Favorite Things

Nate has quite a list of new favorite things right now. He has really started acting more like a big boy lately. Some days it makes me so excited to see what is coming next and other days it makes me miss my little baby that used to snuggle with me.

Nate's most favorite thing lately is watching me cook.We are pretty convinced that he is going to be a chef.  Todd comes home from work and is excited to play and wrestle with him while I get dinner ready. Instead, he ends up standing right next to me holding Nate so he can watch what I'm doing. It's one of the rare activities that actually holds his attention for more than about 2 minutes :)

My mom and dad bought Nate this little house for Christmas. They brought it down early since we are getting close to the start of RSV season and have been staying home a lot more. He's still not quite big enough to climb on everything himself but he loves going down the slide and sending all of his toys down it.

This isn't exactly one of Nate's favorite things but Todd sure thinks it's fun...

It's no secret that Nate is very ticklish. Todd got one of these head massagers from work a couple of weeks ago and we tried it out on him. Apparently, his head is his most ticklish spot :) 

Nate's last favorite thing is taking out the garbage. We take out the diaper pail several times a day and he gets so excited every time. He mostly just loves to go outside for 2 minutes but it really is the highlight of his day. Every time he hears a garbage bag he runs to the front door screaming "Yeah! Yeah!".  

Speech and Feeding Therapy

Nate started speech therapy this week. He has improved quite a bit in the last several weeks but he's still  behind so they are going to start coming out once a month just to keep an eye on his progress. Nate officially says 5 words now even though some are only understood by Todd and I. He can say...
Dad - "Da"
dog - "dah"
apple - "Daaaa da" (this one is a stretch but he consistently says this when he sees an apple so we count it :)
yeah - this one he does pretty well
I love you - I posted a video of his version of this a few weeks ago. I wouldn't have counted it but the speech therapist said it was close enough.

Nate also started clapping last week! We have been waiting for this skill for a long time. It's the first step to other non verbal communication (like waving, pointing, and sign language) so it is very important for him to learn. Plus, it's just so darn cute!

The speech therapist is also a feeding specialist so she is going to try and help us out with feeding as well. Nate is much much better at eating these days but he still has some definite issues with certain textures. He eats a lot but his diet consists mostly of fruit, bread, cheese, milk, peanut butter, and of course chocolate. I'm hoping that with her help we can lengthen that list just a little bit :)

Here's a look at Nate's first Kit Kat. He's decided that chocolate is pretty delicious!

In other eating news, we are officially done with bottles! I don't know why I thought I could "encourage" him to drink from the sippy cup since I haven't been able to force him into anything else he didn't want to do. One day, he just decided he was done and that was that. I hope potty training comes as easily :)

Halloween

We had a great Halloween this year! Our fun started the day before when we went to the special Halloween story time at the library. Nate went as Whinnie the Pooh since we had a slight mishap with his regular costume (The size was mislabeled so we had to exchange it...so annoying).

Here is Nate at the library.

 Story time is kinda pointless for Nate because he never sits to listen to the story. He is always wandering around and causing trouble. Hopefully soon he'll get the purpose of the library and start to enjoy it more.

On Halloween, Nate and I went over to Todd's office for lunch on our way over to an audiology appointment. He ran around in his dragon costume showing everyone his new trick...roaring. I didn't get a video of this trick so you're going to have to trust me when I say it's the cutest thing ever!

Side note: The audiology appointment went well. They are finally convinced that Nate can hear so we don't have to go back for anymore follow-ups. Yay!

After his nap, I took him down to the church to do a trunk-or-treat in the parking lot. We went down with Nate's buddy Curtis. Curtis is 4 and Nate absolutely LOVES him! He is so good with Nate and they play really well together. Curtis is really into knights right now and wanted to be a knight for Halloween. When I told him Nate was going to be a dragon, he was very excited. Here are the 2 crazy little monkeys all dressed up.