18 Months Old!!!

It's nuts, but Lukie is a year and a half old! Or at least, he was on the 3rd. Oops. But still, these pictures were taken during his 18th month, so they count! Get ready for the State of the Baby address.

Lukie has had a bit of a rough go lately. We went to his 18-month check-up on the 6th and learned that he had a double ear infection. As far as we can tell, he might have had it since before Christmas, as that was the last time he had a cold. His behavior had been pretty bad, generally cranky and frustrated, but between him kind of always being that way, and the fact that he has so few teeth (6 to be exact...so we thought it was teething), and him not doing anything with his ears, we had no idea. He was on antibiotics for 10 days (after an allergic reaction to the first antibiotic), and his ears were given a clean bill of health at his doctor's appointment last Friday. He weighs 30.2 lbs and is 33 inches tall. He's a BIG boy!

Look at that belly! Sometimes I wonder where it comes from, since we're still having trouble with him and picky eating. We recently learned, though, that he will eat just about any sauce as long as it's on spaghetti noodles, so in the last week, we've had baked spaghetti with spinach, Cajun kielbasa pasta, and lo mein. He was willing to eat the noodles all those times, but unless he was completely distracted by a movie or something, he picked every little bit of sausage or spinach off of them. Well, at least he's getting tomato...

His other favorite foods include pancakes with honey, bananas, strawberries, grapes, whole wheat English muffins with cashew or peanut butter, grilled cheese sandwiches, cottage cheese, pizza (with spinach- apparently it's okay on pizza),  regular cheese, cheerios (or any other cereal), blueberry/yogurt/chia smoothies, and apple sauce. I've stopped fighting him so much on foods, though. I continually offer other things, he refuses, and I just keep offering but not forcing. I'm hoping someday, I can just tell him that Daddy got so big and strong by eating this or that and he'll be more willing to try.

Weird fact: Lukas will NOT drink milk out of a sippy. Milk comes from bottles, juice comes from sippies, so "DON'T MESS WITH IT, MOM." You would not believe how inflexible a rule this is.

Sleeping has been going much better. Lukie night-weaned (finally) right before Christmas. For the most part. Kind of.

Before we took off to spend the holidays in Illinois, I started refusing to feed him until 3 a.m....and then I pushed it to 4 a.m....and now we're at 5 a.m. I think, however, I'm going to have to go back to 4 a.m. He just doesn't seem ready to give up his 4 a.m. feeding. Despite what the experts say about him not "needing" a night feeding, if I fight with him for an hour before a 5 a.m. feeding, I don't get back to sleep and end up going to work 4 hours after waking up. I'm tired. So starting tonight, when he wakes up at 4, I'll feed him for just a few minutes. That's usually all it takes and he's willing to roll over and go right on sleeping. Hopefully everyone will be happy and we can all get just a little more sleep.

All of that said, it's a relief to be getting a 7-hour stretch of sleep before he wakes up. That hadn't happened for 18 months, maybe more like 20 if you count the night waking I was doing while pregnant. He's happier and we're happier.

Bedtime has evolved a bit, too. Lukie still will not sit still for books, but we need some quiet entertainment for him to wind down to, so we've compromised and watch Shaun the Sheep very quietly for about 25-30 minutes. Then, with Pete and I lying in the bed, too, we turn the light out and refuse to let him out of the bed. Nine times out of ten, he'll roll around a bit on top of me, and then roll into his own crib space and fall asleep on his own. Every once in a while, he wants to fall asleep on top of me. That's fine. He won't do it forever.

(And to all the people who say that if you nurse a baby to sleep, they'll never fall asleep any other way...you are wrong. He nursed to sleep for 13 months, and somewhere around September he started rolling over on his own to fall asleep. So that, my friends, is a straight-up myth.)

Sometimes there is some stinky baby breath involved.

Naptime is pretty similar to bedtime now. Lukas used to ALWAYS nurse down for naps, but this weekend, I laid down with him, again refusing to let him get off the bed, and eventually, after a little fussing, hugging his dolls (Hooty the Owl, Foxy the Fox, and Hobbes the Tiger), he just rolled over and went to sleep.

