this guy

I haven't said anything about Mr. Wesley for a while, so I guess it's about time.

Within a day or two after returning home from Christmas in Idaho, he finally mastered going down the stairs on his own (intentionally).

His vocabulary is growing, too. He has been our latest talker, and was stuck on four or five words for months. (Uh-oh, dada, nana (banana), mo! (more), whoa).

Some of his newer words are juice, shoes, cheese, car, bubble, diaper, and noodle. He makes a "ssssss" sound for a snake and for all other animals he makes his horse snort noise. He can also sense when we're getting ready to go somewhere and will head toward the garage door saying, "Deh-do!" (meaning, "let's go!"). He can understand a lot more than he can say; he can point to his belly when asked, for example, and if anyone mentions the word "bath" he'll head upstairs to the bathroom.

He is a pro at going down the slide at the park by himself, and loves playing outside in general. He loves trying on shoes and will go through our closets putting on different pairs and marching around the house. He likes to hum to himself and the two songs we hear him humming the most sound remarkably like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Old McDonald Had a Farm. He's been doing this for months, so we weren't sure at first if his songs were intentional. Maybe he just plagiarized them.

He has his favorite books now- one being Blue Hat Green Hat. He can "read" that one ("Duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh, Ooooo!").

He can be quite charming when he's in a good mood, but still wakes up once a night most of the time. He's very attached to a pacifier now (he didn't take one until he was close to 1), but we try to only let him have it for naps and bed. He's teething- getting some back molars on the bottom, so we've been letting him have it more often. We'll crack down soon. It does come in handy for keeping him quiet at church, too.

Other than that he's the typical toddler- getting into anything and everything. He still likes toilets, and yesterday he pulled my purse down from the table and managed to eat half a pack of gum before I caught him. He kept cocking his head to the side and saying, "Mmmmmmm!".