Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Tall Dude Short Chick family!

Tyler was not impressed with Santa this year, LOL!!!  Below is last year's photo, I can't believe how much he has grown!  Funny how we got the same Santa.

Tyler: 17 Months

October 24-November 23, 2011 (16 to 17 months old)

What's new with Tyler?

• Growth spurt!  All his pants are suddenly high waters.

• His hair is really growing in and the back is getting curlier by the day.

• He walks down the stairs on his own using the spindles.

• One of his new favorite things to do is stand on our bed and fall straight back.

• This child has always hated blankets.  As soon as I would put one over him, he would fuss and kick it off.  I guess he has changed his mind as he now pulls all his blankets into the crib and lays on them.  At night time he points to them and asks me to put 2-3 blankets over him.

• He can blow his own nose now.  I hand him a tissue and say blow your nose.  He does a quick blow into it and then rubs the tissue back and forth smearing the snot all over his face.  

• He goes crazy every time he sees the bath tub.  He runs up to it, lifts his leg and yells up.  He gets very impatient waiting for the water to get to the right temp and can't get naked fast enough.  If it's not bath time, he throws a tantrum.

• The boy is very stingy with his cheese!  He was feeding me his bananas and grapes.  I said, can mommy have some cheese?  He grinned, shook his head no and said uh-uh.  He fed me more fruit and I again asked for a piece of cheese.  He acted like he was going to feed me some, then pulled back and put it in his mouth, all while grinning ear to ear.  What a cheese-tease!

• This child, who used to gobble up his veggies, has become such a picky eater!  I'm regretting introducing cheese as that's all he wants to eat now.  He's also finicky.  One day he loves bananas and oranges, the next he won't have anything to do with them.  Preparing his meals has become quite the challenge.

• He loves going to get the mail.  Anytime I say "Tyler, do you want to go get the mail?", he runs to the front door and hands me my shoes.  He opens the mailbox, I grab the mail and then he closes it and puts the flag down.

• He's very protective of his mama.  Every time daddy kisses or dances with his mama, he shoves daddy away or separates our hands.  He then looks at me and signs milk really fast.

Language:

New words:

• Dada - Finally!!!!
• Dyson (dy-on)
• Toast (tst, toost)
• Signing Time (tine time)
• Up
• Bye Bye
• Help (ep)
• Shoes (shoooo-sss)
• Cheese (chiss)
• Thank You

New signs:

• Brush Teeth
• Ball
• Dog
• Signing Time
• Please
• Fish
• Hurt
• Hat
• Book
• Eat/Food
• Help
• Thank You

He's really starting to take off in his communication.  I think he's on the verge of a vocabulary explosion.  He is talking and signing up a storm, I just can't understand what he's saying/signing most of the time.

He practices talking and signing in bed at every nap.  I just love watching him on the monitor.  The first time I saw him doing this, he said and signed mama, then said and signed daddy and just kept repeating it over and over.

He signs car when I ask where daddy is.  Daddy is always getting in/out of the car when Tyler says hi/bye, so he thinks Daddy drives all day.

He started saying bye bye to all things that are ending.  The funniest one is when he finishes nursing and says bye bye to my boobs.

I've had a few people ask me about baby sign language, I'll cover it in a separate post in case others are interested as well.

Temper:

Unfortunately "temper" get its own section this month!  Wowser this kiddo is strong willed.

He started throwing himself on the floor when he doesn't get his way.  He melts to a sitting position, gently lays back, then the screaming kicks into high gear.  One day he did this at a store when it was time to leave.  We just walked out the door and said bye bye.  We could still see him but he didn't know that.  He got up so fast and ran to the door!

Diaper changes have been challenging, but they are starting to go nightmare status.  He runs from me when he sees a diaper or hears me say, let's change your diaper.  He fights me like crazy, does everything in his power to turn over, screams and cries.  I don't get it, after ~8 changes/day every single day of his life, you would think he'd be used to it by now and appreciate the dryness.  The only way to change his diaper peacefully these days is to either give him my iPhone or let him nurse while I change him.  I usually resort to nursing as I'm faced with the issue of another tantrum when I take the iPhone away.