Where is our sleep schedule headed? We'll co-sleep with Lukie for as long as we feel he needs it. Eventually, we'll get a toddler bed and put it next to the bed, then slowly inch it into his own corner of our bedroom. When he's about 3, we will probably move him into his own room. We're okay with this arrangement, and since we both work, it gives us extra time with him in the evenings. We're happy, he's happy, and we won't change until it's time. We're not having any more children any time soon, so letting him grow out of this arrangement is okay with all of us.

And now, for our 18-month photo shoot...

As you can see, it's...difficult to get a good shot of Lukie lately. Mr. Go is always moving. We ultimately resorted to using a bike helmet, with which he was fascinated, to get him to hold still. So, his final 18-month-old photo is of him wearing a bike helmet. I guess it adds human interest?

I kind of love that the middle one above is the winner. It'll look AWESOME in his year-two collage. Compare it with him at 15 months...

He's looking so much like a little boy...and not so much like a baby lately.

Finally...Lukie is still not talking. There have been times we thought maybe he was consistently using the same sounds for the same things, but he is, at this point, significantly delayed in speech. At his 18-month appointment, our doctor recommended that we take him to a speech therapist. He just recently started pointing at things he wanted, and for making choices between things. Apparently that's more like 12-month-old behavior. His evaluation is tomorrow, and hopefully, the speech therapist can help us figure out why he's not talking, and teach us how to help him learn to communicate. It's as much training for us as it is for him.

We've always been so excited to hear his opinions and it's been really frustrating to see other children his age speaking. I'm not worried; if anything, I'm relieved that we'll get some answers and advice for moving forward. We think his comprehension is fine; he knows what "no" means, he looks for the dogs when we ask where they are, he associates lots of toys and items with activities. He just can't tell us what he's thinking about yet!

I leave you with this post-nap grin. I usually lie down with him in the afternoons on Saturdays. Most mommies use naptime to do their own things, but in general, I go about my own business during the days on Saturdays anyway. Lukie helps with laundry (kind of), eats snacks and pounds on the counter with wooden spoons while I'm cooking, and bangs on the vacuum cleaner while I vacuum...so naptime is a time I force myself to just chill out and lie next to him. With me working, it's the only quiet time I get with my baby all week. Sometimes I nap, usually I read my book, but I always just stop everything I'm doing and relax for a couple hours.

And when he wakes up and rolls over, there's usually a grin like this.

Quick Video Post!

I promise a real update next week...after I FINALLY take his 18-month-old photos. In the meantime, here's a video of someone using a fork like a boss, and a photo of that same someone after demolishing a chocolate chip cookie in the backseat while unsupervised.

                         

                         

Happy New Year!

Well, we had a good trip to Illinois. There are no pictures. I always forget to take them when we're traveling, and this time, I just left the camera at home. I didn't need to worry about damaging the camera when I wasn't actually going to use it. AND, we were a traveling circus, so something seriously would have happened.

The dogs came with us, so we drove 9.5 hours with an 18-month-old and two dogs, stayed two days with my parents, three days with Pete's family, another two days with my folks, and then drove another 9.5 hours back. It was really nice to see everyone, but as this trip was pretty much directly on the heels of the Thanksgiving trip, we were tired and ready to be home. Lukie was obviously relieved when we got back to HIS house with HIS toys and HIS bed and everything else that was HIS.

That's not to say he was an angel- poor guy was a fuss-pot for two days when we got back. He has six teeth now, but I think the ones on either side of his bottom two teeth are coming in, so he was hurty and tired and cranky.

On Friday, we decided he needed to go to daycare so Pete and I could get a little bit of a Lukie break. Pokey (his nickname) came back happy as a clam that afternoon. I think he was just ready to get back into his routine, play with his teachers, see his friends at school. I'm done feeling guilty about sending him to school for at least part of the day when I'm home. It's obviously good for him; he was a happier guy after getting some ya-ya's out with the other crazy toddlers at his school.

