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.