he memorizes his books, toys, and stories but I never thought he applied it to real life situations. One day, we were sitting on the front steps and a car pulled up to park at the end of the street. I said out loud, "I wonder who that is," more as a rhetorical question than anything and to my surprise he answered "Tony." Tony is a neighbour who lives down the street and the car parked almost right in front of his house so yes, that was a very good guess. I just did not realize that he knew which neighbour lived where. We've walked up and down our street lots of times and when the weather was nicer we often saw our neighbours sitting on their front porches so of course he must know who lives where.

He continues to be active. He loves kicking the ball, riding bikes, and playing in the sandbox. It is so cute watching him run around the playground wearing his too-big-for-him two-piece snowsuit with the sleeves and leg cuffs folded up. He now wears size seven shoes. He's been sleeping well at night, at least 10 hours, and drinking lots of milk. I think he's having a bit of a growth spurt.