21 Months Old!

I promised a big Lukie update, so here it is...

This guy...

...is 21 months old! That means he's only 3 months from being a 2-year-old. I find it mind-boggling. We took him upstairs to his "bedroom" (as in the room we decorated before he arrived in which he has never slept) to take his 21-month-old photos. Traditionally, this has meant sitting him in the chair in his room to be photographed the same way he was once a month for his first year and every 3 months since turning 1. It was...difficult...

In the end, I decided this is his 21-month-old photo.

I think it accurately portrays the likelihood of success when you're trying to get an almost-two-year-old to sit in a chair. It pairs perfectly with his 18-month-old photo, in which he is wearing a bicycle helmet...

So update-y things. It's hard to put things into categories, even though I'm a librarian and categorizing things is one of my all-time, absolute, most favorite things to do, ever. It seems like every part of his personality is so wrapped up in the rest of it that I have a hard time talking about one thing without jumbling in the rest!

We'll start with all the things Lukie likes right now. His favorite thing in the world being outside. We have an epic meltdown every evening when it's time to go in the house. We are outside from the moment it is warm enough to the moment darkness falls, and even that wouldn't be enough for him. He loves bugs (particularly flying bugs, particularly bees and wasps, but he knows not to touch them), birds, his play equipment which looks like a castle, the lawn mower (the LAWN MOWER OH MY GOD THE LAWN MOWER), running back and forth to Daddy's wood shop, and bubbles. He dislikes being told to come inside and being forced to stay in the side yard. 

Lukie is a copycat right now. The other day, he was spinning around and laughing at a bumble bee, and Peter realized he was pretending to be Shaun the Sheep, a character in his favorite TV show, who does the same thing when the Farmer is attacked by a bee. He likes to pretend to scoop dog poop out of the yard and throw it over the fence. He sniffs flowers like I do, even though instead of sniffing, he blows through his nose. It amazes me every day when he has picked up on something Pete does or I do.

Eating-wise, well, Lukie is still a super picky eater. He loves peanut butter sandwiches, cottage cheese, applesauce, bananas, grapes, strawberries, sweet potato puffs, french fries, pancakes, French toast, anything sweet, and apparently (though I haven't been able to replicate this at home), the meat sauce pasta they give him at daycare. He eats few foods other than those, but that doesn't mean I don't keep trying. He's Peter's child; someday, he'll eat anything and everything.

Lukie weaned two weeks ago-- after nursing for 21 months to the day. All along, I have hoped that Lukie and I could go as long as we needed to for him to just stop on his own. That was, until my co-worker and I got accepted to speak at the Tennessee Library Association meeting next week in Memphis. I'll be gone for 2 nights and 3 days, and Peter will be alone with Lukas. We had thought that we would wean him this week, but two weeks ago, he went all night without asking to nurse. Oh, he still woke up, but instead of grabbing his pillow and handing it to me, he just cuddled into me and went back to sleep (that's pretty much how we sleep now). I decided it was time, and for the next two nights, I gently told him "nursies were sleeping" when he asked to nurse. There was a little crying, but not as much as I had feared. He hasn't nursed since the 3rd or 4th of April. I'm a weird combination of relieved and sad. Relieved that my body is mine again, sad because it kind of felt like the last thing that I could do for him that Peter couldn't. I know I'm the mommy. I get that. But telling him "nursies are sleeping" felt a bit like saying "Mommy can't love you right now." Irrational, I know, and holding him while he fell back to sleep says the opposite of that. But it's certainly bittersweet. He's growing up, and it was the last connection to that time when he and I were one working unit.

Ah, well. On to speaking.

Lukie still doesn't talk much. To be truthful, he wasn't a very babble-y baby, and it was something I noticed before he was a year old. He has a few words: juice, weeee (for swinging or playing with something), yay, Dada, shoes. Those are all new developments, though. At his 18-month appointment, he still had no words, and the doctor recommended we see the speech therapist. She assessed him and said that he was behind on his expression (using words) and reception (understanding words). Both were things she felt he needed to work on, and she recommended speech therapy.

