16 Months

Cooper, you are 16 months old as of a few weeks ago, oops!!

You’re getting so big!  Here’s what you’ve been up to over the past couple of months.

You have been sick, sick, sick!  No fun at all!  You had your first ear infection, which you just couldn’t get rid of.  Along with that, you’ve had a myriad of other unknown bugs, not to mention cutting four molars at once!

You have become quite the picky eater, and you think it is hilarious to throw food behind your chair and ON your head!  You are just so, so funny :) You can eat A LOT.  Sometimes I wonder how we will afford to feed you when you’re a teenager.  You often eat even more than I could, and that’s saying something!  You love beans, pesto pasta, cheese, most fruits and vegetables, yogurt, and all carbs.  Your hands down favorites are bananas, club crackers, and sliced cheese.

You have a vocabulary of about 7 words: Dada, Dog, and Woof, which you have been saying for a while.  New ones over the past month are: Mama(!), Uh Oh, Up, and Truck.  Your favorite word is Uh Oh, and you say it all the time.  You love to do something you shouldn’t on purpose and say Uh Oh.  You are talking SO much gibberish over the past week.  It is non-stop and so funny!  Makes me think you might be on the verge of really beginning to talk.

You love to point at everything, and you love to clap!  You only started clapping a few months ago, and now you do it very often.  Particularly when you think you deserve praise.  Like, when you throw food on your head.  Stinker :)

You recently started blowing kisses.  I have no idea where this came from, as we never tried to teach you, but I am so glad you figured it out, because it is the cutest thing ever!

You are always up to give a kiss on the cheek.  But, you give big, wet, open mouth kisses.  Often with tongue, hahaha!

You started daycare this month!  You go 3 days a week.  I think you were a little shy the first several weeks, but now you seem to be more comfortable.  I can tell because we get reports saying that you have been grabbing faces and pulling hair.  Nice, buddy.

You have a new favorite toy.  The vacuum cleaner.  You are obsessed with the vacuum!  You even take us to the closet every day and make us take it out.  You would prefer that we run the vacuum each time also, but we don’t.  You like to play with the attachments and take the handheld part off.  You also love to drag the cord all over.  The other day you even took the plug-in part over to the electrical outlet and tried to plug it in!  Very smart boy :)  I will say that thanks to this newfound love of yours, the house is vacuumed way more than it would be normally!

You play rough.  I have always disliked it when people say “he’s all boy”, because, well, yes, you are all boy.  Um, because you are a boy.  Anyway, as much as I dislike the term, it’s appropriate.  You are all boy.  You can roughhouse and wrestle with the best of the middle school boys, I have no doubt.  You’re so rough that I often hesitate before laying down on the floor because I know that you will immediately run over and jump on me.  Quite literally.  I close my eyes and hold my breath, seriously!

You now refuse to drink milk before bed.  You used to down a full sippy, but now you shake your head no and push it away.    For some reason, this, to me, meant the end of babyhood L

We took you to the chiropractor for the first time this month.  You were having major issues with being sick all the time and you did not sleep more than 3 hours at a time for a month.  After endless trips to the doctor, we decided to try another route.  And I will tell you that your ear infections are gone and you have slept 11 hours straight since we went.  I’m not saying it was for sure the chiropractor, but SIX weeks of illness, and then it stopped after that adjustment.  We’re going back on a regular basis!

Speaking of sleep.  At night, you go down for bed about 7pm and get up about 6am.  When you are at home, you usually take 2 one-ish hour naps around 10 and 2.  When you’re at daycare, you take one nap at noon.

Oh my gosh, you LOVE to help cook!  Love love!  Every time I am making something, you ask to be picked up so you can watch and “help”.  Sometimes it is difficult, especially when I’m making something on the stove.  But, if I’m mixing something that is not hot, I will often let you help “stir” and you love it!  I think you will become a good little kitchen helper one day :)

love love love

Mama

Let’s catch up

Hi :)

Work is busy.  Life is busy.  I know you can all relate.  Here are some randoms for you.

Last weekend, Lee turned 30!  He is an old man. ;) I’m kidding.  I turn 30 next year.  Anyway, he refused to let me throw a party of any kind.  And I asked him every day for the longest time.  I even came up with “themes” to entice him.  I mean, all men love themed birthday parties, right?!  Anyway, we celebrated by going out to dinner with my parents.  It was very anti-climactic.  I will be having a party for myself!

Cooper turned 16 months over the weekend, also!  Birthday boys :)

