Micah is 16 months old!

Micah is 16 months old and I cannot believe how fast this has happened! The old saying "The days are so long, but the years are so short" is sooooo true! He is such a boy and I love to see the differences between him and his big sisters because they are night and day. This boy loves loud things and heavy duty machinery and equipment, along with power tools and vacuum cleaners. The girls love NONE of those things ;) The girls used to take off running when I turned on the vacuum cleaner, Micah tries to hop on and ride it. I used to have to take the girls to the front of the house if Patrick was mowing the back yard so they wouldn't cry from the loud noise, Micah beats on the back door to try to get out there with daddy. He loves big vehicles like garbage trucks, fire trucks, and school buses and the girls enjoy looking at them but do not enjoy the sounds they make. My daughters are 100% girl and my son is 100% boy. It is so fun to watch them play together though because the girls love to play with him. The girls do a ton of fighting with one another because they always want what the other has, but they rarely fight with Micah. They are much more willing to share things with him than they are each other...I can't figure it out?! I guess it's a competitive twin thing and probably a competitive girl thing too. 

What Micah is up to at 16 months:
*He is such a good walker and so sturdy. This boy can fall down and barely make a peep and often has lots of bruises on his face from those falls :( Talk about tough.
*He is getting very good at communicating with us. He will get into the pantry and bring me his bags of snacks and then go to the refrigerator and yell at me until I open it up and get him his milk. He signs to us about food, the "more" sign and "all done."
*He loves food! His latest favorite is spaghetti with red sauce. We had never made it for him before because the girls won't eat red sauce, but we can't get it on his tray fast enough when we make it.
*He is pretty assertive and goes after what he wants. He is not shy in a group of other kids and just jumps right in playing.
*He loves to crawl up in our laps for a few minutes at a time and just sit still, taking a time out. Then as quickly as he crawled into our laps, he takes off playing at full speed again.
*He is definitely experiencing stranger danger these days. He was always so easy because (unlike the girls) we could drop him off in nursery at church and he would smile and play the whole time. We always used to get reports that he is the most laid back little boy they had ever seen. However, now we are lucky to get through an entire church service without being paged to come to his room because they can't get him to stop crying.
*The kids and our new puppy Ozzie have a love hate relationship right now. Ozzie loves to chew and bite everything with his sharp little puppy teeth, especially everyone's feet. However, the kids don't so much love that. The girls will call Ozzie to come play with them and then take off running and crying the second those teeth come out to play. Micah will just sit there and start crying when Ozzie uses him as a chew toy. And I am trying not to yell at Ozzie when he does this...haha! But all of the kids LOVE to come pet him and lay down with him when he is otherwise occupied with either eating, sleeping, or working on a bone.

Here is a recent picture of the kids playing together:

Charlotte (L), Micah, Hannah Kate (R)

Our new puppy Ozzie! (Lto R) Ozzie, Patrick, Micah, Charlotte, Hannah Kate