23 MONTHS

It never fails.  Another month flashed before my eyes. And as the months fly by, they seem to just get more fun with our little man.  He's growing and learning at a rate I never imagined.

At 23 Months...

-Hanley mastered his colors literally the day after I posted his 22 month post.  So, I decided we needed to start working on letter recognition. One of the things I purchased for him was an alphabet place mat.  Since so much of our evening is spent at the dinner table, I figured that would be a good way to incorporate letters and learning into our nightly dinner conversations. It's been a great addition to our evenings. 

-Beyond learning, the place mat has been fun for Hanley too.  Most evenings after dinner, he hides his fork under the place mat and says "Where the fork?" with the biggest grin on his face. 

-I mentioned in my last post, Hanley had school pictures. His individual pictures turned out pretty good. His class picture just cracks me up though.

2014 Class Picture

-One morning, Uncle Wayne and Hanley were playing and they made a couch fort together. That started Hanley's fort obsession. Now, He has to have a fort on a daily basis. Sometimes we will be playing "dumps" and all of a sudden he will say "dump fort". So, we have to build a fort to park all his dumps in. 

-Hanley loves stickers.  What a boy will do for a sticker is unbelievable! Who knew something as simple as a sticker would have such an impact on him. Once we realized how important they were to him, we started using them as a rewards. He "earns" stickers by using his listening ears, using the big boy potty, etc. One evening we learned they work quite effectively as a punishment too. We had an incident where out of frustration, he hit me.  I told him that was not okay and he needed to use gentle hands.  He hit me a second time.  I told him if he didn't use gentle hands, I was going to take his sticker away.  He said "no" and hit me a third time so I took his sticker away, walked straight to the garbage and thew it away.  He followed me screaming and crying "No! No take sticker!!" I had a cold that week and lost my voice so I knew he couldn't hear me over his crying. I told Cody to sit him down and explain why I took his sticker away.  He refused to listen to Cody and hit him too. It landed him in time out then an early bedtime.  It was a rough night for everyone.  We could hear him in his room crying "No take sticker" clearly still upset about losing his sticker. This was a good learning lesson. Since that evening, we have never had to take another sticker away from him.  Yes, there have been times that we have warned him that he would lose his sticker if he didn't do XYZ but that simple warning always does the trick.  He knows Mom and Dad WILL do exactly what they say if his behavior doesn't change. Following through with what you say has already proven to us it's importance as parents. Something we need to always keep in mind but especially as we near the terrible 2's stage coming up.

-Hanley recently got a couple new pairs of PJ's. This has really helped with getting ready for bed because he gets excited about which PJ's he's going to wear. The first time he wore his new Fox PJ's he went around the house saying "Fox Shirt. Fox Pants." The only problem is that it sounded more like F*ck instead of Fox.  So, I made a mental note to never send him to school in a Fox shirt.

-Most evenings I let Hanley choose which PJ's he wants to wear.  He always seems to have a strong opinion about wearing his "Dump" PJ's one night or his "Fire Truck" PJ's another night. So, one Saturday morning I thought maybe he should have more say in what he wears during the day. We were in his room and when I asked him what he wanted to wear today, he grabbed tropical swim shorts and a Dinosaur PJ shirt.  I let him wear it (after all, it was a Saturday at home) but now I make sure to just pick out two outfits and let him decided between the two rather than have full range of his closet!

-We took Hanley to the pumpkin patch.  Something that I really enjoy doing.  We had a good time picking out pumpkins, eating apple cider donuts, and playing in the nut hut but what he really loved was the hay ride.  He's been telling us for weeks "Mommy, I fun at tractor".