Snapshot of 21 months

Dear Huston,
You are at such a fun age right now and it seems like every day you're doing something new and wonderful. I'm trying so hard to treasure every little thing you do, but I know I'm bound to forget some of the things that I'm trying to hold on to. To help me remember, here are just a few of your favorite things at 21 months:

- The "pet shop" game. To initiate this game you say "tweet tweet tweet" and that means we're supposed to get down on the floor with you and pick up the little birdie that goes with the pet shop and say "tweet tweet tweet, can I come in Huston?" Then you open the door for us and let us in. You also like to shove the bird out the door and say "bye bye" and knock the bird off the roof. The pet shop also has people and a dog and a cat, but you don't allow any of them to come inside.
- You love riding in the car and listening to music. You like to get your shoes on in the morning and then go to the garage door and say "on," indicating that we should turn the car on and go drive somewhere and listen to music. Several times a day, in fact, you make this same request, and you can get highly annoyed when I tell you that we don't actually need to drive anywhere at the moment.

- The letter "H." It's your favorite and every time we get out the colors, you want us to draw you several H's.

- Water and rainstorms. You love sprinklers, playing with the hose, splashing in puddles, and standing outside when it's raining. You even laugh hysterically when it thunders.

- Chasing the "hop hops" in the backyard. You always want to go check outside to see if any of the wild bunnies around our house are out there. When you see one, you yell "HOP HOP" and then chase it around the yard giggling until it eventually runs away. Then you tell it "bye bye." You also like to talk about how the "hop hops" eat the grass. Usually your story about an encounter with a bunny goes like this: "hop hop. eat. bye bye."

- Putting on your daddy's shoes. You like to pull his big shoes out of the closet and say "on" and then have us help you put them on. It's pretty adorable.

- Taking the cushions off the couch and running around like a wild man up and down them and on and off the couch. You are definitely all boy.

- Elmo - you ask to watch him several times a day.

- Dogs, especially your Uncle Ben's dog, Pup. You giggle hysterically when she licks your fingers and just can't get enough of chasing her around trying to get her to lick you some more.


A few things I love that you do now:

- Say "bye-bye" with the most southern drawl imaginable.
- Sing EIEIO like this: "Ah, eee, Ah, eee." It's so cute.
- The way you say please. It sounds just like "seis."
- The way you squeeze your eyes shut when we pray and say "Amen!" at the end.
- How you reach up on your tip toes and lift your chin up to give your daddy a kiss goodbye when he leaves for work. And how you yell "Daddy!" when he comes home.


A few things I'm not so fond of:

- You like to cover your eyes and yell at strangers when they try to say hi to you. It's very embarrassing. We were in line at the post office the other day and it was a long wait, and you must have yelled at everyone in there by the time we left.
- You cannot stand for me to pull my hair back or put it in a ponytail. If you catch it up you yell at me to put it back down.
- The beginning of these notorious "terrible twos" I've heard so much about. You can throw a mean screaming fit when you want to.


So there you have it. Those are just a few random things about you that I can think of right now. They hardly encapsulate all that you are, but that's pretty impossible to do with words anyway. You're a one-of-a-kind little boy. I love you,

Mom