18 months

As I mentioned in my last post, we had Aiden's 18-month check-up exactly when he turned 18 months - on the 17th :)  He weighed in at 23 pounds 9 ounces (50th percentile) and is 32.5 inches long (50th). We were pleasantly surprised that he did not have to get any shots!! I had anticipated he'd be getting his second Hepatitis A, but it hadn't been 6 months since the first dose, so they're going to hold off until next time.  We were totally fine with that ;)

I thought I'd post some of the pictures from the last few months that I haven't gotten around to posting.

• We started letting Aiden feed himself at the beginning of March and he's getting pretty good with his fork!  Over the last month though, we've kind of just fed him ourselves because he gets so messy when he feeds himself, but we're trying to be better about all sitting together at the table and letting him do it himself.  I mean, he has to learn!

• I put this on Facebook a few weeks back, but I am officially one of those moms.  Aiden gets so excited every time he sees these carts at the grocery store that I can't not get one for him. They are in high demand though, so we can't always get one, and then if Aiden sees another kid in one, he seems so let down.  It makes me feel so bad!

Lucky for him, Grandma and Grandpa Knuckles have a similar car at their house :)

Grandma and Grandpa Christensen also recently got a similar truck, but somehow I haven't gotten a picture yet.

• Aiden loves to pull things around in his little wagon.  I think it's stinking adorable.

• Our ward friends in the complex (across the lawn from us) "inherited" this dog from someone moving out and, for a while, whenever we came outside with Aiden, he'd make a beeline for it :)  He is definitely a dog lover!

• Lately Aiden will make little nests for himself.

Here he used the plastic bags I had sitting around to recycle.  Notice also that he has started doing a cheesy smile..haha.

And here he used a bunch of clothes we needed to put away. I love that he's clutching his soccer ball :)

• Speaking of balls, Aiden spots the ball bin right away whenever we're out running errands!

We were in CVS here and let him play a while b/c he was so happy :)

• And, of course, he still loves to be outside.

He knows that we often sit on the steps while he runs around, so lots of times he'll sit on the steps with us for a minute before he starts playing :)

We have also been getting some good use out of his trike! Several weeks ago we finally put the push bar on it.  I used to think it was totally dorky, but we discovered that it steers the trike (Aiden's legs are still a little too short to pedal) so now we bring it with us basically every time we go to the pool, mailbox, or just on a walk :)  Aiden loves it!

• He is in the phase that every toddler goes through where he loves to put our shoes on and walk around :)

• Our little stinker is such a little techie.  He has definitely messed up the format on our computers a few times, where we've been completely clueless as to how he did it, but luckily fixing it is usually a matter of simply restarting it (knock on wood).

• We turned Aiden's car seat around a few weeks back.  I think we were more excited about it than he was ;)  It's really nice that we can see him now.

And here are just a few more random pictures :)

I realized that I never wrote about Aiden's stitches being removed on April 24th (accident story HERE), only on Facebook.  I'm grateful Tanis was able to come with.  We had to hold the poor baby down while 2 nurses worked to get the stitches out.  They were so tight that one of them had to pull up on them while the other snipped - definitely a little traumatic :( Luckily there's a playground right outside our doctor's office, so we let Aiden play a while afterward :)

We went to visit Daddy's office a few weeks ago and went to lunch.  Aiden decided to drop his crayons in my water..haha.

It also happened to be Grandma's birthday :)

On this day we shared a smoothie out on the porch while we were waiting for Daddy to come home and Aiden insisted on bringing the silverware from the dishwasher out with us ;)

And lastly, I just love this picture!  Totally bummed that it's a little blurry - I think Aiden may have smudged the lens or something :(