Parenting Check-in June 1

[karlamo]

Hi everyone! Sorry I've been MIA lately. Between vacation and our house project, I'm tapped.

How was everyone's week? Anything new to report?

QOTW: Do people like the QOTW or should we pick a different parenting topic to discuss every week? Looking for feedback on what the group wants.

Have a great Monday!

[kh826]

Hello! William's birthday is this week! He will be 1 on Thursday! That is so hard to believe...

He seems to have finally taken to a sippy cup and he drank a lot of water yesterday - yay!
This makes me feel better about transitioning away from bottles in the near future.
He is down to 2 bottles a day - one in the AM when he first wakes up and one right before bed.
He eats 3 good meals a day, and he has gotten really good at signing "eat" when he is hungry. If we are playing and he gets hungry for lunch, he will say "Mama" and then sign "eat."
Unless we are out or on a tight schedule for a certain reason, we usually follow his cues for when it should be meal time for him.

He has started stacking and sorting, and I am totally impressed by his motor skills. I forget he is an almost 1 year old, and I just continue to be amazed when he masters something new. He loves reading books, and he has favorites that he will bring us over, and over, and over again to read. We need to try to encourage a wider variety of selections from our book collection so that Moms don't lose their minds with the same 3 books hundreds of times a day!

He has started to act like he is frustrated when he doesn't know a word for something. He grunts or yells, and I feel badly when we don't immediately know what he is trying to tell us. Most of the time we can figure it out pretty quickly, but I can tell that he wants to communicate and just doesn't have a big enough vocabulary yet.

He has started saying "this" and he will point to something or hand us something and say "this" and wait for us to tell him what it is. He does it ALL DAY. It is adorable, and I know that is how he is learning words, but if he handed me his stuffed monkey one more time yesterday and said "this" and waited for me to say "that's your monkey" I was going to need a 5 minute break LOL. He did it literally hundreds of times.

My favorite "this" moment yesterday, was when I was getting him up in the morning. We have a standing fan in his bedroom, because he doesn't have a ceiling fan in there. We have ceiling fans in several other rooms and he LOVES to sit and watch the fans. Well, I got him out of his crib yesterday AM and he pointed at his standing fan and said "this?" ... I said "that's a fan" -- he pointed up at the light fixture on the ceiling. I said "light" he pointed back at the fan and said "this?" so I said fan. He said "NO" and pointed back up at the light on the ceiling. I said "William's fan isn't on the ceiling, it is on the floor" and I pointed to the fan again. He looks at me and says "OK" and then claps. It was so funny. It was also really cool to see him sort that out. I feel like his vocabulary is just going to explode one of these days.

He is still not walking unassisted, and I think at this point it is nervousness. He walks holding onto one hand and it very steady. I think he is just nervous what will happen when he lets go. We are not rushing him at all, so he will do it when he is ready. Don't get be wrong though, this boy is UBER mobile. He can crawl at near running speed, and he pulls up and coasts on furniture, walls, etc., so he is everywhere all the time!

I am really excited for William's Bday and Bday party this week! I took off from work for Thursday and Friday, and we will just spend Thursday together as a family to enjoy his day and go out to dinner. Friday we will prep for his party and Saturday is the party. We are expecting about 50 people at our house - whew! It better not rain!!!! I think we will be obnoxiously posting pics on FB later this week. I should send out an apology in advance...

QOTW: I like the idea of a different parenting topic every week. That get's my vote!

Have a good week everyone!

[amberreva]

I have been MIA on here lately. Mainly because I only go here on my PC and I hadn't charged it for awhile so no time on the computer. We had a busy couple of days. On Wednesday we went to the mall, then on Thursday went to the outlets (all attempting to find a breast feeding friendly dress for an upcoming wedding), and then on Friday I went into work to tell them I am going down to part time. Emerson was so good for all of this. She is really a good baby and will just silently observe everything that is going on and loves smiling at people. Well of course all of this made her over tired in the evenings so she was cranky until she finally feel asleep. She is rocking pretty far from side to side on her back so I think it shouldn't be to much longer before she figures out how to flip from back to tummy. I also think once she does it once she may never do it again because she HATES being on her tummy. She is a pro at flipping tummy to back now. I have yet to get a good belly laugh out of her and am really looking forward to that first laugh. Also discovered that she will nap on her tummy. Up to this point all naps have been while being held and although if I have nothing else to do I will still hold her to nap if I need to get stuff done I will now let her nap on her tummy with frequent checks to make sure she is still breathing.

kh826 I can't believe that Will is already a year old. It really seems like just the other day you were sharing his birth story.

