18 mos old...

SO.HARD.TO.BELIEVE. we have a child who is a year and a half old.

I took Deacon to his 18 month well-check last week and he did great, of course.  The doctor said he was right on track for doing, saying, eating everything an 18 month old should be doing, saying or eating.  He's such a busy-body that it was pretty difficult to hold a conversation with the doctor, but she's a mom, too, so I guess she understood that I WAS listening, even if my attention was on making sure my son didn't flip off the table.

So his stats at this point haven't changed much in the last 3 months:

Weight = 23 lbs, 11 oz (21%)

Height = 31 inches (21%)

He's progressing on his own chart exactly as he has been doing (no huge jumps or lags) so the doctor says he looks great.  And no shots this time, yay!  He'll get his next booster shot at his 2 year appt, and then nothing more for a couple years, I think.

His vocabulary has ramped up a little bit, though he still speaks lots of Japanese, if you ask me.  :)  He can now say/sign or sound the following:

eat (and he does the sign, too)
more (just the sign)
please (just the sign -- which looks a lot like "bath", too :)
ba (bath)
mama
da (daddy)
shh (shoe)
cah (car)
cruh (truck -- it's weird but he looks right at a truck when he says it)
chh-chh (choo-choo train)
chh (cheese)
night-night
nap
nack (snack)
hot (as in "the food is hot" or "the oven is hot")
up
no
uh-oh
whoa
yay
apple
nana (banana)
wa (water)
Deacon (oh, my word -- it is the cutest thing!)

15 mos old...

Deacon had his 15 month well-check yesterday at the pediatrician's office.  He did great, as always, charming the nurses with his sweet smile and adorable face.  :)  In fact, they were fighting over who was NOT going to give him his shots.  No one wants that job, especially for the cute ones.  :)

The nurse who "lost the bet" did a fine job, though -- very fast & efficient -- and Deacon was over it in 10 seconds or less.  And I'm sure he doesn't hold it against her.  :)

Here's what we discovered his stats are now:

Weight = 22 lbs, 10 oz (24%)

Height = 31 in (46%)

So still a little guy in comparison, but none of the docs or nurses show any concern about his diet or health.  And he's average for his height.  Jeff and I are, too, so that's not surprising.

In other news, he's pretty much eating whatever we eat for lunches and dinners.  He's somewhat picky (does that make you happy, momma? :), but I think it's more that we just have to keep trying things with him before he decides that he likes it.  He was like that with baby food, so it makes sense that he's like that with table food.  His favorite snack is Teddy Grahams, but he likes Kix cereal and Cheerios, and goldfish, too.

He's walking all over the place and has recently discovered how to get up to standing by himself, without the help of a wall or piece of furniture.  I was so proud of him the first time I saw him do that; I kinda made a big deal about it.  And still do.  :)

He is still such a chatterbox!  I'm so surprised that he's not saying words, other than mama and da (daddy), just because of how much he jibber-jabbers.  But he is starting to mimick things that we say, like "ahcky" for when he gets into the trash can (ew.) -- he says "ah", and I say, "That's right, ahcky."  He also will copy us when we say "up" for help onto the couch.  He makes the same sound.  And he's been saying "bay" for baby, when he sees himself in the mirror, or when he sees pictures of a baby.

And he's still getting so many teeth!  The boy already has 3 molars!  I haven't counted recently (cuz he knows how to use'em, too :) but I would guess he probably has 11 or 12 teeth now. 

Alright, so I don't know how this happened, but we haven't taken too many photos since Christmas.  I must've just been taking the month of January off, I don't know.  So since I don't have many of him at THIS point in time, I'll share a few from the past couple of months...

[13 mos]

[sweet scrunchy face.  14 mos]

[15 mos]

11 months...

Oh, my word.  One month to go before my baby boy turns a year old.  I can't hardly take it...

We had to lower Deacon's crib mattress at the beginning of this month -- he started to like standing up in his crib and that was just not okay with me.  He was too much in danger of leaning too far over so we dropped the mattress down a couple levels.

