Benjamin 20 months

Benjamins1½ blog post has now turned into Benjamin 20 months, and in those 2 extra months so much has changed.  So it'll be a mashup of what has been going on the past few months. 

1½ - Benjamin is becoming more vocal.  A lot more noises and even a few words are in his vocabulary.  There are both Danish and English words among the few…and well, some of the words are hard to tell if it’s English or Danish…for ex: TRAC-TOR!.....in general only Søren and I understand them.

Night night

Duck

Bye Bye

All done

Far (bar) =also other people of our immediate family

Mommy (Mama)

Banana (Nana)  = all fruit

Tak + Thank you

Hej Hej

Vroom Vroom

Kitty

Water

No

Uh-oh

Oh NO!

The vocabulary list hasn’t really gotten bigger since then, but the words are more clear and he is starting to repeat more and more things after we say them

Here is a list of his favorite activities

• Climbing up on things…tables, couch, chairs
• Coming with books and sit on our lap to read
• Drinking by himself from a regular cup
• ANIMALS, HE LOVES animals.  Loves to make the noises, carry the plastic LEGO animals around and he gets to excited pointing at every animal he sees!
• Stacking LEGO blocks together…the small square ones
• Imitating everything we do...mostly copying Silas.  Both with noises and actions. He giggles a lot when he does it.
• Making car racing noises
• Singing along to a few songs….Pharoh song “yeah yeah yeah” and also doing some actions to songs like “The Wheels on the Bus”
• Eating with a fork….also here at 20 months, eating oatmeal himself with a spoon
• Lining up cars…lots and lots of cars in one long line
• Jumping on the trampoline
• Playing outside…he will come with his shoes and want you to put them on
• Pretending to be an American Football Center…down, set, hut!

These past few weeks it seems Benjamin has grown in leaps in his understanding of life and how things work.  Both with the rhythm of the day, but also how different appliances work, how to shake the juice before you pour a glass, etc.  He can also follow simple directions and seems happy to help out, especially with cleaning up!

Benjamin has come to love sleeping.  He now sleeps completely through the night.  The past 4 months his wake up time has been at 5:15 am, but the past month its been moving forward to 6:15…and two days this week until almost 8!  He also takes a 2½ hour nap each day.  Around 7pm, we tell Benjamin it’s almost time for bed, and he often begins to walk towards his room waving and saying “night night”.  He also says “night night” after we put him to bed while we are leaving the room. 

Overall Benjamin is a very happy boy.  He had a few rough months a few months back, where he was very whiney and throwing lots of tantrums on the floor.  Tantrums that could last for 30 minutes or longer.  These days he has found new ways to communicate and it is much easier to get him to snap out of it during a tantrum.

He loves to play with Silas and copy everything Silas does.  The boys have a lot of fun at the dinner table making noises and faces at each other.  Silas said the other day that he was excited for the day when Benjamin also started going to his pre-school.  So they are starting to build a more playful friendship with each other.

Benjamin is a total chatter box at home, and we love hearing him blab and blab.  Interestingly enough, his daycare mom has told us that he is quite quiet for most of the morning, but then in the afternoon when only 3 or so kids are left, he starts talking more and more. So he seems to be more comfortable in situations with fewer people.  We have also noticed that even though there are a lot of kids around, Benjamin will still talk a lot as long as Søren or I are there.  So that’s an interesting fact.

Benjamin enjoys getting to do a little bit bigger boy things now and being allowed to play with Silas’ toys…especially the tractor and ambulance.  But books are still one of the biggest hits.  He will bring over a huge pile of books and plop down on our laps to read each and every one.  He is very particular about  which book we should read first, next, etc, and shakes his head while saying “uh-uh” if we choose the books in the wrong order. J

We sure love our sweetie.  Wow!

I've got my animals!

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