Life's Little Miracles: Happy 18 Months, William Robert!

Will turned 18th months old yesterday! We have had such a wonderful summer so far together and he has grown up so much in the last month. I love summer break because I get to spend so much time with the boys and watch them change and grow every single day!

Here is what Will is up to these days:

He is in size 5 diapers
He weighs around 30 pounds but we will get the exact measurements on the 16th at his 18-month appointment.
He sleeps anywhere between 12 and 14 hours a night. He goes to bed at 8 and wakes up anywhere from 8-10 a.m. depending on whether or not Nathan is quiet while playing in the morning! This is totally the opposite of Nathan who was going to bed at 8:30 and waking up anywhere between 5 and 6 a.m. at 18 months!!
He sleeps with a blanket, and he used to sleep with two stuffed animals, but we had to take the stuffed animals out of his crib last month because we found out he has eczema. He still carries his bears from Build-a-Bear around the house during the day but isn't attached to them or anything.
He LOVES to eat! He loves fruit so we have been eating a lot of fruits lately-strawberries, blueberries grapes, bananas, raisin, and bananas are his favorites so far.
He learned how to eat with a fork and spoon really well in the last month and is now completely self-sufficient when it comes to eating. The spoon was the hardest because he kept wanting to flip it, but he finally got that down this past week so I don't have to spend so much time making sure he is able to eat everything at meal time!
He has learned some sign language. He can do more, all done, milk (he didn't do this one much because he quickly learned how to say "baba" for sippy cup), and eat
Words: Bapa (my dad), Mimi (my mom), Nana (Joe's mom), Mama, Dada, Manda (babysitter), yogur (yogurt), see-a (see ya), uh-oh, ah-da (all done), hi, bye, nigh-nigh (night, night), mine, baba (sippy cup), nana (banana), baby (baby or stuffed animal), bach (book), ball, bite, eat, shoe-shoe (shoe) which has transformed into shoe in the last month, gog-gog and goggie which has transformed over the last month to doggie, *di-ver (diaper), wa-er (water), here, turkey (Joe called him a little turkey and he repeated "turkey"), beer-beer (bear), brover (brother-my favorite new word!), cereal, milk =all of these were in the last week*
He FINALLY got rid of his bedtime bottle last month. My first goal for him this summer was to drop the bottle completely. We went cold turkey June 1st, and he has done great.
He likes milk, but not as much as Nathan. Nathan still drinks three big cups a day, but I have to work on Will to get two down. The only difficulty is getting him to drink enough in this hot weather! Will also will drink water, but doesn't like juice.
He loves playing games with us and usually starts them. He will start peek-a-boo while I get him dressed after bath, he calls our names and brings us random things (shoes are his favorite thing to bring us), rolling or throwing balls back and forth, and he loves for us to chase him.
He adores his big brother. He hasn't said "Nathan" yet, but I am pretty sure he said "brother" yesterday. If he is awake and Nathan is asleep, he will still look for him. On the other hand, he beats up his big brother. Yes, Nathan is 25 1/2 months older than him and Will can somehow overpower Nathan. Usually it looks a little like this:

He also enjoys bugging his brother to death! In the car he will scream just to bug Nathan. Nathan will politely ask him to stop and he will scream again. Ah the fun of brothers! They are still crazy about one another so I know this is just a part of the territory!! :)
He has tried all kinds of new things including the beach (South Padre Island last month), playing soccer while we were in Texas, Grant's Farm (5-30 with LHS play group), Museum of Transportation (6-27-12), and other things like corn on the cob!