We continued to try new foods like broccoli & carrots with cheese, lasagna and apples w/oatmeal (all baby food) and Deacon is not too big a fan.  About a week before he turned 11 mos, we started trying to give him some table food from our dinner -- baked spaghetti, french toast w/bacon, real sweet potatoes, baked beans and peaches...he does pretty well with it all.  My fear of him choking is fading.  :\  We've also begun to introduce whole milk as my supply of breastmilk continues to wane.  As it stands right now, this is what his feeding schedule looks like:

an 8 oz bottle first thing in the morning (whole milk, breastmilk, formula or combo of the 3)

some rice cereal and yogurt for a mid-morning snack or "breakfast"

an 8 oz bottle for lunch

some goldfish, cheerios or puffs and water for snack

dinner with "the fam" (table food from whatever we're eating)

an 8 oz bottle before bed

Since we're talking about his feeding schedule, I'll just mention here that I stopped nursing Deacon at the end of this month.  I had planned to try to nurse through his 1st year and I think we probably would've made it (I had gotten down to just nursing him first thing in the morning by this month) but I went away for a weekend retreat the end of Sept/first of Oct and rather than take the pump with me just for that one feeding, I thought it was time to just be done altogether.  He did great, of course.  He's so easy-going.  :)  I had a little trouble for about 6-7 days with pain & discomfort but within about 10 days I was done with all of that.

[if I'm working on loading or unloading the dishwasher,

he's right there, with his "Dr. Seuss hair"...]

Of course, he's crawling everywhere now.  I mentioned in my last post that he'd finally begun to pull up on everything and was crawling intermittently.  Well, he's really been doing great, getting more fluid and taking less time to get where he's going.  He will crawl right up to me or Jeff where we're standing, grab a hold of our pant legs and stand right up.  It's so endearing -- I just love it!

10 months...

Here we are, another month milestone.  Can't believe my little guy is 10 months old already!  This year is flying by too, too fast!

I have a feeling that won't be the last time I say that.

We had another big month with the foods.  We are trying pretty much anything we can get our hands on.  He's in the 3rd Foods stage (by Gerber) -- jars that hold a little more quantity.  Some new things we tried this month:

a banana fruit medley

apricot

pear & mango

We also tried giving him some meat for the first time toward the end of the month.  He's not a fan of the chicken noodle dinner.  It's fairly chunkier than he's used to and has lots of herbs in it.  We've tried it several times and so far he's not coming around.  He IS still eating a lot of the same veggies he's been eating: sweet potatoes, squash, mixed veggies, etc.

We also gave him "puffs" for the first time this month.  You may or may not be familiar with this little crunchy concept that dissolves fairly quickly when the baby puts them in his mouth.  It's a good way to get them used to that kind of texture in their mouth, and it also helps them practice their motor skills with their fingers.  You can do the same thing with Cheerios (surprisingly, they dissolve fairly quickly, too), and we did.  But we have more flavors in the puffs, so we do both.

He did pretty good.  It took some practice because to begin with, he would get it to the back of his tongue and then start to gag a little bit, not quite sure what to do with it (swallow or spit it out).  But practice makes perfect, they say, so we're doing that throughout the day, here and there.  And he's getting better.  At picking them up, and at eating them.  :)

We also tried giving him baby yogurt for the first time this month.  He likes that stuff!  Our grocery store carries the Yo-Baby brand and we've tried the peach and the blueberry flavors of those.  He likes both.  Jeff also picked up a bulk pack of baby yogurt at Sam's (may have been Gerber brand) that has peach, banana and strawberry flavors, and Deacon likes all of those, too.  We've started substituting his morning meal at 10am, which used to be breastmilk, with a couple tbsp of rice cereal mixed with water and the yogurt.  We've been doing that for about the last 3 weeks now and it's working for us.  It's like giving him breakfast so we're working toward that transition to 3 meals a day.

I'll be honest with you, though: when it comes to changing his schedule in some way, or adding something new in, it's hard on me.  I don't know if any of the other mamas go through that, but it's tough for me.  I get pretty used to the schedule as it is and then the next "stage" just throws me for a loop!   Such a learning experience for both (all) of us...

