Dear William,
On 09/08/2013, you turned 21 months old.
STATS/TEETH:
You are weighing in at 33 pounds 4 ounces. You are 36 inches tall and are comfortably wearing size 3T in clothes. You are wearing toddler size 8.5 EW in shoes. No new teeth have shown up this month, and I’m grateful for the respite.
We bought you a froggy potty chair this month and the first night I opened it up, I told you what it was and took it up to the bathtub bathroom. After your bath that night you asked, “Sit on froggy potty, please?” As you were sitting there, with your bath towel wrapped around you because, “don’t want to get cold!” I asked what you were doing. You replied, “I go potty on froggy potty.” And… well… you DID go potty. And so every night after your bath, our routine now is we wait for you to go potty on the froggy potty, because that’s what you want to do.
NEW WORDS:
The other day we were at Chick-Fil-A, and you were running around in there, chattering non-stop as you normally do. There was another mom in the playground area with her son who was the same age as you, and she was so impressed at your speech and how well you talk. She kept saying, “Oh, wow!” That’s pretty much what most people say when they spend any amount of time with you. Your linguistic skills are very impressive for your age. Scarily so.
People tell you the wrong name for things thinking you can’t say it. For example, we bought you an ukelele in Hawaii as a souvenir. You’ve been told it’s a guitar and I’m coming along behind trying to correctly teach you that it’s an ukelele… and you say the word just fine. Truth be told, I would rather you know the correct name for things, even if it’s harder to pronounce and challenge you to say it, rather than you be told incorrect information! After all, we (your family) are not the only people in the world with whom you’ll be communicating, and not everyone will know what “pet” names you’ve been told things are called.
When I yawn, you tell me, “Mommy tired!” When you managed to reach into the plastic container which held grapes, you informed me, “It’s kinda sharp.” You are very good at opening closed boxes of food that are left within your reach, by the way. I watched you open a box of ice cream cones the other day in 20 seconds flat — I was impressed. You love to tell me about the “container” that you managed to grasp, there’s no secrets, even when you do something you shouldn’t. You love to turn the water on in your bath tub. You also love to turn it off. And then you tell me, “I turned water on!” The reason for that is that you love to “wash bath cars” and stick them up the water spout. You tell me “car parked. It’s home.” Indeed. I guess, with a little imagination, the water spout does look kind of like a garage. I was reading a book the other day, and you walked up and bent it back, looked at it and said, “No pictures.” I replied, “Correct. It’s a word book only.” You said, “Word book, no pictures.” That’s right. Some would tell you those kinds of books are boring, but that’s not me. I say, “Some books have only words, and in those books you make pictures with your imagination.”
NURSING/FOOD:
You love to nurse and one of my favorite things to hear from you is, “Wanna nurse? Please?” Or at night or naptime when the thrill of nursing overcomes you, your whole body goes crazy with glee and you say, “NAH NAHS!” I learned this month while we on vacation, and I nursed you to sleep with no white noise machine, that you do still make noises, and moan and groan while you nurse, it’s just much softer than what you used to do in the first 13 months of your life. I was glad to make that discovery.
A week ago, I made the determination that I needed to end our middle of the night nursing sessions. It appears that your sleep pattern has changed this past month to be more like an adult’s, and that what was intended to be a “dreamfeed” was actually serving to wake you up for the day. It happened twice and so now I leave it up to you. It will take about 3 weeks for my supply to adjust, and until then I’m waking several times in the wee hours of the morning, uncomfortable due to engorgement. This decision makes me sad, as that session was, hands-down, my favorite nursing session of all of them. But you are growing up and the timing feels right.
You do well with table food and enjoy a lot of variety. You will try most anything, and walk up to us and say, “Wanna bite, please?” You also desperately love to eat out at restaurants and one night this week we ordered our food to go, and when you figured out we were leaving, you got very upset that we were not eating there! You’ve also fooled many waitresses when they come to take drink orders. Your father always says, “Iced tea.” I always say, “Iced tea.” And then the waitress looks at you and you respond, “Iced tea!” The waitress this weekend paused, looked at you and said, “Seriously??” You grinned back at her, she wasn’t sure what to make of you. ha
I’m trying to be conscious of my word choices when talking to you about food. So I’m cognizant of using the word “enjoy” instead of the word “like” … sometimes we enjoy our food, and other times we don’t, but we still need to eat. I also am uber-aware of simply telling you what the food is and not adding any qualifying statement. For example, “This is turkey.” and then DON’T say, “You really liked/enjoyed/didn’t like/didn’t enjoy/should taste this, etc.” Whatever you choose to do with it is your business. If you’re hungry, I expect you to eat, if you’re not, then don’t. Also, if you’re done eating, I don’t negotiate with you. I simply confirm, “You’re all done?” “All done,” you’ll respond. I say, “OK. We’re still eating. I’ll clean up your plate in a moment. Please wait. Here’s a car to play with.” And that’s that. Sometimes you’ll eat some more, other times you’re not happy with sitting there, but I firmly believe that good table manners are an important part of life. Given all the food issues I’ve had in my life, I want to give you the opportunity to do better.