He started fighting getting dressed out of the blue.  He's always been super easy to dress.  He has always pushed his hands through the sleeves on his own anytime I put a shirt over his head.  Now all of a sudden, he screams and pushes the shirt back off before I can blink.  I found a game that has been working quite well.  I put his arm in his sleeve and say, where's Tyler's fingers?  As soon as his fingers pop through I say, there they are!  I repeat with his toes as well.  It works!

Same with brushing his teeth... he's always loved getting them brushed.  When he wanted a little independence, he was really good at brushing them himself.  Not now, he's like holding onto a pissed off raccoon when I try to brush his teeth.  It takes 2 of us to get it done.  If there's not a 2nd person available, I just stick the toothbrush in, screaming = open mouth, and his head thrashing does the brushing for me.  Maybe I need to come up with a game for this task as well.

Eating is on his schedule.  If it's lunch time and he's not ready, there's no getting him in that highchair.  Ok, yes I'm much stronger than him and I can force him in that chair.  Then I'm rewarded with the joy of listening to a screaming child thrashing in a high chair signing milk so fast I fear his fingers will start a fire.

Talking to other parents, this seems to be pretty common for this age.  I've been told I have a lot of patience for it.  I believe I can thank infertility for that.  The amount of love and gratefulness for this child, even on his worst day, is enormous.

Sleep:

Thankfully "sleep" gets it's own section this month!!!  Someone pinch me, I think I'm dreaming!  As in dreaming because I'm actually getting to sleep long enough to fall into a dream state!

Over this last month, he finally decided he was ready to sleep through the night!  I know, most of you are bug-eyed and thinking, he's just now sleeping through the night???  Well, it's true.  Upon talking to other BFing moms, it seems this is pretty common with breastfed babies.  They don't like giving up their middle of the night milk and the moms don't like the risk of losing their milk supply.  I could have forced him to learn much earlier, but I just made the personal decision to let him do it in his own time.

It didn't happen overnight.  Out of the blue, he just started sleeping longer periods and was less demanding of milk.  I found myself waking up really full and wondering if he was ok.  Sometimes he would wakeup, cry and go right back to sleep.  Sometimes I was so full that I woke him to nurse and then he slept the rest of the night.  Gradually, he went from sleeping 6 hrs to 8 hrs to 10 hrs to 12 hrs.  Gradually my milk supply adjusted to this and I was able to go this long without bursting.  I was really surprised to find that my supply didn't drop that much and is still accommodating day time nursing just fine.

Now he's not sleeping through the night every single night, but most nights.  One thing I feel really made a different was the sleepsack.  I bought him a Halo early walker sleepsack, the one with feet cutouts.  This keeps a blanket on him at all times but yet allows him to stand up and walk around when he wakes.  I think many nights he woke due to being cold as he would never keep his blankets on.  This caused him to holler for me to help him get warm and back to sleep, and while I was there, why not ask for a middle of the night snack?

Nap time is going back and forth between 1 and 2 naps a day.  He always goes down for his first nap around 10:30a and sleeps for 1.5 hrs, but the 2nd nap is always up in the air.  I always put him down, but you never know if he'll sleep or not.  Many times he just lays there and entertains himself.  He gurgles and chats aways.

Wake time is much more pleasant as well.  He used to stand up and cry until we came to get him.  Now many times he sits peacefully and plays until we show up.  I make sure to leave a couple of books and his light up turtle in the corner of his crib so he'll do just this.  Many times he'll just sit in the dark and read his books.

I feel so rejuvenated!  I mean, this is the first time I've gotten a full night's sleep in almost 2 years!  Now that I've gotten used to the extra sleep, it's extra brutal on the occasional nights where he decides to go back to the old routine.  But he's worth it!

This month in photos:

Halloween

Passing out candy.  He wasn't too sure of the strange looking kids knocking on our door, but he thought it was pretty cool dropping candy in their bags.

First recital

Crazy hair

Grocery shopping from his highchair.  This kiddo scares me!

Shopping cart bling

Protesting the drawer locks I was about to install!

Sitting in the basket of toys is a favorite this month.

Introducing Dyson Jr.  We couldn't take the screaming for Dyson Sr. anymore, so we broke down and got him his own Dyson.  While he still begs for Sr., it has decreased significantly.

Uncle Tyler and his nephew Mason vacuuming.

Weight lifting

Aerobics

I taught Tyler how to use the massage chair remote one day while trying to buy some time...

