half-pint charmer

Ben hits you with a 1-2 punch.  First, he gives you the puppy dog eyes:

Then he follows it with his dazzling "I got my way" smile (if you enlarge this picture, you can see how swollen his gums are for his emerging teeth--those bottom incisors and molars are so close to popping out):

I have a bad feeling this will spell trouble for college-age girls in 18 years or so.

Ben has a BIG personality, and seems even bigger, given his size.  He is nearly 18 months (just another week until his half birthday) and here he is wearing a 12-18 month bunting.  I suspect it will fit him until he warms back up 7-8 months from now:

At nearly 18 months, Ben is a whopping 31.5 inches tall and 22 pounds.  He might be taking after me--I didn't break 50 pounds until I was 9, and only weighed 75 pounds or so when I finally reached 5 feet tall.

Ben is a little charmer these days.  For one, he sleeps through the night (defined as about 7:30pm until 5:30am) about once or twice a week.  This is a HUGE improvement over what he sleep used to be, and when he does wake at night, he simply nurses and goes right back to sleep.

His 2nd charming thing are the way he greets everyone.  When he says "hi", he does the beauty queen wave (where you turn your hand side to side) and he says hi to everyone--the cats, people across the parking lot, etc.  His excitement for greeting Liam is especially sweet.  Today when Liam's bus pulled up, Ben yelled out "Me-ma!!!!!!!!" (how he says Liam) and then said hi and waved at the bus, yelling in excitement until Liam walked off the bus. Oh,and he loves blowing kisses to people he especially likes.

His signature move is sound imitation--he imitates everything from the cats purring to cars to me sneezing.

Ben loves the cats, and somehow he has even charmed Murray, who lets Ben pet him (Murray still runs and hides from Liam).  Ben also loves babies and baby dolls.  He has a new obsesssion with ducks and bears....and surprisingly Elmo, even though we rarely watch Elmo.

Ben also answers questions now, and is pretty advanced in both expressive and receptive language. Our conversation this morning went: 

Mommy: Do you want to get Liam?

Ben: No!  Milk!

*Mommy nurses Ben*

Ben: all done milk

Mommy: are you all done?

Ben: Yeah!  Me-ma!

*Ben runs to Liam's room

The other day Ben was saying something, but I had no clue what it was.  When this happens, he repeats it over and over again. This particular day he was saying "Memo!"  I usually figure it out, but if I don't Ben gets frustrated,  Finally, he brought me a book with Elmo on it and pulled my hand while saying "Memo stuck!"  He dragged me to the trash can where he had thrown away his Elmo doll.  I retrived poor Elmo, and Ben toddled away hugging him and saying lovingly "Memo, Memo!"

I guess Ben is trying to make up for how fussy he was his first 1.5 years of life.