Lukie goes once a week for half an hour. The therapy is play-based. He and the speech therapy assistant, whom he really loves, play and do tasks- a lot of them have to do with teaching him to pay attention and listen when she's speaking. Lukas is a focused child, and because of that, he often tunes out the world in order to really focus on the toy he's playing with or the activity he's doing. He wasn't listening when Pete or I would speak to him, so we work on making sure he stops what he's doing and listens to us. 

Lukie's therapist says he's doing really well. He will now mimic her when she does something with a toy, respond with increasingly varied babble (both the sounds he's making and the inflection he uses while making them), and pays attention a little better every time. I know his reception is better; the other night, I asked him if he was ready to watch Shaun the Sheep, part of our bedtime routine as he's still not great with books, though we're working on it, and he ran directly to the bedroom and wanted help onto the bed. We don't know how long he'll be in therapy, but it is really nice to see him making some serious leaps in the speech department. 

So that's it; that's our life with Lukie right now. He's developing a personality, which we can't wait to find out more about once he's talking to us, and we're watching and enjoying. We're slowing being able to do more and more fun things with him, and that is such a welcome development. As he grows older, it's so fun to watch as our family settles into a life where Lukie is interested in the things we're doing, learning from us, and teaching us to be patient and creative.

Oh, and here's my first tiny bouquet of cuttings from my garden. :)

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.

So much blog...

You guys. I have so much blog to share. I think the only way to share the 47 (47!) pictures and not have you read some kind of novel of our lives is to just upload them all and caption them so you know what we're up to. I've got a couple posts waiting in the wings that feature, like, stories and stuff...but for right now, I have to share photos for the various and sundry family members who want to see pictures of this kid.

Post-bath evening shirt-free hangout time.

Probably the next morning. This guy loves his tractor...and sometimes we walk in the room to find him actually standing, on his two feet, on the seat. So it's a deathtrap, but he just LOVES it so much...

Teaching important woodwork-y lessons.

Post-play Muppet coma.

Yup. You're seeing that correctly. And if it wasn't so cute, I wouldn't post it, but apparently, if the photo is cute enough, I have no shame.

Papa Bob and Moki (Grandma Vickie) got us a new lawnmower. Well, they got Lukie a new lawnmower.

This kid's morning hair. I just CAN'T with it.

Yeah. He's putting keys in the door. We're in trouble.

Daddy was using the air compressor out on the porch. Lukas thought it was utterly fascinating, and not a just a little fun.

Our new friend, the finger toothbrush. Every night was dissolving into a complete meltdown when I was trying to brush his 2 teeth, so I got this bad boy. He doesn't LOVE it, but he doesn't HATE it, and I think it actually must feel good when I massage his gums where the next teeth are coming in. By the way, the doctor said today that his next teeth are really close. Lukas had his 15-month check-up and he weighs 28 lbs and 2 oz. He's a massive little man.

We took a trip to Knoxville this last weekend and Lukas was fascinated by the fountain near the Farmer's Market. The trip went really well!

Post-trip wasn't that great, though. Little man came down with a cold and coughed most of Saturday night and Sunday. At my wit's end, I ran to the store and got some baby Vick's Vaporub and put it on his feet to sleep last night...and I don't know if it was the Vick's or the new footie pajamas he was wearing, but Lukas SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT FOR THE FIRST TIME LAST NIGHT!!! He napped from 5:30-6:30 yesterday, then slept from 9:00-5:45, nursed, then went back down until 8:00 a.m.

Hallelujah! Let's just see if it EVER happens again.

That's my stool from when I was a little kiddo. He likes to sit on things (no seriously, like everything he can find to sit on, he parks his rear end on it), so we got this out and he liked sitting on it to watch the Muppets.

And then we played outside all afternoon and drank cider. It was a pretty great day, even if this was a bit of a sick day. He still had fun and I finally got some good fall shots of him. 

That's it, folks. I got some new toys that will hopefully make posting on the blog a little easier from here on out, so until next time, WHICH WILL BE MUCH SOONER, I PROMISE!