... I found him later on enjoying a massage!

 He loves "repairing" my printer.

For all you parents with iPhone addicted toddlers, I highly recommend this Fisher-Price iPhone case!!!  It protects your phone and prevents them from hitting the home button which ends their app.

This month in video:

Video:  This is what happens every time I put Dyson away.  Poor guy gets popped in the head at the end.

Video:  Tyler having a good ol' time in his beloved exersaucer.  He begged me to get this out and I believe he's having even more fun in it now than when he was a baby.

Video:  Tyler practicing language in bed.  He does this every time we put him down for a nap.  In this video, he was practicing mama, dada, all done and milk.

Gatlinburg

October 8-11, 2011

We took a mini vacation to Gatlinburg.  We met up with family/friends and shared a log cabin.  It was so beautiful and so good to visit with everyone.

The 5 hr drive there was NOT fun!  Tyler would not go to sleep in his car seat, so we experienced very long crying spells that were just plain agonizing.  It was our fault really.  We needed time to pack where he wasn't unpacking us as fast as we were packing, so we put him in front of his beloved Signing Time video.  Unfortunately, we took much longer than anticipated and he ended up watching 2 hrs worth and we blew through his nap.  We thought oh this will be great, he'll be so tired that he'll sleep most of the drive.  Ha!  Overtired produces nothing good, ever!  Lesson learned, again.

When we finally arrived, this little boy passed out and never moved the rest of the night.

Here's Tyler "driving", he really thought he was big stuff.

Hang on, we're taking a sharp right!

It was a little chilly in the shade, so I put his stroller blanket over him to keep his legs and feet warm.  This is the position he immediately resumed.  Kinda defeated the purpose of the blanket!

At the restaurant he refused pizza and instead ate 4 lemon wedges and parmesan cheese from the shaker.

Video:  Tyler pushing his stroller.  This kid is obsessed with pushing things.  =)

This picture gave us a good laugh.  We didn't even notice the sign while taking this picture, but after the fact, it was like it was sympathetically telling us "moonshine samples this way" after the drive we had.

This is the night we all got locked out of our log cabin for 4 hrs.  This cabin was located in the middle of no where on top of a cliff.  We were all so scared that Tyler was going to get loose and fall off the cliff.  This was our makeshift baby gate cabin-style.  As you can see, he was not happy about it at all.

Enjoying a cup of air.

Such a happy little fella in the mornings.

Video:  This is what Tyler does when we stay at a hotel.  He gets so excited that he giggles and slides all over the bed.

Enjoying a breakfast of bananas, grapes and raspberries.  A funny story... it was just the 3 of us, everyone else was either gone or still sleeping.  One lady was downstairs sound asleep snoring quite loudly.  Tyler leans over the baby gate at the top of the stairs, listens for a little bit and then looks at us and blows this big farting noise with his mouth mimicking the snoring.  He then leans over again, listens and then makes the noise again.  We laughed so hard.

One of our favorite things to do was swing on the porch.  I think Tyler really enjoyed it as ever since we returned, he wants to "swing" in his glider every night.

Gpa and Tyler hanging out.

Pop can tabs provide a lot of entertainment for a toddler.

Gpa and Tyler enjoying a walk.  This kid doesn't go anywhere without his vacuum.

Ohhh, buttons!!!

Tyler having a splash of a good time with Gma and Gpa.  He kicked and giggled up a storm.

This is what Tyler does when I'm in view.  He wants his mama.  We just went with the picture because it is what it is.

Our last photo together before departing.  Sniff, sniff... it ended much too soon.

Our return drive back home was brutal!  We did everything different this time.  We loaded up a well rested, well fed, happy Tyler.  The first hour was pretty good and then not so much.  Despite showing all his tired signs, this child would not go to sleep!  He cried for 2.5 hrs straight.  Stop and let him out and he was fine, but as soon as we strapped him back in, he started right back in.  Nursing him would put him to sleep, but he would wake and cry as soon as I put him back in his seat.  So we just pushed through.  We tried everything, music/no music, food/drink, the stroller canopy over the car seat to block the sun, a blanket over that to make it dark, windows up/down, books, toys, cell phone, talking/quiet, me in the back seat, me in the front seat, crying ourselves.

