More teeth

So I think we'll be taking you to the dentist a little early, although I haven't called yet, may be I'll wait till you get 2 more lower teeth. You already have a mouth full of teeth that you won't let us brush. I've been trying everything, 3 different toothbrushes, finger toothbrush, fruit flavored paste, teeth cleaning song, me demonstrating how I brush my teeth... none of it you care for. It's a total fight to get you to open your mouth even when I try to clean it with wet cloth like I used to do when you didn't even have teeth. On top of that I noticed a little white spot on your front tooth, may have something to do with fluoride deficiency of some sort. In any case I'd like a professional to take a look at it. Also you always bite your lower lip and i think it is the reason you keep getting this red rash around your mouth, not to mention I noticed an overbite. Not a huge surprise there since I've always had one, I was hoping that you wouldn't inherit that from me... but I am guessing that you may have, sorry!

16 Months

This post is a few weeks overdue...

Your newest thing is singing...you hear a tune and then you start singing along with it. We'll actually be starting a "Music Together" class tomorrow that runs for 8 weeks, and it will be fun to see how you react to it since you love music, dancing, and now signing too.

You seem to understand us better and better. You definitely understand what "no" means, although when you hear it you would rather run the other way and do exactly what it is we are not wanting you to do. Eating is also still a big challenge, considering you will hardly eat anything outside of your four personal food groups: cheese, bread, pasta, and fruits...but we're learning that sometimes it's just the appearance of the food that you do not like. Once we actually get you to try it, maybe you will like it and want more. The challenge of course is to get you to try it. Somehow we have to distract you with birds or dogs outside, and when you start looking out the window you are less aware of what we're trying to make you do.

For a while you stopped eating meat (unless it was all ground up like baby food), and a few weeks ago was no exception as we were having dinner and I tried again & again to feed you, but you refused to take anything from me. It was getting pretty frustrating, and then your cousin Zac handed you a piece of turkey, which you gladly accepted, and then you kept coming back for more! I was just sitting there stunned. You won't take it from me, or you will hurl it onto the floor, but when he gives you a piece you are so excited about it. Then he even gave you ham and you took that too! Unbelievable! Is it because I've tricked you so many times? Or what? You also eat much better with the nanny. With us it's a completely different story. You start crying and pushing everything away or throwing it on the floor. Fun times!

Last weekend while we went up to Carmel to see our friends Josh and Molly get married, you stayed home with grandma and grandpa. Everything went really well (yay!), unlike the time we left for Boston last Fall, but of course we were only gone a few days. Over the weekend you learned how to climb up onto the couch and slide right off of it. I've seen you do this before but only once or twice. Now you just hop on and off like there is no tomorrow. You found this corner where the couch meets the chaise and you get more leverage that way. It's a bit scary since the coffee table is right there and if you fall off you can easily hit it. Yesterday I saw you run across the couch from one end to the other, while squealing... clearly you knew you weren't supposed to do that and I told you to sit and you did that right away, so at least you listen ... sometimes. Other times we tell you no, or "don't do that," and you keep doing it, or you run away and come back and do it again. This discipline thing is going to be a challenge i can already tell.

You love your baths! You run into the bathroom as soon as you see daddy filling up the tub, and you want to get in immediately... even in your clothes! And when it's time to rinse your hair you want to run away immediately, so as soon as the water hits your head you start to get up and try to escape. It is hilarious :)

Fun naked butt picture with your tummy that is always sticking way out... it's really funny looking! :)

Your hair is getting long & curly, and perfect for styling

Signing Time Finally paid off

Don't know how this just happened, but it's looking like signing language has finally clicked. Last week out of nowhere we noticed that when you get up in the morning, you start to sign for milk, sometimes with both hands. You're pretty impatient in getting it too. You expect it as soon as you get up. Then a few days later we saw you sign for more, as well as a sign for bird and for dog. I've also seen you sign for eat and drink. I can't believe this, it's so awesome that you are able to communicate these little things to us. When we got you the signing time DVDs, a friend of ours just told us that babies love them and even if they don't start signing right away, at some point they just get it. That definitely rings true for you. We even stopped showing you the DVDs after some time thinking that you must be bored with them and we must not be that consistent with it, since it's only us doing the signs and not the nanny. I guess you can say I sort of given up. So who knew, that all of the sudden you'd start signing. Little smarty pants! I can't wait to see what else you're going to sign. We've now moved onto the 2nd DVD, so we can switch it up a little. 

It's so fun to watch you be able to understand more and more of what is going on around you. Pretty soon we'll definitely have to become more conscious of the things we say when you're in the room. Here are a couple of photos I took a few weeks ago on St. Patricks Day while you were running around in the front yard. 

Musician ... perhaps?

I meant to post this a week ago, but had a bit of trouble with IMovie and downloading the actual clip, but here it is... learning how to play the guitar, or actually teaching yourself :)

15 Months

Oh how much you're changing every month!? Where do I start?

I thought I'd make a list of things you love, like and dislike.

You want attention all the time. That makes it way harder to try and get dinner ready or do anything else. You start to pull on my pants and step on my feet wanting me to pick you up while I am in the kitchen. Not sure what happened to all your independence that you had before.

You understand us! We ask you to bring your doll to us or a book, or a ball and you start looking for it and sure enough you bring it right over.

