Team Taylor: November 2013

Dear Monkey,

You are 22 months old...almost 2 years old...wow, time flies!

You are such a chatterbox...talking non-stop saying real words and often making up your own words. You like to tell us stories, especially the one when you fell down at day care and scraped your eye. The story usually goes..."fall down. Rocks. Outside. Boo boo." You often make up your own stories, which are pretty entertaining. You are starting to be able to say your own name, but it usually sounds like "Saycyn"; you prefer to refer to yourself as "baby". Some of your new favorite words are: yep, nope, I yike, whatcha' doin', ok, ssshh and "I too" means I love you.

With Christmas around the corner, we are getting lots of toy catalogs in the mail and you love to just sit and look at them, page-by-page, saying "baby. toys" with every turn of the page.

We took you to Disney on Ice a few weeks ago and you loved it. You were a little scared at first of the loud noises, but quickly relaxed and enjoyed the show. You did great to sit still and watch the characters. Mickie & Minnie Mouse and Nemo were your favorites. It seems that you also really liked the scene where Pinocchio and Geppetto are swallowed by the whale & then sneezed back out because you will often say "fish...achoo".

You have learned how to sit Indian style and love to copy us crossing our arms. You love it when your clothes have pockets and will walk around with either special toys or your hands in your pockets. You like to try to dress yourself and sometimes have success with getting your pants and shirt on (usually backwards); socks and shoes are a bit more challenging though and can be a battle. You're very independent and strong willed (like me), which I love about you....but can be a big challenge for me - I want to help you, but know you need to learn for yourself, and you are not about to let me help you.

You have almost mastered doing a somersault; you practice often (always between finishing our bedtime books and heading to the bathroom to go potty) and are always so proud after doing one. You love to "help" Daddy and me - you can be in the middle of throwing one of your tantrums and if we ask you to help us with something, anything, the tantrum will stop and you will "help".

You love baby dolls and any type of animal (I see a family pet in our future). We recently cat watched for a friend of ours and you loved to pet the soft kitty and followed her around with her toy. You did not like when the kitty smelled Daddy's shoes, scolding her saying "No kitty. Daddy's shoes."

You are starting to like to play dress-up and especially love shoes, purses, and jewelry. You can almost count to 10 (you've succeed a few times, all by yourself) and are starting to learn your colors - you're pretty good with yellow, orange, and blue. Daddy even caught you saying your abc's the other day - all of them, from a to z!