16 Months

16 Months

 

Date

April 16, 2013

 

The official 16 month picture
(it's his first "Golden" birthday.  16 months on the 16th)

Weight/Size

Elliott had his 15 month check-up on March 29th.  He was, get this, 28 pounds.  It's the 95th Percentile.  It blows my mind, and explains why my left arm is significantly stronger than my right arm (I carry him on the left).

 

He is wearing 18 and 24 month clothes.  I literally took shorts that Spencer wore last summer (meaning, all the way until October) out of Spencer's dresser and put them straight into Elliott's drawer.  They were 24 month shorts.

 

We have one package of size 4 diapers left and then we're making the switch to size 5.

Sleep

I am going to lose my mind if he doesn't stop crying out in his sleep.  He falls asleep pretty easily every night and sleeps through the night, but he cries and screams and shrieks in his sleep every. single. night.  And multiple times a night.  It doesn't wake him up, but it certainly wakes us up.

 

Starting last week at night time I have been nursing him, rocking him for about 1 minute, putting him in the crib, saying good night and then sitting in the chair in a totally pitch black room.  Then I sneak out after about 5 minutes.  So far it is going well.  I'm sure he knows I am leaving and it doesn't seem to bother him.  We didn't get to this point with Spencer until he was 2 years 4 months, so we're pretty pleased. 

 

I still nurse him and rock him to sleep for his nap though. 

Movement

He is so, so, so close to walking independently.  He can do it, he just really choses not to.  I don't know if it scares him or if he thinks that crawling is just faster.  

 

This is him walking on his own.  The second he catches himself without support though he screeches, falls over and crawls away. 

Movement Continued

Elliott gets MAD when you try to hold his hands to walk.  He yanks his hands away, curses at you and then falls to the floor in a hysterical heap.  He let Spencer do it once for about 4 steps but that was the only time.

 

 His new favorite activity is walking all over the entire house for like 30 minutes at a time using his old man walker.  He can self-correct when he's headed for a wall or piece of furniture.  He can also turn himself around and head the opposite direction.  We'll be playing on the floor and he'll just randomly get up, grab his walker and hit the hallway for some laps around the house.

 

Elliott's adjusted age is 1 month less than his real age.  It is completely within the normal/average range for babies to start walking at 18 months, so I'm giving him until 18.5 months to start walking before I get him evaluated by a physical therapist.

Communication

I stopped writing down his words and keeping track when he got to 30.  I kept track for Spencer until he got to 50.  Oops. 

 

When I accidentally run a red light and cause a 40 car pile-up I'm going to blame Elliott because he sits in his car seat yelling at me to Go! Go! Go! every time we come to a stop.

Food

Nothing new that I can think of.  He somehow ended up eating a hot dog in the last few months.  I don't know how that happened because we don't normally buy hot dogs.  Anyway.  He loves them.  So we just bought some 5 million dollar healthy chicken hot dogs from Sprouts that have no preservatives or fillers. 

 

He's nursing twice a day- nap and night.  Sometimes he wants to nurse for 18 hours and sometimes he is done after 18 seconds.  I can never, ever predict what he will want.

Teeth

He got one in the last month.  It's on the bottom.  It's the one that is on the left of the middle one (I don't have his baby book to check which that one is).

Favorites

Reading- we read all day long.  His favorite book right now is called Happy Baby Colors.  We will read the whole thing, then Elliott turns back all of the pages to the first page (the color red) and fusses until we start reading again.  He'll do it 10 times before he's had enough.

 

Ginger photobombed

Favorites continued

Yogurt, fruit, puffs

 taking baths

 playing with water

 doing the Indianapolis 500 around the house with his old man walker

 saying hi to people at the grocery store 1 million times until they say hi back and even then he will say hi ten thousand more times.

 

And all the rest of the pictures because he's cute and I couldn't decide on my favorites.

 

He was being a speed racer and I couldn't back up fast enough so I cut his head off.  Otherwise this would have been a great picture.