I have never seen a kid be that close to sleep and fight so hard to stay awake, in a car seat going down the interstate.  What kid isn't lulled to sleep by this?  He looked miserably tired, crying with his eyes closed.  Numerous times he drifted off only to resume crying a few seconds later.  What finally worked was me saying over and over again in a soft slow voice "night night Tyler, close your eyes, mama loves you".  It seemed to soothe him and he finally drifted off to lala land, but not until we were only 30 mins from home!  We spent those last 30 mins freaking out about every bump or noise.  We were so desperate to not wake him.  I think we both have a lot more gray hair after this drive.

Despite the drive and being locked out of the cabin in the cold for 4 hrs, what a fabulous time!

Our next trip is a 7.5 hr drive to my SIL's house for Christmas.  Anyone have any tips???  Any opinions on auto DVD players?  Please share!  Thanks!

Tyler: 16 Months

September 24-October 23, 2011 (15 to 16 months old)

I think he's had it with his 16 month photo shoot!

Well visit @ 15m3d:

• Weight: 21 lbs. 13 oz. (35th %tile)

• Height: 31" (50th %tile)  ---  He's half of me now!!!

• Head Circumference: 18" (20th %tile)

Tyler had the dr. laughing so hard.  She walked in, he looked right at her, reached down, grabbed one side of his cloth diaper velcro and rrrr-rip!  Then he grabbed the other side... rrrr-rip!  He stood there all naked like, hey lady, check out my goods!

Tyler's not the only funny guy in my house, here's Kerry trying to make an upset Tyler laugh with "Tyler, what does a cow say?"

What's new with Tyler?

• He now walks up the stairs on his own using the spindles.

• He can open and close all interior doors.

• He can reach the top of our table/counters (which also means the stove).  More baby proofing to be done!  We have to make sure we don't leave anything near the edge, ie knives, water glasses, etc.  He definitely keeps us on our toes!

• He lifts his leg when he wants up on furniture.  He just stands there like a dog peeing.

• He loves riding his 5ft tall stuffed giraffe.  Every night before bed he asks to ride Mr. Jaff.  I put him on, gallop and yell giddy-up!  He hugs Jaff's neck and kicks his legs.  He never wants it to end.

• He's obsessed with chairs and will push them all over the house.  When we go to the chiro, he steals all the chairs from the kiddie area and pushes them across the building.

• He knows how to unlock, open and close the dishwasher.  Removing all of the dishes from the bottom basket is fun!

• He started doing peek-a-boo.  He covers his eyes with his hands, book or blanket while we look around saying, "Where's Tyler?  Tyler?  Where are you?".  He cheats so bad, he'll have one eye completely peeking through 2 wide spread fingers, it's so funny!  He then removes his and hands and we say "There you are!" and he just grins ear to ear.

• He puts my hand on things he wants.  I'll be sitting there and all of a sudden he lifts my hand and puts it on my cell phone.  He'll keep putting my hand on the phone until I pick it up.

• He now does the popular "pound it" handshake where you pound fists together.  He thinks it's so cool, especially when I add the "explode" after it.  If I stop before he's done, he'll pick up my hand and put it in place to pound again.

• He likes to admire works of art.  He hovers his hands over things like a container of flowers or a tower I built out of blocks and really admires them while grinning and saying "ohhhh".  About then another child will come by and rip up the flowers or knock the tower down.

• He discovered my nose holes.  He likes to stick his fingers up them while he's nursing.

• He's starting to point with his index finger vs his whole hand.  He points to items in a book when I ask him to.

• We started working on body parts and so far he'll point to his toes and tongue.

• Last month he hated socks, pulled them off and even pulled mine off.  Well now he likes socks.  He brings me mine and tries to put them on by laying them over my toes. 

• Wanting to be held all the time has gone to a whole nuther level.  He uses us to get to things he wants like door knobs and light switches.

• He now gives us kisses/hugs when we ask for them.  Heart melts!

• He's very possessive of me.  If I pick up another child or one sits on my lap, he immediately gets upset, runs over and pulls the child by their ankles or sleeves.  If that doesn't work, he slides behind them and pushes them off.  He's gentle about it and fortunately doesn't hit or bite, but still not acceptable.  When I tell him that we share mama and mama has two legs to sit on, he gives me a serious look and starts signing milk really fast.  I guess that's pretty smart of him as he knows milk time is mama and son time.

