i think we can officially say jack is walking. i measure this in a child by whether they get up to walk again after they fall or if they sigh heavily and resort back to crawling (until put back onto their feet by an adult (or all-too-happy-to-help brother)). by this measurement, he's a walker. flipping finally! what's up with my kids wanting to live forever in a stroller and pack n play?! he also insists on a banana for breakfast everyday. this means he screams 'nana' while contorting his face into some sort of whiny twist. of course we give him the banana, so we repeat this scenario again the next morning. i, in fact, do not even believe he particularly like bananas over anything else we might give him. i just think that because he can say the word he feels he must then have the item. every morning i remind myself to move the bananas to the pantry so that he doesn't see them on the counter for every meal. (the whining (screaming) is not limited to breakfast, it's just at it's worst then). alas, the bananas are still on the counter as i type.
he has a lot of other words down -- dada, mama, hippo (his blanket, which he actually calls ho-po), outside (his version, of course), night night, bye bye, moon, ball, elmo (thanks to the diapers), aidan (his version), no (prounounced ney-o, sort of a spanish version of the german niet ... we hear this one A LOT) ... he will try to mimic just about any word we throw out at him. i think he's just trying to make up for starting to walk so late. he knew he would have to show me some improvment in some developmental area or i might put aidan on the job of gently nudging him forward in one of said areas.
