The tiny dictator is not so tiny as he once was.

Stephen primarily eats adult food now. He drinks about 40oz. of milk/juice per day and eats a little bit of every meal that I eat. He can feed himself with a spoon (if I load up the spoon with the right amount of food every time) and can nearly sip out of a real cup. I'm moving away from bottles since he is proficient with a sippy cup and a straw cup.

He still can't say anything but "dada" and "mama" but he can wave hello/goodbye and he is starting to try to clap. We are pretty well into one nap per day mode now, which is really nice for planning things. If we aren't doing anything all day, he can nap at 11am, but if we have things to do, he can nap at 2 or 3pm instead.

He can do something that's a lot closer to "playing" now. He gets this look in his eye and takes off running--either towards you or away from you. He understands that he can throw himself down on either the couch or a bed and not get hurt. He'll take two quick steps and fall on one of our oversized pillows if we put him on the couch.

He has a growing collection of loud toys. Some of them even have no volume settings. I'm pretty close to taping cotton balls over the speaker of of one toy in particular.