Speaking of Cooper, last week, I was at my wit’s end with his illness(es?) and everything that went with them.  He had had an ear infection for a month and a half.  Had not slept in almost that long (meaning WE had not slept in almost that long).  Had taken 4 rounds of antibiotics.  Had woken up multiple times every single night, screaming and thrashing around in what was obviously some sort of pain, but we had no idea what.  He repeatedly banged his head on everything, on purpose.  He was never, ever happy.  He was having big problems at daycare, including biting two of the kids in his class (devastating for all of the parents involved). We went to his pediatrician’s office for the 5th time, where I completely lost it in the room with the doctor, because they were still not listening.  I was seriously almost sobbing.  They said he was fine.  He was having night terrors.  I know what night terrors are, he has had them off and on since he was about 5 months old, they are very, very sad.  This was not that.  Night terrors don’t cause my child to go completely rigid and them immediately limp in my arms and writhe around in pain for hours at a time.  She would.not listen to me.  This is my child.  I’m telling you this is not right, you need to listen to me.  I know that some of his behavior is typical of him just being a toddler, but my gut was telling me it was something more than that.  So, we went to a chiropractor the next day.  One that specializes in children under two.  She listened to every single thing I said.  Wrote every word down.  Sympathized with me.  Why can’t his ped’s office do that?  Anyway, she talked with me for about 20 minutes, all the while watching Cooper play around the room.  She would comment on things she noticed him doing, ask if it was normal or not.  She was very observant.  I felt so good about this.  Then she did a couple of adjustments on Cooper.  And I’m telling you that he slept for 11 hours every night after that.  The child who had not gone more than 3 hours in a row for over a month, has been sleeping 11 hours.  Just like that.  He wake up happy in the morning.  Not screaming.  He laughs, smiles, plays.  This is my child.  Don’t get me wrong, he is far, far from perfect, and still throws kicking and screaming meltdown tantrums, usually at the start of the word “no”.  But his happy disposition is back.  You can just tell that he feels better, whatever it was that was bothering him before.  I can’t tell you how grateful I am.  We’re going to continue to see the chiropractor in the future.  Not as a substitute for his pediatrician, I won’t get started on that road!  But I know that she helped him, and we will go back.

Is there a 12 step program for people who are addicted to collecting crafts projects?  I honestly have supplies for about 6 projects right now.  And I just finished 3 in the past week.  It is out of control.  I blame Pinterest.

We have decided to have Thanksgiving at our house this year.  Usually we go to my parents’ house.  Part of the reason I want to do it at our house is so that we are forced to buy a dining table, haha.  I’m not kidding.  We have the money saved, but we just can’t bite the bullet and go shop for one for some reason.  So I went ahead and confirmed Thanksgiving at our house so we would go get one!

That means my craft projects will have to find a new home, because they currently live on our existing (falling apart) dining table.  And I have gotten paint all over the place.  Oopsie.

There is a Starbucks drive thru on my way to my dad’s and to daycare.  Which means I pass it every morning.  And by “pass”, I mean, drive thru and buy something.  Not good for my hips or my wallet!

We have a long hallway that we want to turn into a gallery wall.  Maybe.  It’s kind of narrow.  I can’t decide whether we should do some ledges with pics sitting on them, or to hang them directly on the wall.  The narrowness is my concern, either way.  We also have the wall going upstairs that we could use for a gallery wall instead.  I hope to take some pictures and ask for advice on where to put it/what to do.

Enough randoms for now, I think.  Back to work for me!

Aye yi yi

Ummm, what happened to last week?  I was super busy at work and it went by so fast that I don’t even remember it.  I had several posts I wanted to write as well, but I clearly never found the time!  Hopefully I’ll get to them this week!

Guess who has another ear infection?  Yes, Cooper!!  Wtf?  Poor guy can’t catch a break.  3 days back at daycare and BAM!  I honestly have no idea if it is related to school.  I mean, it seems like it is, but I have to remember that the first time around, it had started before he even started daycare.  More likely, it is because of the teeth he is getting.  I read that the saliva that teething produces can get backed up in the ears while they are sleeping (aka, lying down) and can cause ear infections.  So, he’s been getting 4-5 teeth since September 1.  2 have popped through, and the others are still trying, so I think that may be the more likely culprit.  Either way, it sucks.  And the dr mentioned tubes.  Obviously it’s a little early in the game for that.  Not to mention he had never had an ear infection before last month.  But still.  I feel sad for the buddy :(

Both times he’s had the ear infection, we’ve taken him to an urgent care by our house, and I have been SO SO impressed with the doctors there!  Seriously, they are so great with Cooper.  Better than his pediatrician’s office even!  And I like his ped’s office.  They just spend more time with him at urgent care.  They make balloons out of those rubber gloves, and look in mommy and daddy’s ears before Cooper’s because he freaks out.  At the ped’s office, they make us hold him down and restrain him to look in his ears :(  Is that normal, by the way?  I understand that it might have to be done, but it seems like that shouldn’t be the first thing you try.  The looking in mommy and daddy’s ears thing works for Coop.  He doesn’t freak out when they do that first.  Just wondering…

We also almost took Cooper to the ER on Saturday night.  When I was giving him a bath, he started just shaking all over and his eyes got glazed over and he was just staring.  It was really scary.  Something was just not right.  He couldn’t move, or wouldn’t move, I’m not sure.  It wasn’t like he got chilled, it was something else.  I grabbed him out of the tub and called, well, screamed really,  for Lee.  I laid Cooper down to put a diaper on him and he just laid there limp, with glazed over eyes, and just staring.  Usually he freaks out when you change his diaper (these days he HATES it).  He was just acting so weird it was scaring me.  So we decided to go to the ER.  After a few minutes, he seemed to be doing okay.  And then in the car he just snapped out of it.  He was fine, just really tired.  I talked to him and asked him all of the questions I know he can answer.  Like where’s your hair, your nose, etc. And he answered them all for me and even started laughing.  So then we decided no to go to the ER.  I don’t know what was wrong.  He could have just been really  tired.  I mean, he had been tired for the past couple of hours because his naps are weird right now, but still.  It was freaky.  He went to sleep just fine, and even slept in until 7:30, instead of his normal 5am wake up.  Of course, he was also getting the ear infection, so maybe that had something to do with it?  Either way, I would like for that to never happen again.  I’m just glad that Lee hadn’t gone to the OU game.

I’m going to lunch with an old co-worker today that I haven’t seen in forever!  Old as in we worked together a long time ago :)  I’m excited!

Okay, back to work and hopefully I’ll get around to posting more this week!  I know you can’t wait :)