17 months

Joel has been home sick for the past couple of days. He has croup again, but thank God this time it was not so bad. We did go to see the doctor but since we already have a nebulizer, we were able to treat it before it got too serious like last time.
So our little man is sprouting some new teeth all of the sudden. All four molars have cut through and he is finally getting some friends to accompany his bottom two teeth.
Here's so new things Joel has been doing that I of course think are the most precious, genius, adorable things ever:

• Joel helps me carry in groceries. Really. He gets a bag and brings it into the house, puts it down in the kitchen, and follows me back out to the car. Love him!
• Joel helps me put away dishes from the dishwasher. He loves to hand me the silverware one piece at a time while I wait by the drawer. Yesterday he got a little overzealous- when I turned around he was holding a big dinner plate, like, "Here you go!" I could see that ending badly real fast. 
• Joel loves to watch Joel. I have a lot of little videos on the computer and he likes to watch himself and laugh. He says, "Joel, Joel.." while he watches.
• He has developed a love for Dancing with the Stars. As soon as he sees it on tv he says, "Dee! Dee!" which obviously translates into "dancing". Duh.
• He has found a name for Carol. Although Grandpa was easy for him, he has chosen to forego the Grandma route and go with Mammaw. He came up with it on his own and says it when he sees Carol's picture, but has yet to say it to her face. 
• He is very into pumpkins. Going to HEB is very exciting for him now with all the "Big Mac" pumpkins outside. Note to self- carve pumpkins this weekend and go to pumpkin patch.
• He has started to put a few two-word sentences together. So far we have No dog!, Read Dada, and Me Read.
• He still loves his books and loves to hear the abc's. His favorite book right now is probably Chugga Chugga Choo Choo, but Little Blue Truck is a close second. He has even gotten to where he knows some of the words when he sees the pictures. He'll say, "bump bump bump" when we get to the page that has the truck going through the mud and on the last page he'll say, "beep, beep, beep!"
• While giving him his breathing treatments is not his favorite thing to do, he is ok if we start singing to him. The bingo song makes him laugh and he also likes Twinkle, Twinkle, ABC's, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. 
• He's still holding strong at 30.5 lbs