20 Months!

Oh little boy, you are a joy and a handful at the same time.

But first, I want to talk about the moment that brought me to near-tears tonight.

You are obsessed with belly buttons. You love your belly button, love showing it to people, and will find it the instant you are asked to find it. The same with other people. You love finding their belly buttons, pointing them out, laughing when you stick your finger in it.

Typical 20-month-old behavior. but tonight, when you hiked my shirt up over my growing belly to find my belly button (still and innie, thank God!), I told you that you have a little sister in there.

I said, "There's a baby in my belly." And you put the palm of your hand where you had just seen her kick and said, "Baby." It was beautiful. I love you always, but at that moment, my heart swelled for you and your little boy charm. I can't wait for you to meet her.

Otherwise, you're in tip-top form for a 20-month-old, with lots of words and phrases and more things that we can't understand. But lots of things we can, like when you want to go downstairs, you say, "Down" or "Me down." You understand "me" as in James and I hear you say it every one in awhile.

You are starting to drink from real cups, rather than your sippy cups, and you have figured out that you need to set them on a table or counter when you're done with them, or your milk goes away in a hurry as it all leaks out, usually all over our arpet (awesome!).

You are obsessed with the bathroom, still. Love flushing the toilet, turning off the lights etc. So we bought you a toilet seat that fits over ours. We already have an actual potty-training chair for you that even has a splash-guard for little boys, but it's so hard to sit in at any given moment. We've tried just to sit you on it, not even to practice, just sit and you certainly don't want to. So we tried it with the toilet seat, and you didn't want to have anything to do with that either. So I wonder what it will take to get you to start potty training. At least you're still interested. I'm tired of diapers and don't want to have two children in diapers!

You are more than familiar with time out, and usually after one night of several time outs, you are good for a couple of days. Your daddy is finally starting to "grow a pair" and figuring out that he can be stern and you'll listen and not hate him.

You can be the sweetest boy, bringing us our glass of water to drink (which causes me to have a panic attack every time because I swear that you are going to drop it), steak knives that we have left out too close to the edge of the kitchen counter (no cuts yet!) and sometimes, you like to try and share hot dogs with us (even the beef ones that I buy that are more dollars than typical "hot dogs" I will not touch...)

You have a deep laugh, you love to smile, and you are growing like a weed. I love you more than you know. I hope that when you are 18, a senior ready for the real world, you will let me give you a zillion kisses all over your face, hug you like it's my last time, and keep that mischievous twinkle in those deep blue eyes. Nothing good usually comes from that twinkle, but it melts my heart any way.

I love you, sweet boy.