Letters

In the past couple months, Nate has become fascinated by letters. Whenever he sees letters on my shirt or on a box, he will point to each of them individually, understanding that they make a word. When he's in his crib after a diaper change, he'll point to his name on the wall with a big smile and I'll say "Nathaniel -- Nate." And then we'll go through each letter individually. He also has this Leapfrog contraption on the fridge that you can put letters in and it'll sing, "B says B. B says B. Every letter makes a sound: B says B." We also have an alphabet puzzle thing where the letters pop out and he can stick them back in. One day a few weeks ago, he picked up the H and made the H sound! Now he does it all the time. I think he just likes how it sounds.

As for talking, Nate has quite a few words, but his pronunciation isn't very good. I'm pretty sure that Chuck and I are the only ones who know what he's saying. He seems most interested in animals sounds -- we'll say, "What does Wylie say?" and he'll make a panting noise (because Wylie doesn't bark). He'll make a "mrrreow" noise for a cat, "moo" or more like "brooo" for a cow, and "baaa" for a sheep. And he definitely knows his body parts. He can point to his head, hair, nose, teeth, tongue, chin, neck, ear, eye, fingers, hand, toes, knees and -- his favorite -- his belly.

I forgot to put Nate's 18 month stats on here last time. He's 28lb. and 33.5 inches tall, making him more than half my height and in the 80th percentile for both. Whenever I see him around other kids his age, I just feel like he's so tall. The kid is going to outgrow me by the time he's 8.