[Stringy]

We are bopping along here with a two year old full of opinions. She has figured out how to hang on things. Like low monkey bars or anything she can grab, she will pick up her feet and "hang". Except she's trying to do it on the arm of the screen door, kitchen drawer handles, my elbows, and anything else. I did find an appropriate height bar at our park and now its her favorite.

kh826, just settle in for the long haul with repetitiveness. We probably own 100 books and I'm sick of every single one of them. She usually latches on to a batch for a week and then changes, but there are some that are every day books. This is mostly because there really isn't much story to toddler books and they are boring (to adults). But I can tell you, at 2, she can find whatever book we ask for on the shelf, and its so funny when we talk about something and she connects it to a book and runs to find it.

Same goes for language. She still wants us to label things. Even things she knows and has words for, its like she enjoys the confirmation. She has an easter basket/bag that she has carried around since Easter and it has her mickey and daniel tiger figurines in it.(ETA: She calls it her "easter bunny hop hop bag" which cracks me up) She's obsessed. But one of her favorite games is to take them out and line them up one by one and make me say their names. Even though she knows them and can say them. I have been trying to work with her to say things like "who is that?" or "what is that?" cuz she still just goes "eh-eh" and points - even though she's capable of saying just about anything, that's her old standby for asking for a label.

The clothes battle has lessened a bit but is not gone in the slightest. And she's dreaming like crazy. Talking, tantruming, laughing, in her sleep. Is this normal? More often than not its her being upset about something (this morning she was saying "no water headdddd" like she was dreaming about bath time) so it does wake her up. Can't we sleep ever?

[jazibel]

Morning Everyone!

Hectic weekend here with family in town for Elizabeth's cousins High School graduation. Kaden and Owen love their cousins that range from 6 months - 18 years old. Mostly Kaden played with his 9 and 13 year old cousins. The 13 year old also loves babies, which meant Elizabeth and I actually had a few minutes to grab conversations with family.

Sleep has been off. They've been going to be very late, Owen slept until 10-10:30am two days in a row. And Saturday night we had a hellishly hard time putting them to bed. As in Owen screaming for 3 hours, Kaden getting out of bed every 10 minutes....

Otherwise the kids have been amazing. The things Kaden says are hilarious - his perspective on the world amazes me daily. Owen is a complete extrovert, and just loved having his day filled with people and activities.

It's starting to get warm around here so I'm looking forward to Summer activities. I bought a Groupon for indoor swimming lessons and hope to get into a class this week.

[mahler5]

C is 15 months.

kh826-- Happy Birthday William!

Her vocabulary definitely took a jump this week. And some words she was only saying part of she is annunciating much better. Some words she has added include, book, block, broc (for broccoli), and cock (for cookie mainly). She also says it for her Cookie Monster puppet and for her plastic lego chicken since I have made a "cockadoodle do" noise for her in one of her books. It's pretty hilarious that she says "cock" so much. I'm hoping it turns into "cook" instead soon though

She has been doing more in her swim class. She's climbing more. She was able to climb on top of the arm chairs at the library today which was pretty cool. At home she tried to climb up the sofa though which terrifies me.

She also wants us to read her the same books over and over. I'm glad we get her library books to mix it up. She also will want to stop mid book and go on to the next sometimes. This really drives me nuts.

QOTW--- I like it when we have QOTW related to parenting. I don't know if we need it to be every week but it's nice to get everyone's take on parenting related topics.

[2mrsks (mrs&mrsk)]

R loves his exersaucer and is trying to mimic us. He rolled over a couple times but not consistently yet.

[kona]

Olivia is 10 months.

Olivia is sleeping better. Still not great but we had hit an all time low and so this is an improvement. Apparently we had her day scheduled all wrong so we are working on correcting that. It really doesn't fit our adult schedule very well but I guess that is what it is. She still will not fall alseep on her own but I guess that is the next step on the sleep training train. Overall we are seeing improvement. We will need to spend the night with my mom on Friday night due to having some spray foam installed in the garage and needing to be out of the house for 24 hours. It will be our first night out of our home, it will be interesting to see how it goes.

She is taking steps now, quite frequently. She's very proud of herself when she does walk. We have really got to get on this babyproofing deal. I wanted to go cheap but then realized these things might be in place in our house for a long time. Especially if we do have another one in the next year. So now I am reconsidering and then I need to pick up some extra hours to cover the cost. One of the downfalls of having a completely open floor plan on our first floor.

She continues to enjoy music and swim classes. She's social but reserved. It's neat to see her personality start to come out.