Wilder at 13.5 Months

... because that's a logical time for an update, right?

After doing my Life of Wilder posts every week for a year, I feel like I never really talk about what he's up to anymore development-wise. I'm going to try to do better at that because, if I thought he changed a lot in his first year, just the first month and a half of his second year has seen exponential growth and development. So here's a little about our precious/precocious boy at 13.5 months...

• No idea what he weighs because there's no time to sit around and weigh ourselves, people, come on! 
• In other words, he never stops moving. I just try to keep up from one activity to the next and, at night when I sit down collapse and think about all we've done that day, I mostly can't remember specific things. My memory of the day looks like if you took a video of a normal person's week and sped it up to fit into 12 hours. He literally goes from one thing to the next to the next to the next all. day. long. only pausing, and not always voluntarily, for meals. He even takes his snacks on the go while I chase him around the house spooning applesauce and shoving cheese into his mouth. The boy is B-U-S-Y. 

• He amazes us daily with how smart he is and how quickly he picks up on things. We show him something once or twice and he's got it. He loves to mimic things we do and sounds we make. 
• He's finally catching onto "no" since we implemented a one-minute time-out in the pack-n-play as a punishment. Most of the time the time-out works after one stint. I've noticed him going back to look at what we told him "no" about afterwards but then remembering and steering clear of it, which is very validating as a parent. But just because he knows he isn't supposed to do something definitely doesn't mean he never does it. For the past week, he's started shaking his head before doing something he knows he's not supposed to, haha! It's like he's giving us a warning -- "Y'all, I know I shouldn't hit Rider...Uh-uh, no I shouldn't... But I just can't resist... I'm going to do it"... Smack!
• He loves to point to things in books and make the sounds they make (Voom-voom, Woof-woof, Quack, etc.). If he sees something in a book that he has in his room he loves to point back and forth between them, like a dog in a book and the dogs in his room. I used to encourage this, but now he just does it on his own. Today he found an alligator in a book that I had never seen before and he sat there and stared at it and then pointed at the big stuffed alligator in his room. I was so impressed that, all by himself, he would connect the illustration to the real (stuffed) thing. 
• He absolutely loves books and this makes me so happy. Our new favorite game, whereas before he would point to something and I would say the name for it, now we'll open to a page and I'll say "Where's the ball? Where's the baby? Where's the flower?" etc. and he'll point to each thing. I love testing his knowledge and helping him expand it. I thought being a mom to an infant was rewarding but being a mom to a toddler is even more rewarding. It's so amazing to be able to teach him things and have him retain them. (Sorry, the video is like 3 min. long but I had to take advantage of him cooperating since he usually doesn't when I'm videoing.) 

• I try to treat each day like it's his own personal preschool. That's not to say I have the whole day structured and planned out but I do try to throw some purposeful activities into his whirlwind of free play and I love seeing the results of that. He is such a little sponge.
• He is still obsessed with anything with wheels, especially motorcycles. He does his sound effect for any kind of wheeled vehicle, which can get a little embarrassing when it's somebody in a wheelchair and he's pointing at them and saying voom-voom. 
• He loves his dogs SO MUCH. He loves to hug on them, "gentle pet" (and sometimes not-so-gentle pet) them, throw the ball for them, share his snacks with them, and woof-woof at them. 

• He has also become much more affectionate with us and will randomly come up and hug us. He will give us a kiss if we ask and sometimes even when we don't ask, which is the best and melts my heart every time. He likes to mess with us by pretending he's handing us something and then pulling his hand back when we reach for it. He really gets a kick out of that. He also likes to "get" us or have us "get" him. He and Paul were playing on the floor the other night though and he tried to come up and tackle Paul but fell and hit his mouth on Paul's elbow and his bottom teeth cut his lip. It looked so awful and bled for what seemed like forever, but he cried for all of two seconds and then after that didn't seem to know what the big deal was. He's definitely rough and tumble, which is a good thing since learning to walk requires falling flat on your face about a dozen times a day.

• Paul wanted me to put down a list of Wilder's words so here are all the ones I can think of that he's saying right now. They aren't all fully formed but you can definitely understand what he's talking about. Probably because he says each of them over and over about 50 times a day: bye, dog, Dada, duck, boon (balloon), quack, ball, woof-woof, voom-voom, moo (sort of), book, bug... but, nope, still not Mama! (Except for a brief British phase a few months ago when he called me Mum.) I like to think it's because I'm with him all the time and he never needs to call for me? That's what I'm telling myself at least. He'll say it soon enough and it will be a glorious, joyful day when he does ;)

There's so much more, so many little things that Paul and I love about him and laugh about every night. We just love this little boy and everything about him. We feel so incredibly lucky to be his parents and try every day to give our best to him.