Myles Monthly: 22

As you may know, I didn't decide to start my blog until my son Myles was about 8 months old. And well... now he is over 2 years old! I'm still trying to get caught up with the monthly updates and monthly favorites, so I can get, and hopefully stay, up to date. 

 May 15th- June 14th, 2014

Health/Personality
Pretty good month health wise, but we had another 24 hour sickness. This seems to be becoming a trend around here. I don't like seeing him sick, but luckily it only lasted a day again and I'm not going to lie, the cuddles were pretty amazing! It is a completely different Myles from his regular non-stop, go-go-go personality. Tons of cuddles, movies, and sleep and he was feeling 70% better the next day. The craby and clinginess still lingered around for a couple days after, but it was never anything that stuck around too long. 

Watching The Lion King.. gets me every time!

  Last month I touched a little bit on his new flair for the drama and it decided to stick around this month as well. I really can't complain as it wasn't a daily occurrence. However when it did happen, it was intense. This particular day he wanted to see his friend Cammy. He kept saying "door, car, Cammy." When I told him he couldn't play, meelllttttdddooowwnn:

Eating
Steadily trying more foods and adding more to each meal. Still no breakfast food, just milk, but lunch and dinner were going good. Nothing new in the breastfeeding department. Same schedule as last month: once in the morning, at nap time, and before bed.

  Sleeping 
After the slight hiccup during our vacation back home last month with the new big boy bed, we were back to our regularly scheduled program this month. Bed time being from 9pm-8am and one nap still from 1pm-3/4pm.

Saying

For some reason I didn't write down that many new words this month: 
He calls nursing 'drinks', whenever he was tired and wanted to nurse and sleep, he would say 'I drinks'
 'Hold me', 'Oh man'
'Come on mommy' while grabbing my hand and taking me places
He will only call himself baby, He will not say his name. Whenever you asked what his name was, he would say 'baby'. We tried so hard everyday to get him to say Myles, but he wouldn't do it. I think it became a game to him, knowing we wanted him to say it so bad, so he wouldn't.
And lastly, this....

Proud mommy moment :)

Outings

• Fair season officially started and I was all over it! I found out about a children's festival 30 minutes away from us and had to check it out. I couldn't believe how many awesome things were at the festival, some of them actually being FREE! I loved the animals the best (kitten sleeping with baby pigs!) and Myles was all about the air ball blow-up and train ride!

He also got his daddy to take him on this strange, but fun looking motorized horse ride:

• I also found a little amusement park 20 minutes from us. By this time, I knew that we would be moving to a new city within a couple months, so I wanted to make sure we did everything kid related around us. Now that I have Myles, I have an obsessive need to check out every possible kid activity around us. This place was small, but had a couple fun rides, a little creek, two playgrounds, a train, and lots of grass to run and play on. This was the first ride we went on. The cool thing about Myles' age was that he hadn't quite figured out fears yet, so he didn't hesitate to go on this. It went pretty high, but he liked it and actually went on a couple times. He wanted to hold my hand too :)

The bottom left picture is so funny. I captured it just at the right moment because he wasn't ever scared or wanting to get down, so I really don't know what was going on there!

And a little carousal action:

•  I was not expecting it so get so hot in the Bay Area. Before we moved, I figured it would be like San Fransisco weather. Boy was I shocked when I got to the east bay to see that it regularly gets into the high 90s the whole summer. Not complaining at all though; just need a little splash pad action and we are good to go!

   Milestones/Skills

• When we went to the children's festival, Myles rode his first real fair ride. There is a picture above of him riding the train and here is a video. I bought a bunch of tickets thinking he would want to try out all the rides, but he kept saying no to all of them. He went on the big slide once, but wouldn't go on anything else... until we found this train. We used all of our tickets on this train and he rode it like 5 or 6 times!  

• First time riding an escalator. We were at the mall eating lunch and Myles was super antsy waiting for the food, so I took him out to walk around. We were right next to a set of escalators and Myles was super intrigued. So I let him go on it.. game over! He seriously would not stop... down, up, down, up... at least 25 times! I don't know how I got him away from it... maybe the lure of fries.