• He was labeled as a "fusser" by one of the nursery workers.  Sadly, she's right, at least when it comes to the nursery.  He does not like large groups of children nor likes to be without mama.  He will cling to an adult for most of the service.  I would love to attend regular play dates to expose him to more children, but all these play dates seem to be during the day ran by stay-at-home-moms.  This is the biggest downfall of being a working mom.

• He likes my purse.  He carries it around and goes through all the pockets.  Amazingly he puts everything back when he's done, most of the time.  (my purse doesn't contain any pens, change or meds, so it's safe)

• He loves helping us.  He brings us our shoes, helps unload the dishwasher, closes doors, puts items in baskets, brings us printouts off the printer.  It just amazes us when we ask him to do something and he does it.  We're like wow, he really understands what we're saying!

• His new favorite thing to do in the shower is clean it!  He puts a rag in his bucket of water, rings it out, scrubs the floor/walls and repeats.  Unbelievable.  I took a video of it to show him later when he's a teen.

• He's not always helpful, many times quite the opposite!  One of his new favorite things to do is pull all of Kerry's clothes off the hangers.

• He started displaying an interest in his pee/poop.  He stares at it and if I'm not quick enough, he'll grab it.  Ahhhh!!!

• He has 2 more molars coming in for a total of 3.  Molars are the worst!  I've had a cranky, needy, fussy, finger chewing toddler on my hands.  He refuses to eat and only wants to nurse.  He's woke to nurse 3-4x/night for a week on top of his regular all day nursing. I feel like we're back at the newborn stage, except this time I'm working a full-time job.  I am so exhausted I can barely function.  I wander all over the house wondering what I was looking for.  I went to clip his nails and almost felt too weak to squeeze the clippers.  How many more molars are to come???

• On October 5th, we celebrated Tyler's 2 year transfer-versary!  Ok, we didn't really celebrate because frankly, we totally forgot about it, thanks to previous bullet point.

• He can now bite off food.  Oh to not have to cut everything into bite sized pieces!  Wonderful!

New foods this month:

Thumbs up:

• Cottage cheese
• Anything cheese
• Banana with peanut butter on it (yep, he is totally Kerry's kid)

Thumbs down:

• Cod (his 1st taste of fish)
• Pot roast

He's obsessed with cheese.  He points at it every time I open the fridge and signs "more".  He reaches and yells for it when he sees it in the grocery store.  If the store has cheese out for sampling, he keeps going back for more.

Language:

New sounds:

• Snake (sssss)
• Lion/Tiger/Bear - He makes the same growl sound for all.
• Cat (meee)

New words:

• Uh oh - He says uh oh every time he or we drop something.  He also says uh oh anytime we accidentally leave a baby gate open or a cabinet unlocked.  It's so funny, he'll open the gate/cabinet and look at us and say uh oh!
• Banana (naaaaa-na)

New signs:

• Mama - He surprised us with this one, we weren't even trying to teach it.
• Cheese - He learned this one after only showing him twice, despite it being a more difficult one.  I think there was a lot of motivation, the boy love his cheese!  Now he signs cheese all day.
• More
• Shoes
• Potty
• Daddy - He won't say it, but at least he'll sign it!
• Car

Tyler says mama constantly.  One day we were asking him the usual "Tyler, what does the cow say?  What does the monkey say?... insert several animals..."  Then Kerry out of the blue said "What does Tyler say?" and Tyler answers "mama".  We laughed so hard!

This month in photos:

He insisted on eating the banana himself!

Got yogurt?

Loving on Homey G

Out of all the pumpkins, he wanted to pick up the biggest one.

I totally took this little boy out when he ran right into our path!

Making the home boys proud!

He no longer wants to sit in his stroller, he wants to push it.

Such an amazing little helper, he vacuumed the entire nursery!

Driving at Chunk E Cheese

Matilda and Tyler enjoying their new couch and a good book.

1, 2, 3... and the winner is... Matilda!

Tyler and Matilda enjoying a good book on their plastic thrones.

This month in video:

Video:  Tyler sliding on his own

Video:  Tyler's animal sounds

Video:  What does Tyler say?  (after some very lazy animal sounds)

Video:  Tyler signing

Video:  Daddy tossing a toy is really funny!

Video:  Mama roaring is hilarious!