Sunday, July 21, 2013

18 months

This post is a week late and I'm sure that I subconsciously stalled writing it because I am in denial that my little man is 18 months old. It just doesn't seem possible that 6 months from now we'll be having a 2-year old birthday party. We've had such a busy summer that everything has flown by and here we are at 18 months.

**He is walking about 95% of the time. He will still crawl just a bit, but has really improved his walking to where its not as zombie-ish and he can almost run. Crazy improvement on the walking this month.
**He can get up from the floor without pulling up something. He does much better with this on firm surfaces, but is getting better even on carpet or grass.
**He can also squat down and pick things up from the ground now.
**His bottom molars finally came through, so he now has 12 teeth. Now he is only lacking his canines and 2-year molars.
**He was in his first wedding as the ring bearer for Todd's sister Traci. He was absolutely precious and I can't wait to see the professional pictures taken that day. We were nervous how he would handle the pressure of walking down the aisle in front of all of those people, but he was a complete ham and totally worked the crowd while he walked down.
**He is now napping a heavenly 3 hours everyday. Even though Aubrey is still awake, 3 hours of not being attached at the hip to him lets me get a lot of things done during the day.
**He loves being outside and in the water. He gets so excited when I ask him if he wants to go outside and he will almost knock himself over the with the door trying to open it.
**He loves to give hugs and kisses and has become so affectionate recently. I love when he lays his little head down on my shoulder. Heart melts every time.
**We think he is pretty much tired of all the foods he can eat because he just refuses to eat them and throws them on the floor. However, if we give him something new, he will gobble it up. So, we are trying to search for new foods that don't upset his stomach and new ways of preparing the ones he can eat so he will eat them.
**He is still working hard on eating with a spoon but has improved some since we gave him a rimmed plate to eat from.
**He hasn't really made anymore progress in talking, but since he knows around 10 words, I'm not too concerned at this point.
**He learned how to undo zippers so we now find him with his feet out of his sleep sack every morning.


He had his 18-month well check on Friday and he now weighs 22.1 lbs (22nd percentile), is 31.5 inches long (20th percentile) and his head is 18.5 inches (40th percentile). We met his new pediatrician, who replaced Dr. Honeycutt, who moved and changed practices. He now sees Dr. Little, who is the husband of the Dr. Little that delivered him, which I think is so sweet. I was a little nervous about seeing a new pediatrician, but those fears were put to rest really quick. I really like Dr. Little. He was awesome with both kids, really seemed to listen to me talk about the food issues, asked tons of questions, and talked about the potential for growing out of the food issues vs not. He also did 90% of the exam with Mason in my arms because he saw how upset Mason was being put down on the table. He went ahead and ordered a blood allergy test and said we would develop a plan if anything showed up. He is hoping that this is something Mason will outgrow by the time he is 2, but said we'll see how things go between now and then. He said otherwise, Mason is fine and healthy and seems to be developmentally on track. After the dr's visit, the nurse came in for 2 shots and the first one shocked Mason and the 2nd just pissed him off.

After that trauma, we then had to go down to the lab for more torture. The tech could not get his vein in his left arm after sticking him, so she went to the right arm and proceeded to blow that vein. Mason was a screaming, sweaty mess through the whole process and it literally took all of my strength to hold him. The tech asked if we wanted to come back and try again and I told her no, we were getting it done that day. So, I got him up, walked him to calm him down, and then gave him Aubrey's Leap Pad for distraction and the tech was amazingly able to quickly find the vein in the left arm and get the blood she needed. Poor little guy has some nasty bruises from that trauma, but seemed to be fine later that afternoon. Hopefully, we'll get some answers from the blood work and make a good plan for his eating from here on out.







This is how we find his sleep sack in the mornings.