Funnies and Favorites

•  Loves to check the mail and get the newspaper everyday

• Loves to walk the dog

•  Funny poop stories:
  Myles had a weird infatuation with finding our dog's poop outside. Every single time he went out back (multiple times a day), he had to come running to me yelling "poo poo" as soon as he happened upon even the smallest turd. Then I, of course, had to instantly go pick it up or else he would not stop telling me about it.
  
  
    I let Myles go diaper free for an hour or so in the afternoon when we would be mostly playing outside. Two days in a row he ran inside telling me "poo poo". Thinking it was the usual dog poop I didn't think much of it until I went to go pick up the 'dog poop' and realized it was Myles poop on the ground outside. Not exactly potty training but hey at least I didn't have to clean up a diaper!

• Messy play of course; we can never get enough of it in our house. This month we made Foamy Bathtub Paints! Messy and clean at the same time; parenting win!

• This may come as a surprise, but the trampoline is still a favorite :) After Myles would not get off of the trampoline during our trip back home, I knew he would love the trampoline park! These things are so awesome.. why didn't they have them when I was young!?!?   

• I got Myles a life vest for when we went to the outdoor pool at our gym. He actually wore it most times and did really well with it. I had to take a picture when I saw him put it on like this one day:

• This kid.. I don't even know what to say. I bought him a sucker to keep him entertained on a longer car ride. I heard him keep saying 'stuck' in the back seat. I finally look back and see this:

• And lastly, a favorite of mine. I went to the gym one night for an hour long class and came back to this:

What are some of your children's favorites and funnies?

Myles Monthly: 21

As you may know, I didn't decide to start my blog until my son Myles was about 8 months old. And well... now he is over 2 years old! I'm still trying to get caught up with the monthly updates and monthly favorites, so I can get, and hopefully stay, up to date. 

 April 15th- May 14th, 2014

Health/Personality
Stat Update: Because of insurance reasons we had his 18 month well check a little late. So at almost 21 months he was 24.6 pounds 34 inches. I think the height was a little off because now at 27 months he is 34 1/2 inches, so I think they were high on that stat. And his poor weight; he started out at like the 90% in the early months and has steadily gone down to like the 20 percentile now. He is very strong and normal height, but so skinny. 18-24 month pants are still falling off of him! He is my little peanut now!

Since the health category is kind of phasing out lately and his personality is coming on strong these days, I figured I would start to change up this category a bit.  
This month the terrible twos came on strong! He was always wanting to do things that were dangerous or defiant. Although I am sure he didn't really understand what he was doing wrong or why I was saying no. The worst was that he always wanted to run out in the street. I tried to keep him away, but I also wanted to expose him so that he would learn. He definitely didn't understand 'no' and I was beginning to think I was headed for the point of no return. I picked up a couple books, one of them being The Happiest Toddler on the Block hoping to avert my foreseen doomed future. I actually really enjoyed the book and found a lot of helpful hints if any of you are looking for a recommendation. 
He also started to be over going to The Little Gym. We had been going since he was 11 months old and recently moved up to a new class. He didn't want to participate in group activities and became bored after being there a couple minutes. It was a great place to go and we really loved our teachers, but I could just tell that it was time to let that one go.
To end on a positive note, he also started showing an interest in the way things work. He always wanted to help his daddy fix, make, build, etc. He knew right where the all the tools were and loved to get out the hammer!

Eating
Steadily trying more foods and adding more to each meal. Still no breakfast food, just milk, but lunch and dinner were going good. Nothing new in the breastfeeding department. Same schedule as last month: once in the morning, at nap time, and before bed.

