Officially a Toddler!

Our little man is officially a toddler! Hudson decided he was finally ready to start walking last week. He had been cruising since about 10 1/2 months, so I was beginning to wonder how much longer he was going to wait! He is quite proud of his new skill and spends much of his day working to perfect it.

The last couple weeks it seems like he has just taken off with his development. I had to write a whole list down the other day because there were so many new things he is doing that I wanted to remember.

New Words

I have a feeling that even though girls are typically more verbal, Hudson is going to be a very talkative child (just like his father!) It seems like he is saying new words almost every day! Some of them stick and he uses them frequently and others he just repeats for a little bit until the fun wears off. His favorite words right now are yucky (ack-ee), which he uses for anything he knows he's not supposed to touch, and uh oh (uh-oooh). He also has been saying bye-bye (ba-ba), tick tock, night night (nah-nah), kitty, and of course lots of mama and dada. I love hearing his little voice! It's adorable :)

Animal Noises

We have lots of books with animals in them that Hudson likes to read, so we are doing lots of animal sounds lately. The first one he picked up was for an elephant. He raises his arm and kind of squeals. I was pretty amazed when he started doing this while we were reading a book and he saw a picture of an elephant. He also likes to do monkey, where he says ah-ooh-ooh. Mike and I say ooh-ooh-ahh-ahh, so not sure how he got that one backwards. He also will occasionally make dog noises too, but you probably wouldn't recognize it. It took me awhile to realize he was consistently making the noise when we talked about doggies.

Body Parts

Hudson loves playing with his feet and will now point to them when you ask him where his toes are. He thinks it's so funny for some reason! I think he's pretty close to figuring out fingers/hands too because we are always asking where his hands are when putting on his shirt.

Mimicking

He is starting to figure out how objects are supposed to be used and one of his favorites is the phone. He would love to have mommy and daddy's phone, but I gave him an old cell phone of mine I still had stuffed in our desk drawer and it definitely suffices. He loves to "talk" on the phone and will hold just about anything shaped like a phone up to his ear and say hello. :) The other thing he started doing the other day was trying to comb his own hair. Up until then, the comb had mostly been a teething toy!

Emerging Toddlerhood

The other thing I've noticed lately is that my sweet innocent baby is starting to test his boundaries. It's really kind of interesting to watch his mind work, kind of like "Mom said not to touch the lamp, but maybe I can touch the bottom of the lamp, ok no, well maybe I can touch it with just my finger tip, ok no, well how about with my foot" and on and on. After a few times of this he usually does realize that mom is in charge because he will give a short cry and his best pouty face, and then move on to something else. Except when it's the toilet paper roll. That thing is absolutely irresistible.