17 1/2 months

Thomas has a new molar! Now he's got all four molars, and he's missing 4 canines and one bottom incisor. When he opens his mouth, it's like Jaws!

For my birthday, we went out to eat at Hanamizuki Japanese Restaurant on Friday night. As always, it was delicious!!! I guess Thomas looks big enough that they now give him his own cup, bowl, spoon and fork and ask what he'll have for dinner. We shared food with him from our plates and he ate a lot! He screamed twice, possibly prevented from more because Mom distracted him with rice, which he loves. Nowadays we can put a plate of food down in front of him and he will feed himself! He can use a spoon but mostly uses his hands. It's very freeing! Once Thomas is set up, I myself can eat, instead of feeding him and waiting to feed myself until he's done! My stomach is very happy with that arrangement!


Mom and Dad brought back a toy Delta airplane and a toy San Francisco Cable Car for Thomas from their trip to California with Shauna. He loves them! He pushes them around the floor and has gotten used to the airplane noises now -- it's got quite noisy "engines"! He has also started to sit on his big "car" and push with his feet to go backwards and forwards! He gets a really big smile when he does that, and has started pushing himself over thresholds for the extra bumps.

Ever since we came back from Japan, Thomas has been going to bed at 8:00pm and waking up between 7 and 7:30am. His nap has slowly moved from early in the morning to 12:15pm, and lasts about an hour and a half! I think he's now really settled into this one-nap thing. He's not so grouchy or tired in the morning, and doesn't take so much energy to distract him from his foul mood, or to try to keep him awake. On the other hand, he's really motoring now and that takes a lot of energy to chase around after him!!