"Melmo"

Oh boy, 16 months is such a fun age! Collen has quite the personality, and he seems to do something new every single day!

We are loving watching his personality blossom. He is quite the social butterfly. He loves to say, "Hey!" to people and "Bye Bye" when they leave. He will repeat almost anything you try to get him to say. He is very verbal....really "talkative" - although it comes out as jibberish most of the time.

He is saying so many things:

"Melmo" - Elmo
Da Da
Momma
NaNa - which is banana and NaNa (Jeremy's mom)
Juice
Eat
No
Yes
Mess
Gross
Yuck - "uck"
Truck -"uck"
Sock - "ock"
Shoes - "oosh"
Hot
Light
Octopus - "Pus"
Football - "butt-ball"
Ball
And all sorts of animal sounds!!

He says even more than these, but I can't remember them all!

I need to get some updated pictures on here for you guys to see. I take so many pictures on my phone...I really need to start using my camera again.

I am enjoying watching him learn and finding out what interests him. He still LOVES books. He now really enjoys puzzles and riding on his cars. He also enjoys his Sesame Street playset he got for Christmas. Anything that is hand-held, like a figurine or a toy car...he loves! He has also, just recently, become interested in coloring. He doesn't quite have the attention span for it, yet, but he will sit and color for a little while (supervised of course....we don't leave him unattended for very long at all!! He gets into mischief pretty easily!). He has also taken an interest in watching particular tv shows - namely Sesame Street/Elmo's World. He also enjoys the Winnie the Pooh movie and Curious George.

This week, we have noticed a huge change in his sleeping patterns. Over our Christmas break, he slept all night long... 8:30 - 6:30 in his crib, and then he would move over to our bed to finish out the last 2 hours. It was heavenly!! Now that we have gone back to work and back to our routine, he hasn't slept well at all. I don't know if it's the change in routine again (he slept fine with this routine before) or teething or a new phase of separation anxiety. Whatever it is...it has us all exhausted. He is waking up at night (usually about 3 hours after we put him to bed) just screaming and inconsolable! We considered night terrors, but he is soothable once we hold him. But once we go to put him back in the crib, he's screeching and screaming so loud!! He sounds terrified!! And we don't have the heart to leave him in his crib crying like that. So, we let him sleep with us. We know this is bad practice, but we have to get some sleep!! This has gone on for the last week with no end in sight. Tonight, he wouldn't even go down as he normally does. I watched Jeremy (on the monitor) trying to lay him in the crib, and he just cried and cried. Eventually, Jeremy took the matress out of his crib and put it on the floor so he could lay next to him (I had almost done this the other night...). I'm watching now and it seems Jeremy has fallen asleep...haha. Anyway, I'm wondering if we should convert his crib to a bed and see how that goes. Since he likes our bed so much...I'm thinking it may make him feel more comfortable?

Never a dull moment, huh?