January 2012: 16 months

Dear Patrick, starting off the new year this month:

• I bought a children’s song CD to play in the car and you love it.  Especially the “Ants go Marching” but you really love all songs.  If you are ever upset and someone begins to sing any melody at all - you will forget your worries and stop to listen.
• You love the moon and look for it in the sky all the time now - day or night.  You point upwards and say “moooon.”
• You play “ah-boo” with Dad on his iphone.  And then you bring the game to the dining room table when you peek over the top to look at us on the other side.  I can't see your mouth (only your eyes) but I know you are smiling.  Your height amazes me since just last month, we watched you walk under the table without bumping your head.  
• If you are talking to us and we aren’t giving you our full attention (the quality attention you deserve!) you pull our faces to look at you.
• Uncky and your father do push-ups in the living room and you run over and jump on their backs.
• We took you to the Mexican place around the corner for dinner the night of Monday 1/16 and you had no desire to sit at the table in the high chair they provided.  Good thing its so loud in there.  Your father and I took turns noisily walking the length of the restaurant as you visited other patrons, splashed in the fountain, banged on the windows.
• You have both bottom molars in now.
• You are going to bed closer to 8:00pm vs 7:30.
• You can open the front door, which is scary.  So it now has to stay locked at all times because you desperately want to get outside.  Even when you are wearing nothing but a diaper...in the middle of winter.  Did I mention its January?  
• You love to taunt Cooper.  You demand to have a bone (“bonga”) from the pantry only to wave it in Cooper’s face and run in the other direction.  And when Cooper does finally take it, you cry buckets of tears in surprise.
• You don’t say “please” often but when you do it sounds like “plah.”
• We sing “Naked Baby Time” and no matter where you are in the house you go running for the bathroom to stand by the tub.
• You were always a good eater, but you’ve become a little picky lately.  Your father has gone so far as to write on the grocery list not actual "things" but instead phrases like “More exciting dinners for P” or “Ideas for breakfast?” We are trying.