In the meantime, Pete and I did some housework. For one, I painted the dining room. I only have a couple before photos, and they're not of the room before we pulled the furniture into the middle, but they'll have to work. I guess I COULD use old photos of the room, though...

That's an older photo. The others are of the dining room once we'd moved everything out of the way and rolled up the rug.

I have HATED that blue paint color since the day we moved in. It actually looked way less blue in person. Almost white-- as in so light blue you couldn't tell the difference between it and white. It was kind of scuffed in quite a few places, and the worst part that it didn't offset the trim at all. You couldn't see any difference between it and the trim.

Our house is a very old house which has been MOSTLY renovated. It has some (but not all) of its original character. In fact, every room in the house has something a little special about it. The living room has a fabulous turquoise blue milkpaint ceiling that is to die for. The downstairs bedroom has plank walls and  a fireplace mantle. The upstairs bedrooms have gabled ceilings and big windows. The bathroom is lovely...but the dining room has bugged me since we moved in. It's just a box. The only things it has going for it are nice hardwood floors and trim...so we needed to offset the trim. We're talking about ways to put in a window because I think it's absolutely necessary. Pete thinks he's going to build a door with a built-in window. Another solution is to just put in a window that matches the one in the kitchen. We've also talked about wainscoting, but that won't happen until we have the window situation figured out.

Point is, the room needs help, and the first stop on that train was to paint it. I chose a sandy color that ended up looking gray on the walls...which was EXACTLY my goal. Pete might deny it, but he has since conceded that I was right about the color on the walls. IT'S IN WRITING, PETE, YOU CAN'T CHANGE YOUR MIND AND NO I DON'T WANT TO PAINT EVERYTHING IN THE HOUSE GRAY BUT I WAS SO DARN RIGHT IN THE DINING ROOM!!!!!!!!!

I love the color on the walls. It's a subtle difference, but it affects a huge change in the room. Plus, it's just so nice to have fresh, clean paint with no scuffs, holes in the walls, or Lukie marks. I briefly mentioned painting the hallway the same color and then left the room before Pete could tell me I'll have to do it because he wants no part in that fun.

I started painting Frank the Desk over the weekend (yes, the desk has a name-- he was built in the early 20th century by my great uncle Frank...and he's kind of poorly constructed, but we've painted him and moved him and he's a family member. Uncle Frank would probably get a kick out of knowing that someone was STILL limping this desk along after all these years, knowing how shoddy Frank's construction really is...). Pete thought maybe a blue/black color, and I liked it on the chip, but was less enamored with it once I got it on Frank and into the dining room. It looked fine on the porch, but I think it'll have to go more brown/black. I'm thinking a tea leaves color.

Someday soon, Frank will have a fresh coat of paint and be back in the corner of the dining room. Hopefully under some new artwork.

Anyway, things are back to normal around here, but can I note how nice it is to be working on projects again? For a year and a half, I guess more because PREGNANT, we've been in a holding pattern on working on things...and neither Pete nor I enjoy sitting around. We're workers and one of the hardest parts of having a baby, especially away from family so we have very little help (except for Suzi...thank God for Suzi), has been putting all of our little projects on hold. I think we've both always felt like working on a project meant we were borrowing time from the other person. Lukie has a demanding personality (which will serve him well someday, but is very difficult right now and was impossible when he was an infant), and that has meant that up until now, someone has had to be interacting with him at ALL times. He's getting better at entertaining himself, and it's getting safer and easier to have him around when we're working on things. It'll get easier from here on out, and I know Pete is looking forward to actually having Lukie "help" (though probably closer to "hinder" most of the time) on projects.

I leave you with pictures of Pete feeding Lukie ice cream...in the bathtub. Lukie LOVES  ice cream, and I usually tell Pete he shouldn't have it if he didn't eat his dinner, but last night, Lukie did eat SOME dinner, so he got ice cream. He had been pretty on the fence about the brown ice cream (he was used to only white ice cream), but apparently he's over that.