One other thing we've done this month in the meal department is tried giving Deacon a sippy cup for the first time.  We have a sippy cup with a soft, silicone spout and we're just giving him water in it for now.  He seems to be doing okay with it.  We offer it at random times during the day, mainly when he's eating his "breakfast" (the cereal and yogurt) and when he's having a snack (the puffs or Cheerios).  He does drink a little bit of the water and then sometimes he plays with the cup.  We have cups that don't have handles on the sides, but I think I'd like to get one that does have handles and see how he does with it.

Most everyone reading this will be aware of the hurricane we had blow through here last week, the first hurricane of this season, Irene.  Well, that was Deacon's first hurricane!  Of course, nothing was different for him.  We stayed here and just prepared ourselves for what could come.  He had no trouble sleeping through the wind and rain that Friday night/Saturday morning that the storm came ashore.  Our work offices closed around noon that Friday so we just spent the day hanging out, taking (and uploading) cell phone photos of the storm around our house, waiting for and wondering if our power would go out.  It never did.  In fact, we fared really well through the storm as compared to other areas around us.  Praise the Lord for that.

This was pretty much the extent of our "hurricane party":

Deacon does have a couple more tricks but I'll be posting about those in a separate post soon.  I've written enough in this post about my sweet boy, right?  :)  You know I could just go on and on...

We did weigh Deacon at the end of this month and he is now 19.5 lbs.  Up 3 lbs in 4 months.  I was kinda thinking that he would weigh more than that by now.  He seems like a little chunk to me but then when I see him up against other kids his age, he's on the small side. 

Regardless of his weight, height, head circumference, or whatever else they want to measure, he's my perfect little doodle.  :)

8 months...

8 months...gone like THAT.  Craaaaazy.

So Deacon now has 5 teeth.  Yes, that is FIVE.  Teeth.  In his mouth.  He has both bottom center teeth, both top center teeth and then one over on the side, top left that popped through but not much else.  And that happened probably 3 or so months ago.  Nothing much is happening with that one.

He also moved up to size 3 diapers around 7.5 months.

He is growing SO fast...

[handsome little fella, all ready for church]

Around the middle of June Deacon got in his first big pool.  My sweet friend who keeps him for me Mon-Wed each week has a really nice above-ground pool and one night we went over to grill out, hang out and swim.  Deacon loved the pool!  He was so relaxed in it, whether one of us was holding him or he was just floating by himself in the little floaty that the Squires' family had.  I'm so glad he likes the water.  :)

[7.5 mos]

That same week, we had friends over to do the same (in our itty-bitty pool :).  Deacon's buddy, Grady, came to play so that was fun to see them interact together.  Grady is just about one month older than Deacon.

We've still been trying to give Deacon solid foods here and there.  We're not super-diligent with it but we try different things here and there.  So far there's still a lot of frustration as he just doesn't seem to be interested in solids, only taking a few bites each time we try.  We've given him green beans, sweet potatoes, carrots, bananas, apples and most recently peaches.

The peaches were not a hit to begin with -- I'm thinking they may have been a little on the tart side -- but the 2nd time we tried them, he actually started leaning in with an open mouth for more by the time we were done.  That was VERY encouraging for this mama...

You've never seen someone get so excited about their kid eating some peaches!  :)

This kid loves his pacifier. 

We try to limit how much he has it but there are definitely certain times of the day that he wants/needs it and we don't mind letting him have it if it calms him (which it does) and helps him to fall asleep (which it also does).

He's pretty funny with it now because he can "do it himself".  If it falls out, he just picks it up and pops it right back in.  If he wants to play with it a little bit, he just takes it out of his mouth and plays some and then pops it back in at will.  That's kinda nice.

I distinctly remember a recurring thought in the early days...

"How can I strap this pacifer around his head so it won't keep falling out?!"

Aaaanywho, I don't think I've included enough photos in this post, do you?

Here.  Here's a few more for you... :)

[yes, he gives kisses now!  I LIVE for those.]

[8 mos]