  Sleeping 
Before we went back to visit my parents in Illinois this time, I told them to sell his old crib. It was a smaller one with the changing table attached and he was too big for it now. I thought about buying another, bigger crib, but it didn't seem like it would be worth it considering he would most likely be in a toddler bed soon. I also thought about bringing our pack 'n play, but that was getting too small for him too. So I gave my parents the okay to look for a big boy bed for him. I wasn't sure what exactly was going to happen because he was still in a crib at home. I was hoping for the best and expecting (dreading) the worse. 
I showed them a Buzz bed I found on Craigslist just for fun, knowing it was too expensive for just a vacation bed. My mom told me she bought just a regular cheap one and I was happy with that. However, we were both surprised when we got there and saw this:

He was so excited he was fumbling over his words! And at that point, I knew that the bed was totally worth it! I figured the fact that he loved it so much might work in my favor to get him to sleep in it! At night we laid down thick layers of blankets on each side in case he fell off. I did our normal routine, nursed him a bit, and laid him down. He went to sleep with no problems.. miracle! He did wake up early and get into bed with me for a while, but that was expected from him. I couldn't believe how well he did! I am guessing he was exhausted from the trip because the next night... not so much... I did everything the same and then a couple minutes later he was up walking around crying for me. I let him go a bit to see what he would do and within a couple minutes I didn't hear him anymore. When I went in there to go to bed myself, I found him sleeping on the blankets that were on the side of the bed. I didn't dare move him, knowing that the blankets were probably more comfortable than the bed anyway! The next night he got up and cried again, only this time it lasted longer. I waited it out and again he put himself back down. Then every night after that was fine. So all in all, it went way better than I could have ever imagined. With his sketchy sleeping history, I was really preparing for a total disaster and it wasn't too bad. The transition back home was a little rough the first few nights because he was used to coming in bed with me around 5am, but he quickly got over that and fell back to his normal routine of bedtime being from 9pm-8am. Also one nap still from 1pm-3/4pm.


Saying

Adding words each month that were new and I remembered to write down: 

'Op' for open- Op please or Op door
Up (to carry him), outside, Otay
Starting to repeat words back after you say them
Starting to say 'ABCs' and says letters when looking at words
Can count to 6 but not all the way thorough at the same time

Names for family members: Uncle Tick (uncle Chris), Papa (grandpa), Dabo (grandma)
I have no idea where Dabo came from. When we went back to visit them. he woke up in the morning and went to the garage door and said "Where's Dabo?" and it has stuck with every since. So now I am guessing she will be Dabo for the rest of her life!

Outings

• We spent the actual holiday of Easter in Illinois. We did some Easter egg hunting, church going, brunch eating, egg dying, and tons of family hanging:

 

• This month we were on a Jamba Juice kick so we had many a Jamba Juice dates. Myles called it "Tippy juice" because we went there a lot with his friend Cammy (who he called Tippy).

•  We also got to celebrate some great friends' birthdays. His bestie Cammy turned 2.

And our little friend Kenny turned one!

• We took a day trip to the Children's Museum of Stockton. I found out about this place on Yelp and thought we would give it a try. We drove a little over an hour to get there and at first I didn't think it was worth it. I picked this place solely based on some pictures I saw online of emergency vehicles that you were able to get into and explore. I thought for sure Myles would love it.. well of course he was in and out of them within 5 seconds and didn't even care to check them out. At that point, I figured it would be a dud of a trip. Luckily Myles found a makeshift pinball machine that kept his attention for like a half an hour! And once we started exploring the rest of the museum, we found tons of things to keep our interest: train table, mini golf, art room, house with kitchen, farm, grocery store, newsroom, and water table. So in the end it was a successful trip and a place I would recommend for the little ones.

• While we were vising back home we got to spend some quality time with my lifelong best friend and her kids. It was going to be my niece's birthday in a couple weeks (and I would be missing it) so I wanted to take her some place that we could spent some time together. And now that Myles was getting older, he could play and interact with the older kids more, so we took them all to a family fun park for mini golf, go-carts, and arcade games. We tried to get Myles on the go-cart but it took too long to start and he wanted out before we got going. He played a little mini-putting, but it mostly turned into him trying to throw his ball into all of the water features. But I really had the best time with them.. they make my heart so happy!

