Blake leaps forward.

We are experiencing a skill explosion in the Blake Territory.  This is a good thing, because he's now 20 months and due for some grand advancements.  He will walk all around the house holding onto a finger or two, will cruise any and all furniture, and will stand for 20-30 seconds unassisted and walk 6-8 steps before toppling.

Last week we pulled out the 3T clothes, because the 18M are way too small, and many of the 24M are too short in the legs or showing a bit of onesie midriff.  This has caused a bit of strange psych-outs between Jen and I, because with Blake wearing some of Ian's old 3T, and Ian still having (very few) Size 4 in his current wardrobe, we see something and say, "Didn't we just put that away a few months ago?"  In some cases, that may be true, because when Ian likes clothes, they'll stay in his drawer until I can see his ankles and wrists with his limbs hanging straight down.  The other problem is that many of the Size 5 or 6 pants are much too wide for our bean-pole eldest.  I have a couple of belts for him that I thread through his belt-loops, but recently he has taken to wearing red suspenders, and wore them to school a couple days this week.  It beats having to run around with one hand always tugging your trousers up during recess!

In addition to size and gross motor skills, his language has been phenomenal.  Here is list to update or old list of what we could come up with being in his vocabulary.  He will mimic many others, but these are ones that he'll see/request/speak of the object on his own.

1. apple (appa)
2. baby
3. ball (ball)
4. banana (babana)
5. bath (baf)
6. bed
7. belly button (bayee buppon)
8. bib
9. bite
10. boo!  (as in, Surprise!)
11. books (bookth)
12. boot  (booTth)
13. box
14. braces (behtheth)
15. bread
16. brother (bubba)
17. brush (bsh)
18. bum
19. bump
20. bus (buth)
21. button (buppen)
22. bye bye
23. cars
24. cat
25. chair (tcheh)
26. cheek
27. cheese (theeth)
28. chicken (thithen)
29. chin
30. choo choo
31. church (chuch)
32. close
33. coming (comin)
34. computer (puther)
35. cracker
36. crash
37. cucumber (bumba)
38. cup
39. Dad
40. dance (danth)
41. diaper (didah)
42. dog
43. done
44. down
45. downstairs
46. duck
47. feet
48. fish
49. foot
50. Gram
51. glasses (gath ess)
52. Hannah (annah)
53. hair
54. hat
55. head
56. home
57. hot 
58. Ian (yuh)
59. Jesus (theethuth)
60. juice (jooth)
61. kitchen (chichen)
62. knees
63. Libby (ibby)
64. Mama
65. meow
66. mittens
67. Nat (Natalie)
68. necklace
69. no
70. noodle (doo dt)
71. nose
72. now
73. oh my!
74. on
75. off
76. open (papen)
77. Owen (own)
78. pants
79. Papa
80. peek-a-boo 
81. pen
82. phone
83. poop
84. puppet
85. shirt 
86. shoe (boosh)
87. socks
88. spoon
89. stairs (thers)
90. teeth (teet)
91. tickle (thithle)
92. thank you (day doo)
93. toast (toes)
94. toes
95. trash
96. uh-oh
97. up (bup!)
98. upstairs 
99. what's that (wuthuh)
100. yes (yeth!)

And as a bonus, a few animal noises!

woof woof

meow

baa

baaaaaaak baba

moo

quack quack
ooh ooh ooh ah ah
roar