Myles Monthly: 15

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 22 months 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. 

 October 15th- November 14th, 2013

Health
Fit as a fiddle and as healthy as can be. Loving the months with no abnormal behaviors, symptoms, attitudes, etc. It makes life at least a bit easier with a wild-child toddler.

Eating
Eating just the same, which is good, but could be better. Still not eating breakfast, sometimes lunch, and always dinner, and getting snacks throughout the day. He had his favorites, but was trying some new stuff too. Dailies were fruit, cheese, meat, and rice/pasta, and some other new likes were salmon and macaroni and cheese.

Still going strong on the breastfeeding, nursing anywhere from 5-10 times a day. Morning, nap, and before bed were the times that he would drink a significant amount. The other times were short 5-10 minute sessions because he was upset, got hurt, was bored, etc. He did still have some days that he would want to nurse all day long, but they were becoming less frequent. When my family came out to visit this month, he didn't nurse as much because he was occupied with them and having too much fun to even think about breastfeeding!

Sleeping
Keeping strong in the sleep department! I certainly could not complain, considering where we were just 8 months prior. Sleeping from 9pm-7am, then nursing in my bed for 30-60 minutes. Normally his naps were once a day for 2ish hours from 1pm-3pm. We would lay in our guest bed and he would nurse to sleep and throughout his nap. When my parents were in town, our nap schedule was a little different though. Since we were out and about most days, he would take 2 shorter naps in the car/stroller. This worked out well as he was more than tired by bedtime! Bedtime routine was still the same: bath, jammies, book with dad, nursing/snuggles for about 15 minutes, kisses, and crib. Also still using blackout curtains with no nightlight and ocean sound machine running. 


Saying

No new words that actually stuck around this month. He would say words randomly once or for a couple days, and then stop saying them. So I am not counting those words here.

Outings

• Going to Little Gym once or twice a week. He loves going and I love the interaction he gets with other kids/adults. I continued to see a lot of improvement in his listening and physical skills. He participated pretty well, but he still had a tendency to want to go off and do his own thing. You can see the bars with the hotdog rollers under them in the picture below; that was his absolute favorite thing to do in the whole gym. If he ran off, 90% of the time, it would be to walk across those rollers.

• Still going to the park regularly. Usually sometime every day we would end up at the park. The weather was gorgeous and I couldn't get over being able to play outside in November, in t-shirts no less! After 28 years of Midwest winters, I was not about to let any nice day to go to waste. Pretty safe to say we were loving California! 

My family came to visit this month! We got a whole week with my mom, step-dad, and brother! We tried to get a good balance of our time between activities, touristy explorations, and down time. And I think it ended up perfect, although time went by way too fast :(

• We visited a local farm for their annual pumpkin patch. We got to check out some animals, watch a little concert, run around a hay maze, and most importantly, pick out our own pumpkins! This was the first time I have ever gotten to pick a pumpkin right from the patch and I was pretty excited to make this memory with Myles. Pretty sure he thought he was in heaven being surrounded by all of the "balls" and getting to take one home! See more of our visit in my Halloween post.

•  Myles got in some quality Uncle Chris time. My brother got a new skateboard when we went into the city and then he also got a new best friend. Myles would not leave that thing alone and he was so fascinated by what it did. My brother was my little side-kick when he was younger, so I just love seeing them together. It reminds me of our time together. I know he is going to look up to him as he gets older and I think he is an awesome role model!

•  One day I took them to the Contra Loma Regional Park to show off the beautiful scenery around Antioch. This park is only 2 miles from our house and has an awesome man-made swimming lagoon (you can see in the top right picture). There is also fishing, hiking, biking, grilling, etc. It is so cool to have this so near our house. My mom, brother, and I hiked to the top of the main big hill there and I had to snap a few photos. I had seen people climb it and went by it a dozen times before, but this was the first time I went to the top. It was so incredibly peaceful up there. I could have stayed for hours.

•  We of course had to go into the city. We experienced the city as true San Fransiscoans and took public transportation everywhere.

 My family had already been to the city on a previous vacation, so we planned on going somewhere they had never been. We went to Haight and Ashbury to do some shopping and hippie watching. Oh and of course, we had to go to the Ben and Jerry's right on the infamous corner.

 Since we were so close, we had to stop by our favorite city park, Golden Gate Park. Myles' favorite part was chasing the birds away.

• We also spent a day in Berkley. I wanted my family to see the Berkley marina and the awesome view of the city over the bay.

Myles got to test out the feel of the wet sand and beach water. It was really hard to keep him from going all the way in; he so would have done it if it weren't for grandma holding him back. 

There was also a park by the beach that we played at for a bit. I tried to do a little photo shoot, but Myles had other plans.

Mark's cousin recommended the Berkley Rose Garden, so we stopped by there on the way out. I'm so glad we took the time to go. It was beautiful there and it was so cute to see Myles discover flowers! I showed him that you smell all the pretty flowers and then he had to stick his nose in every single rose in the whole garden!

• Later in the month, Myles got to go to his first parade, and it was for Veteran's Day. It was pretty short, but that worked perfectly for us because Myles had a very short attention span. He loved the motorcycles and horses the best; no candy, but we did get a cool flag!

Milestones/Skills

• We celebrated Myles' 2nd Halloween! I considered this his first real Halloween though. Last year he was only 3 months old and we didn't take him out or anything because it was too cold. I did dress him up as a chili pepper, but I don't count that as a real first Halloween. So this year I went all out! We celebrated for weeks! You can check out all the details in my Halloween 2013 post, but here are some of the highlights:

We went to a party at the Little Gym and dressed as Batman, Joker, and Harley Quinn. Myles was the superhero and we were the villains! They had lots of activities, a haunted house, professional pictures, and the gym was open for free play.

We also went to a party at the gym that we go to. They did a parade around the gym, had games, and a little photo shoot set-up. I dressed Myles up in a horse costume :)

The pumpkins we picked and carved.

On Halloween night we took Myles out to do the holiday right! We pushed him on his bike and he was such a trooper. We did a trunk-or-treat and then walked the neighborhood. He lasted the whole 2 hours and we all had a great night!

• First sucker: Myles got his first taste of a sucker. While out for lunch when my family was in town, grandma sneaked this treat to Myles. He LOVED it! Even after it was gone, he wouldn't let me take it from him: I mean freak-out, full on temper tantrum!

• We also had our first California playdate. We met Cameron and his mom Leesa at the Little Gym. They were a lot a like and I just thought he was the cutest. When Leesa and I started talking, we instantly clicked and the boys got along great. We took them to the marina to feed the ducks, and although the ducks wanted nothing to do with our bread, the boys had fun! They even got in a little hug action (that I missed with my camera)!

Funnies

• One night I was cleaning the living room and got out the vacuum to suck up the crumbs in the couch. Once I pulled the cushions off, it was like a light went off in Myles' brain! "This couch was made for jumping mom!" He also loved falling on his butt, and would do it on command! He started doing it one day on the ground (ouch) and then whenever I told him to 'fall on your butt', he would plop right down :)

• We were at the park one day and he decided it needed to be cleaned up! I have no idea where he got the idea from or why he started doing it. He was done playing on the equipment and started wandering around. Then he found rocks and this happened:

What are some of your kid(s) new sayings or funny rituals?

 

Come back to check out my favorites from months fifteen & sixteen!