You give us kisses... usually we ask for kisses and if you're in a good mood you'll walk right up to our face and give us one.

You love playing with our phones, pushing buttons, and you pretend to answer and talk on it too. It's one thing that I can give you to make you stop crying or keep you entertained while I have to get something done.

You hate getting your nails clipped.

You love going outside, in fact when I close the back yard door, you get really upset sometimes.

You love parks and going on the swings & slides.

You love touching flowers.

You love cheese, not Provolone though.

You love pasta.

You love plain Mazoni yogurt that my mom makes for you. Sometimes I try to trick you and put veggies or meat in there and then you spit it out.

You don't like meat very much... at least not lately.

You love baths. You've learned how to get up while in your little tub, so every time daddy tries to dump water to rinse your shampooed hair, you try to escape out of the tub.

You don't have much patience in the morning to get your milk, you expect it as soon as you get on our bed.

You love books, you bring them over to us to read all the time.

You don't like veggies very much.

You don't like having your teeth brushed at all.

You love being around people and other babies/kids.

You love corn - the only vegetable you'll actually willingly eat... although I've discovered that it doesn't get digested very well, so I sort of stopped giving it to you as much.

You're not very good at going to sleep anywhere except for your crib. You have pretty much eliminated your 2nd nap... unless you get really tuckered out and it's still early enough to get one in. 50% of the time you only nap once.

You point at everything and say "daddy".

You say "mama" in a whiny sad voice when something bothers you.

You hear dogs outside and you immediately start looking for them and saying "woof, woof".

You love dogs, and cats too.

You love pointing at things outside... like birds.

You love music and dancing.

You love strumming daddy's guitar.

You love to laugh.

You love to pull all the DVDs out of the DVD rack.

You love giving hugs and kisses to the baby bear, and then hand it off to us to do the same thing.

You love to open cabinets and get things out of them.

You love to run away after you get in trouble and waive your arms up in the air... like you just don't care! haha

You love swings and slides.

You love playing with balls - baseballs, footballs, regular balls, any kind of ball. You learned pretty quickly how to kick and push a ball too. Here is a picture of you with one at the park.

Well that just about sums it up for 15 months!

Here are your stats. The doctor doesn't seem concerned with your eating habits, and said that you are following a nice growth curve just on the smaller side.

Height: 31 inches - 69%

Weight: 20 lbs 10 oz - 17%

Head circ: 17.25 - 6%

Getting sick and falling down

I forgot to mention that last week you picked up your first cold. Daddy was super sick and sure enough a few days later you came down with a fairly high fever, runny nose and a cough. I came home and then stayed home with you the next day. The fever went away after one day but the cough lingered a bit longer. It's always so sad to see you not feeling well. You tend to not have the same energy as you usually do, and you want to be held all the time... it's really cute. Luckily whatever you picked up was definitely a milder version of whatever it is that Daddy had. I also am thankful for the fact that you haven't had any UTIs since late October. It seems like the antibiotics we have you take are keeping that under control. You absolutely hate taking them, and it's a total pain to administer them to you every night, but if it keeps the infections under control then it's worth it. I am hopefully that when we go back in for tests next October that the reflux that you had has gotten better, may be we can give you a break from the antibiotics then. :)

I've mentioned before how you seem to be such a tough little cookie, not crying too much when you fall. Well the last few days have been tough on you. First you fell at the park while with your nanny - Lada. I am still not really clear on what you hit but you got 3 scratches on your nose and a little bruise. The next morning Lada came over and you were walking around in the kitchen trying to get into the dining room and tripped over the wood transition and your head hit the wall. You had a nice big red bump on your forehead. When I got home later that day I could barely see it, I was a bit surprised it didn't turn into a huge bruise, since you refused to let us put anything cold on it, and it seemed to be pretty large and red. Then this morning right after Lada arrived, you either tripped on your pants (PJ's I put on you were a little big) or just fell for no reason. It was right on the carpet and I didn't think you hurt yourself since I saw you put your hands forward to brace the fall, and there was nothing around you, but who knows, you definitely cried like something hurt. I know you're still getting the hang of this whole walking thing and there will be more bruises to come... I just hope you don't seriously hurt yourself. We had a bit of a scare a few days ago, where I got you out of our bed and let you walk around without shutting our bedroom door like I usually do. After a few minutes of entertaining yourself in our bathroom, you bolted out of the room, towards the stairs without me noticing right away! Daddy jumped out of bed, and luckily got there in time. It looked like if he were there a second later, you would have already stepped off the step. Soooo very scary!!! We only have a gate downstairs and I was waiting to see if we should bother w/a gate upstairs since our stairs are so wide and require much wider gates than normal stairs. Also I think I need to teach you how to go down on your tummy more, so that you stop trying to leap off the stairs.

We have barricaded the area around the TV with some gates because you wouldn't stop touching it. Hopefully you'll learn soon that it's off limits, although you seem to like to get into trouble. You love getting your way, and after you do something you know you shouldn't have, you laugh and waive your arms around in excitement. Oh boy!

What's a post without a picture?
Here is one of your favorite toys where you stack the little wooden rings on top of each other.
BTW...Your shirt says "made you smile" and you sure do... every single day!
We love you!