Our little 18 month old

In August Benjamin turned 18 months old - where has all the time gone??  He's an amazing kid that makes us smile every day!  He learns so fast and it's all due to his own determination - when he wants to learn something he works and works at it until he's got it down!  He loves talking and has quite a vocabulary (he tells us about everything), knows lots of animals and their noises, knows his colors & shapes (his favorite thing these days is to tell us what color everything is), and is pretty good at doing puzzles and shape sorters on his own, too.  Benjamin also started nursery and is loving it - he didn't even care that we left the first few times - he just jumped right in and started playing or doing whatever they were doing.  Some of his favorite phrases these days are "uh-oh" or "oh-no"(but then usually right after he reassures us and tells us it's "okay"), "a-gon" or "a-dun" when he finishes eating, and "aw-vue" (I love you).  He's gotten pretty good at feeding himself on his own.  Other than when he's eating with a spoon (that still gets somewhat messy) we can finally just give him his food and let him take it from there - he especially loves eating with a fork so he can "poke" his food.  His favorite foods are just about any fruit or veggie (he's rarely picky with those and gobbles them up) and he loves drinking water!  Since getting his cast off he's been able to do so much more with his left hand.  Right hand is still much more dominant, but he can use his left hand to do a lot now.  His favorite thing to do with his left arm, though, is carry his teddy bear around with that, while he plays with his right hand.  We've tried building some excitement about the baby coming soon, but who knows how much he understands - it would be nice to know what he is thinking sometimes!  Benjamin loves his teddy bear, cars (especially motorcycles), and animals - he is such a joy!

As mentioned, he loves drinking water, and for awhile we just
had Dave's camelback set up on the chair and Benjamin
would just go over and get a drink whenever he felt like it.

He loves wearing these glasses (from a Mr. Potatohead set)

Such a happy guy!

So cute when he's sleeping!

It's always fun seeing where his teddy bear ends up when he's
sleeping.