   Milestones/Skills

• Jumping; jumping with both feet off the ground and jumping on the trampoline until he couldn't jump anymore!

• First time in big boy bed (see 'sleep' above)

Funnies and Favorites

•  Favorite movie: Robots 
• Favorite book: Ernie and Bert Can 
• Favorite game: being chased around the kitchen and in circles
• Really good at kicking and 'dribbling' the soccer ball
• Favorite toy: Still loving his balls

• I had to include this picture for all the Toy Story enthusiasts. One day we were playing with Buzz upstairs and I mentioned something about him flying and the next thing I know Buzz is being launched down the stairs onto the ground. Perfect reenactment of one of the saddest scenes in the original.   

• Hot enough in California for splash pad time in May. I picked this one up at Target and it was the perfect way to keep cool while playing outside. He always wanted me to stomp around in the water with him.

• Favorite ride/game: This virtual ride at Chuck E. Cheese. This kid would sit on that ride forever, even if I didn't put any money in it. I can't tell you how much money I have spent on this machine, I probably could have bought our own by now. This time he suckered grandma onto it for all three rides, plus the bonus one :)

• And jumping of course! Discovering the joys of the trampoline at grandma and grandpa's house made this the happiest boy on Earth.

 

What are new milestones your kid(s) are reaching?

Myles Monthly: 20

As you may know, I didn't decide to start my blog until my son Myles was about 8 months old. And well... now he is over 2 years old! I'm still trying to get caught up with the monthly updates and monthly favorites, so I can get, and hopefully stay, up to date. 

 March 15th- April 14th, 2014

This month is going to be pretty short and sweet! When going through my pictures for this month, I was saddened by the lack there of. I don't really know what the deal was; I guess we were either not doing too much or doing so much that I didn't have the chance to get out the camera. Luckily, I noticed that next month will more than make up for it!

Health
A fairly good month overall (as far as I can remember!) with only one little bout of sickness. Myles had his first real throw up this month. When he was little (3-4 months) he used to throw up his breast milk once a day, but when that was over he hadn't thrown up since then. One morning Mark went to get him when he woke up (per usual) and noticed something all over his bed. He yelled for me to come in and I started freaking out not knowing what was going on. It took a minute for us to figure out what happened and why there was purple all over his bed. Sometime in the middle of the night he must of thrown up blueberries. I never heard him cry or make any noise over the monitor so I guess it didn't really bother him though. We cleaned him all up, but he definitely had a fever. He breastfeed a very little bit (unusual for him) and then we went downstairs. I was eating a breakfast bar and he wanted some so I let him have a bite. 30 seconds later... puke all over!!! So I cleaned everything again and we laid on the couch all day long. He would not let him put him down or walk away for anything. He napped and breastfeed a little bit more and continued to just lay on me the rest of the day. Around 8pm he finally let me put him down for the first time and he walked and played a little bit. When it was time for bed he laid down perfectly fine and woke up the next day 75% better. He was still pretty clingy, but otherwise normal. This was the sickness I was referencing when I posted about our zoo trip last week.

He also pushed through his two bottom stomach teeth (16 teeth altogether), which now that I am writing this, may have been the reason for the sickies.

Eating
Progressively eating more and more with each passing month. He has never been a big eater; never ate baby food, and took a long time to start eating a significant amount of anything. He had been eating a decent lunch for a couple of months now, so I was happy with that and just waiting for him to do the same for breakfast and dinner. This day we played and ate lunch at Chuck E Cheese and I just had to take a video to document how much he ate of his pizza. I would say that this was the most he ever ate in one sitting:

Besides the one sick day, we were doing very well with sticking to only nursing three times a day: once in the morning, at nap time, and before bed. The day he was sick, I let him nurse as much as he wanted. I was a little worried it would set us back in our weaning process, but thankfully that day didn't ruin our progress.

