17 Months Old

The apple of our eyes is 17 months old already.  Raleigh has settled into his new school well.  While we had teary-eyed departures the first few weeks, now he asks for his friend "Aca" (Alice) in the morning and smiles and giggles when his favorite teacher takes him out of the car.  Wednesday, we even got to school late, but he happily joined the rest of his class, which was a welcomed change from him crying the instant we pulled into the parking lot and frantically shaking his head "no" when we approached the classroom, as he did the week before.  :(

Raleigh quickly got a reputation for being "the climber" on the second day of school by crawling up onto the picnic table during recess and then standing on it and cheering for himself.  Perhaps he had to draw attention away from him being the "bad napper"...  Luckily, he's napping well and spending recess at lower altitudes with the rest of the kids.  Raleigh also reportedly spends a lot of the day pointing to people and saying their names repeatedly, just like he does with mom and dad at home. :)

Raleigh is rapidly acquiring more words--even more obscure words now--and has built quite the vocabulary for a little guy.  We are especially enjoying two words Raleigh brought home from school: "away" (for putting things away) and "help" (sounds like "up" when he says it, but he also signs it).

"Please" is even more popular than "thank you" was for Raleigh.  "Thank you" got a big reaction out of mom and dad, so Raleigh would thank us several times - and even thank both of us for anything one of us did.  Now "please" gets Raleigh almost anything he asks for, so it is very popular: "More ____ please."  Tonight, Raleigh may have figured out "help please" is a magic combination for getting out of his crib, just like "poopoo" was before it.

"Stop" is also a very fun word.  Raleigh saw the Knox holding out his hand to the fox, so we learned that meant "stop".  ...then we had to learn what stop meant, so mom and dad would run around until Raleigh shouted "stop."  ...then we had to learn "go".

Raleigh will try to repeat anything we say, except for some animal names. Some animals are only referred to by their sounds. Even is we say "ka-ka-ka-cat," for example, Raleigh repeats "ka-ka-ka-meow." :)

One last antecdote... Earlier this week, Raleigh got really excited during our evening walk - the kind of excitement we usually only see when Raleigh spots cheese and realizes it's for him.  "People" he kept saying, and pointing to the people across the street.  Not a dog, not a cat, not a toy - people, whom Raleigh made feel very special that night.