SLEEP:
When we traveled this month your sleep was simply awful. You were overstimulated by all the things we were doing and seeing, and woke multiple times a night with nightmares. There were a couple nights when I brought you into the big bed with me and we snuggled/slept in the wee hours of the morning. I’m not big on co-sleeping, as I don’t rest well, but turns out those moments are some of my fondest vacation memories. The first morning we were on vacation, you woke at 3:45am and was so surprised there was no sunshine. You looked out our lanai windows and said, “I see lights.” You were looking across the way at the security lights on buildings. I told you that’s what happens when you wake in the middle of the night, you see lights. The second morning you woke at 4:15am and without missing a beat, you said, “I go see lights?”
You napped well, better than I expected, while we traveled. Even on the airplane, as we flew, you took solid 2 hour naps in my arms. Once we got back home, it took a few days for you to adjust to being back home, but then (now that I don’t dreamfeed you) you’ve started sleeping solid 10 hour stretches. You wake ravenous in the morning and drink all the milk I’ve been storing away, and would like to go back to sleep in my arms, and do on the weekends, but during the week I don’t let you because I want to keep you on a somewhat decent schedule.
THINGS WE DID/PLACES WE WENT:
08/17 – we went to LegoLand and its waterpark.
08/23 – we flew to Maui (Hawaii) for 6 days/5 nights… it was a 5 hour flight each way.
09/05 – First Emergency Response Vehicles event at Chick-Fil-A – got to sit in a police car and ambulance; that same night you went into the playtubes all by yourself.
09/07 – breakfast with your godparents at Bruxie’s, and saw your cousins
You had gym class and music class, as well this month.
PLAYTIME AND CHILDREN INTERACTION:
You frequently request to see your “Cousins! Huck and Milo… friends” and your “Grandma and Grandpa H.”
On Labor Day, our neighborhood had a block party which we stopped by for a few minutes. You were playing with a ball. Another boy, a 4 year old, decided he wanted the ball and so he grabbed it out of your hands. Then, for good measure, he then turned back around and shoved you and knocked you straight on your butt. I ran across to you, as it looked like the kid was getting ready to kick you … and yelled, “Hey! No pushing!” I was behind you, and moved another kid out of the way to get to you. I could hear you saying something, over and over again, but couldn’t make out what it was. I finally got to you and picked you up, only to hear you saying repeatedly, “Oh goodness! Oh goodness! Oh goodness!” in the saddest little voice. Your sweet spirit always touches me when I least expect it.
You are definitely in the little boy phase of being obsessed with cars, trains and airplanes. Your father pulled out his remote control car after you spent the evening previous chasing the neighbor’s. When your father finally let you “get it”, you were in awe of it and inspected every minute detail of it, telling us that, “It’s a car! It has wheels! They turn! It has lights! It goes fast!
THINGS I WANT TO REMEMBER:
~How you love to stand at my nightstand and push the buttons on my clock/radio/CD player. When you finally get the right button and the radio turns on, you turn around and look at me and exclaim in a wondrous voice, “It’s music! It’s music!”
~You love to get into my bottles of lotion and walk around sniffing them, saying, “Mmmmm. Smells so good!” And then you found the vanilla scented one and told me, “It’s green!” And then, “It’s yogurt! Yummy, yummy, yummy!” Because the bottle is indeed green and it does smell remarkably like vanilla yogurt.
~The way you take roll call of those around you, constantly, “Grandma D.? Mommy? Daddy?” And wait for us to respond to you so you know we’re there.
~How you recount sitting in a police car and ambulance to me every time it enters your mind.
~How when people come over you love to show them all your special toys. I remember doing that as a child… it’s adorable.
~How, last Saturday, we had breakfast with your godparents. You were so excited about it that every time we left the house that day, you asked, “Go see Grace?” Funny thing, we went to Costco later that day and you asked, “Go see Grace?” I told you that we were going to Costco… and wouldn’t you know? Grace was there! ha
~How you love stampers and getting your hand stamped, this started because of gymnastics class, so I stamped your hand with a pumpkin stamper one day and you spent the entire day, even after it had mostly washed off, walking around showing people your pumpkin. You also really enjoy stickers and so we stuck a bunch of stickers on a piece of paper, and you happily show everyone your masterpiece, and constantly asked to “see it!”
~How you are obsessed with getting out into the cat run so you can pet your cats. This is not a particularly endearing thing, by the way.
~The way you love to love on Tuggy and lean way over him and rest your head on him, gentle as can be. He tolerates you well, and this relationship you have with him might even turn into a true pet type relationship as you get older.
~How when we were driving home from Costco, we heard you saying in the backseat, “I see sunset! I see sunset!”
Sure enough, you were seeing the sunset and sharing your world with us. We probably wouldn’t have seen this amazing sunset without you alerting us to it. Which makes me wonder how much more beauty I would have missed if you weren’t here?
Love, Momma
Jammie J's Quest 