20 Months old and 7 Months home

I can’t believe it took me two weeks to get to write the 20 month post. I am in FP&A and this is supposed to be our slow and easy time before budget season starts and yet it’s been quite crazy busy.
Doing the hourly drive every morning and evening is starting to get to me even though I only do it for 3 days out of the week and work out of the Newport Beach office on Thr and Fri (only 10 min’s from home). It’s tough knowing that I spend less than 1 hour with Vanie per day during the week. Jason’s been great and taking care of the kiddo after work during the week most days and of course Vanie loves being with his daddy. Well, enough whining, now on to the updates…

Vanie is getting bigger and bigger by the day and not to mention stronger and more energized than the Energizer bunny.
Changes/ Updates: grandma’s six months of babysitting were over last week and she left for Bulgaria (Thank you for all your help, grandma Vera). Grandpa Simon came in at the end of july to take over the next 6 months of baby sitting. Vanie didn’t even need an adaptation period., he was great with him from day one.
Activities: Our kid just loves being outside (but when I think about it I did, too, when I was a kid). He could be outside at our lake or in the park all day long and it’s still not enough and he cries when going home.
He runs really fast now and continues to run rather than walk. As of July he started attempting to jump. The jumping is pretty comical for now. He spends so much time getting into position and preparing and gaining strength and then the actual jump is him barley lifting one of his feet from the ground and then him falling on his but. His gotten better over the weeks but still needs practice. I will try to film him and post a few of his jumps on the blog.
Feeding: Eating is still a hit a miss. One week is great and another he’d barley eat his lunch and dinner. My mother in law cooked for him every day and I am continuing with that trend. Some of my backup plans for “refusing to eat the cooked meals” days are: hot dog franks, string cheese, oatmeal, bread, warm instant pudding (vanilla or chocolate), french fries, pizza bagels. He loves to eat these and they all have enough calories so they tend to make up for a lost meal.
He still doesn’t like to drink any kind of juice and is on water and milk only (I am not complaining at all). Still not a big fan of fruits so I try to sneak them blended with his oatmeal. It usually works.
Teething: He officially has all teeth except the 2 yr molars. He is still drooling like crazy and I am starting to think I need to consult with his pediatrician. We go through 3-4 t-shirts in one day just because he gets them all wet. I tried checking if the 2nd yr molars may be coming out but that’s not an easy task…got bitten severely several times (and of course, it’s all an amusing game to Vanie).
Talking: Hmm, he is definitely blabbering… A LOT, very vocal but it’s all baby talk. Bulgarian is a farily hard language (I didn’t realized it until I saw how much he struggles with the pronunciation of some of the letters - we have 30) but he is trying. He is starting to say (or try to say) more and more words… he probably has about 20 words and we noticed as of this week he is repeating many of the words as soon as he hears them from us (one of them is “trash”) so we keep reminding ourselves with Jason that we have to be careful what we say.

That's about it on our little temujin for now. We are exhausted and yet oh so happy to be able to say why. It doesn’t matter how many time-outs I may have given Vanie during a day, I still go bed with a big smile knowing we have him. He’s definitely what we’ve been waiting for all these years.
Oh yes, and apparently he now says “I love you” but it sounds like “babili bab” .

As for fun activities from the last month – I will post separately with pictures.