Dear Austin,

The last letter I wrote to you on this blog was 7 months ago, tsk tsk, bad Mommy! I think instead of writing you letters here and posting your pictures here, I’ve been doing a lot of that on Instagram, but I still feel that it’s important to document your growth on here once in awhile as well!  Your 21 month old day is coming up this Saturday!

Where do I even begin trying to catch up for the last 7 months?  Well, for starters, you started walking!  That happened right around 14 months.  You experienced language explosion around 18 months and now you can say so many words it’s so hard to keep track.  To name a few, you know:

The names of all family members in Chinese
You can say the following colors: red, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, grey, white… we’re still working on orange, you just say “o”
You know when and how to say “please” and “thank you” (in chinese)
You know the names of random objects: car, truck, schoolbus (you say baobao), duck, cup, taxi, train (you say choo choo), rock, shoes, socks
You can mimic a ton of animal sounds
You can say “yea” and “no”
You can repeat the whole alphabet!
When we ask you, “What’s your name”, you point to yourself and say “Austin”!

And you are really just learning new words each day and are getting good at answering questions! It’s so exciting to see you pick things up so quickly, it also means Mommy and Daddy need to watch what they say. 😉

Since you can’t quite dress yourself yet, Mommy is slowly defining your fashion sense… and it looks like you are turning out to be quite the trendy hipster toddler. You usually don’t have a problem with how Mommy dresses you, except you sometimes refuse certain shoes and hats and sunglasses. Mommy herself loves to pattern mix and dress in bright colors and she tries to do the same for you!

Your next Drs appointment isn’t until after you are 2, but we think are about 33 inches tall and 25 pounds right now (give or take 1-2 inches/pounds each way). We are so excited to see how tall you will be when you are 2 (legend has it that if you just double your 2 year old height, it will give you your adult height).  As for eating, well as the shirt says, you still love your milk! You call for it every morning when you wake up. You are kind of a picky eater and won’t just eat anything we give you, but you definitely love corn, broccoli, quiche, and sweets. Oh yea, and you officially sleep almost a 12 HOURS at night and have a 1.5 hour nap in the day. You sleep at 7:30PM  and generally don’t wake up until 7:15AM, and then nap around 11:45AM.

You’ve been at daycare for 6 months now and although it’s been a real change from having your grandparents watch you, we feel that it was a good change to help you grow your social skills. Teachers at daycare generally give you a “happy”, “cooperative”, “busy”, and “chatty” report card and say you are getting along great socially with your classmates and even the 2 year olds! Your teacher used to be Ms. Kelly which we loved, but she left and now you have Ms. Amber (or as you like to call her Ammy). The way you say “Ammy” and smile shows us that you love her and love going to daycare. And Jeffrey making you pancakes on Wednesdays is a big plus in your book too!

As you can probably tell from the picture, your favorite activity is pushing things. Pushing lawn mowers, strollers, carts, anything.  A few months ago, we traveled to Michigan and Ohio and you had a fit at the airport because you wanted to push your stroller. We were going through the security line so couldn’t let you, and you wouldn’t stop crying at 7am in the morning… We know you love your stroller, but there’s a right place and time for everything, you’ll learn that soon. 🙂

I have to say, that sometimes you tire out Mommy and Daddy with tantrums and crying, but we still love you unconditionally. You’ll go through spells of very terrible terrible two tantrum behavior, but most days you are pretty good. 🙂 We are excited for you to learn more words and express yourself, we are excited for you to see more of the world, we are excited for you to try new experiences and not be so shy (a little shy at first is OK), we are excited for you to get to know family and friends better, we are excited for what’s come for your bright future!

Love,

Mommy and Daddy

 Outfit Details

Tank: Bobo Choses
Cardigan: American Apparel
Shorts: Old Navy
Shoes: Collegian
Bandana Scarf: Vonbon