  Sleeping 

I think I can get rid of this category pretty soon. Even up until now (at 27 months), his sleep has been pretty consistent when we are at home. Vacations back to Illinois are a whole other story, so maybe I will keep this just for those occasions.
  His schedule has pretty much been the same since he was 12 months. Bed time from 9pm-8am and one nap from 1pm-3/4pm.


Saying

He continued to add many new words this month (words that he used consistently): 
I poopy (when he farts), 'Sleepy' when he wants to breastfeed and take a nap, big hug, fruit snack, Cammy (friend), Okay mommy, window, messy, boo-boo, sticks, Wall-E(ge), Uh Oh, working, cheese, broccoli, Choo Choo, zoo, bug, high-five, slinky, funny, car, fries

New animal noises: elephant
Putting more words and phrases together: Mommy help me please, Daddy stop it

Repeats me when I yell for 'Mark' (his dad's name) with much emphasis on the 'ah' sound! Calls the cat "Me-Oh" I think this comes from meow, but he could only say me-oh. So now we all call the cat me-oh. Mark always says he is me-oh from the kitty Matrix. 

Says 'high' and reaches up and says 'low' and reaches down (from an Elmo book)

Outings

• Our biggest outing this month was a pre-Easter celebration at Crab Cove beach on the Bay. Myles was able to meet the Easter bunny for the first time (no bunny fail here!), see the beach and ocean for the first time, play tons of games, and 'Easter egg hunt' for the first time. I use quotes because it was just an area blocked off with crackers/snacks on the ground for them to pick up. The 'hunt' ended up being the least pleasant experience of the whole day (re: 100 toddlers and parents rushing a 10x10 area), but everything else was a blast and getting to see Myles take in the ocean and sand for the first time was quite awesome!

• I am pretty sure that the park has been on our outings list every month since moving to California! That makes me smile because it is the main reason we moved here and I love that I am sticking to enjoying every beautiful day this place has to offer. Our favorite park day this month was a picnic-park day with our best buddies Cameron and Leesa. 

• We also visited the Oakland Zoo for the first time. Pre-meltdown we had a great time; if you missed the post last week see what animals we saw here.

• We frequented Chuck E Cheese's this month. I like going when they first open because we are usually the only ones there. In the morning, it is the most clean with no big kids running around and Chuck E gives us tons of free tickets!

   Milestones/Skills

• In his 18 month update, I talked about how Myles started to get into TV a little bit. He got a favorite show (Handy Manny) and would actually sit through an episode. Well this month, Myles found his first favorite movie: Toy Story. To say he became obsessed is a huge understatement. I mean he would ask for it all day long, and if you said Buzz or Woody he would start yelling about watching it. I played the movie for him a couple months back (I bought it with money from his first birthday), and he had no interest. One day, I decided to try it again and it was game over. He sat and watched the whole thing (unheard of) and fell in love with Buzz.
  I had bought him some pull-ups to have around and Buzz was on some of them. He found them and would carry them around all day long. I started to feel bad about it, so we went and bought him his very first Buzz Lightyear. The look on his face and the excitement over having his own Buzz was something I will never forget. Buzz went everywhere with Myles from that day forward :) and now 7 months later poor Buzz is so beat up, even the toy doctor can't fix him.

 

• We were given our first real bike from some friends. Although he is still a ways out from riding it, he loves to sit on it and be pushed around. He can almost touch the peddles now, but is still not into learning to ride. We are steady working on that one.

• He took his first shower. He was protesting the bath a bit, so I tried the shower. He liked it at the time, but he has rarely done it again.

• Can count to three; uses his three fish in the bath.

• My dad bought him his first skateboard last month when he was visiting. This thing is very slow, so it is perfect for his age. He couldn't ride by himself of course, but he loved to be pushed on it. I am hoping he wants to learn to ride it as he grows because I think it is really good for coordination. 

Funnies and Favorites

•  Only one picture this month! This was post-lunch when apparently he was done eating and ready to relax :)

What are some recent 'funnies' from your kids?