Wow!! Sam is 18th months as of 4/6/11. He is really turning into more of a toddler every day. Here are some of his stats:

• Weight: 26 lbs, 14 ounces (70th percentile)
• Height: 34 5/8″ (96th percentile)
• Head circumference: 19.5″ (90th percentile)
• Sam continues to learn new words every day. Some are pretty hard to understand (down=”mown” and raspberry=”baba”) but he is starting to improve his pronunciation with some words. Our doctor said that by 2 years old, 50% of Sam’s words should be understandable to strangers. I am putting a list of the words Sam knows at 18 months at the bottom of this post so that I can have a record of it!
• Sam continues to get a little bit more adventurous with his climbing but he is definitely a cautious guy. He does not like to put himself in dangerous or tricky situations!! However he has been getting a lot of practice lately at going up and down stairs and is getting better. He would much prefer to walk down stairs holding my hand than to crawl down backwards.
• Even though Sam hasn’t hit his terrible two’s yet, he is definitely getting into a more willful stage! When he doesn’t get his way he is quick to throw a nice, big tantrum. One of his favorite new tricks is to swat at our faces! Ouch!
• Sam now has his top four teeth, his bottom two teeth, and all four pre-molars. It looks like he will be getting his I-teeth soon. I hope he gets the remaining two bottom teeth at some point! Poor Sam was very unhappy while he was getting his molars and was pretty crabby. But the last week he has been a happy little guy!
• Sam is really into learning names right now. My dad, sister-in-law, and mom have all visited in the last 2 weeks and Sam was so excited to learn their names and point to them (Bapa=Grandpa, Beba=Becca, Nana=Nana). Now that they are gone, he likes finding their pictures and naming them. He has a little photo album with his friends’ pictures and he loves pointing them out to whoever will listen. His favorite names are Ella and Chase!
• Bubbles, crayons, and stickers are Sam’s obsession right now. He also loooves to read. He will sit quietly for 10 minutes with his books, just looking at the pictures and commenting on each page. Sam loves music and likes to dance. His newest trick is spinning around in circles.
• Sam loves to blow kisses at everyone and will sometimes even kiss you right on the lips. The other day I saw him blowing kisses on the video monitor while he was supposed to be napping.
• Henry and Sam are getting to be better and better friends. This month we showed Sam how he can feed treats to Henry which is a popular new activity with both of them!

Sam’s vocabulary at 18 months: airplane, all done, alright, apples, applesauce, baby, ball, banana, bear, blueberry, boat, book, bottle, bubbles, bulldozer, bye, Cheerios, cheese, crayons, Daddy, diaper, dirty, dog, down, duck, eat, eyes, garbage truck, grandpa, helicopter, help, Henry, hi, I do, keys, light, mango, milk, Mommy, moon, more, night-night, no, nose, open, outside, pasta, peas, please, raspberry, shoes, socks, stick, strawberry, thank you, there it is, tractor, truck, uh oh, ukelele, up, waffle, want that, water, whale, yes, yogurt.