Whenever I see a chart of milestones your child should be able to accomplish, I like to skip ahead to see how advanced Tyler is and to know what's to come in his development. Recently I read that he will be able to draw something that resembles a vertical line between 25-30 months. He's not yet 20 months and he drew one last night. I had totally forgotten that I read that until we were at Chili's (the restaurant, not the dog) waiting for our food. Tyler picked up a crayon and the very first thing he drew was a very long and fairly straight vertical line. Hah! Smart boy. After he ate some fries and chicken strips, he started teasing us with those crayons, pretending to dip them in ketchup and put them in his mouth. This was the first time I've seen him not put crayons in his mouth and found it very funny that he pretended to. He's even smarter than we think he is. He also sat through the entire dinner pleasantly. Such lucky parents we are.

I can always tell when Tyler is near the baby, even if he's out of my sight. I can tell because he starts saying obvious words like Baby or Binky. Or else he'll start naming body parts. This morning as I was getting ready for work I heard Tyler saying 'hand, pinky, hand,' just as I rounded the corner to make sure he wasn't hurting the boy, I heard 'nose, eye.' Thank goodness Tyler can talk, if he were doing these things quietly I never would have known he was about to poke the baby in the eye.