Carter - 18 Months

This is very belated.  I apologize.  I have been so busy at work lately and we also did a lot in the 18th month that I had to go through and find pictures of.  I know I say it every month, but 18 months is a big milestone and I CANNOT believe he’s a year and a half old y’all!  I just can’t believe it!  Time has flown by way too fast and I can hardly remember when he was a newborn.  Here’s a few things that happened in the 18th month of Carter’s sweet and precious life:

• We had Carter’s 18 month appointment today,  almost two weeks late (hence the late blogpost).  When we were there, we had to answer about 20 questions about Carter’s abilities.  Things like if he can point to body parts and whether he stares with no purpose for long periods of time.  This was a test of autism.  The doc said Carter got a perfect score.  YAY for no autism!  Doc said everything looked great and that we could now be more adventurous with his foods (finally able to try peanut butter now).  He suggested us waiting a few more months before turning Carter to forward facing in his carseat.  We were wanting to do it now, but we will definitely wait since it’s safer to do it closer to age 2.  Also, he had his final shot until age 4.  So other than the flu shot he’ll get each year, no more shots for 2 more years!!!  His stats are as follows:
  • 32 inches (30th percentile)
  • 24lbs, 7oz (30th percentile)
  • 18.5 inch head circumference (25th percentile)

• He sang for the first time.  Justin and I were in the car and were pulling into our driveway.  Carter was in the back watching Elmo and it was a part in the DVD where Elmo sings about birds.  The lyrics aren’t difficult, mind you…he just sings “bird bird bird….bird bird bird….bird bird bird bird bird”.  Justin and I both heard Carter singing along at the same tempo as the DVD.  It stopped us both dead in our tracks and we looked at each other and said “was that Carter??  Did he just….SING??”
• At some point in the last month or so, he figured out how to climb up the stairs to a slide and slide down on his own.  A small slide, though.  Not the big ones you see at playgrounds, but the smaller ones you see in someone’s backyard….like this:

 

• He started trying to figure out how to put his own shoes on.  We didn’t push this.  It’s something he randomly started doing on his own…

 

• We went to a few birthday parties.  Harper Lobdell turned 1 and so did Savannah Williamson.  Unfortunately I didn’t get the chance to take pictures at Harper’s party.  Here’s some from Savannah’s party (he was LOVING the ball pit):

• We took a pretty nasty fall down the brick steps on the back porch and landed on the concrete patio (he was NOT happy this day…AT ALL).  Y’all, I had my back turned for literally 5 seconds.  In that 5 seconds, he tried to walk up one step and then back down, but he must have fallen on his way back down because by the time I turned around, he was face down on our concrete patio.  Thankfully there was no major damage.  Just some small cuts.

• Speaking of falling, he’s doing a TON of that these days.  Why??  Because he’s figured out that he LOVES to try to climb things.  I understand now why all the books I read say that parenting a boy is 10 times more exhausting than parenting a girl because they have 50% more energy than girls.  Carter is constantly climbing on things all over the house:  the bed, the couch, the pack and play, chairs, stairs…anything he can climb, he tries to.

• He began pointing people out in pictures.  He’s been doing this for a while now, but for some reason, looking through our wedding album has become one of his favorite things to do lately.  He loves looking at the family page and pointing out “Gigi, Nana, Papa, Mama, Daddy, Jen Jen, etc”.  In the video below, he was focusing on Gigi.  This video made Gigi’s day!  Just the other day, I noticed Carter had been quiet for a long time (too long for an 18 month old).  Naturally I had to investigate.  I found him in the corner of the living room.  He had taken our wedding album off of the table, pulled it onto the floor and flipped to the center page of it.  This center page is the page with a ton of family pictures on it (same page where he points out Gigi in the video below).  And he was pointing to where Papa (Justin’s dad) was in all of the pictures and was saying his name over and over.  He really loves to point people out in pictures!!!

• He began “dancing”.  He used to dance by just bouncing up and down but now he prefers to turn in circles.  He loves doing it so many times that it makes him dizzy and he falls all over the place.  DRUNK BABY ALERT!!

• Henry.  O…..M……G.  The attempt of weaning off Henry is in full effect y’all.  For some reason, about the 2nd week in June (17 1/2 months) he became completely dependent on Henry.  Like, cried when he wasn’t there…all the time.  It came out of nowhere.  He’s always loved Henry and uses him during naps and nighttime sleep and randomly throughout the day, but has never really NEEDED him.  He has certainly NEVER cried out Henry’s name when he’s upset.  So we really are trying to limit Henry’s appearances to sleeping only.  We will not be bringing Henry with him when he starts school in the fall.  Henry always helped Carter transition to being cared for by someone other than us and grandparents so he always went to school with Carter, but we won’t be doing that come fall.  I’ve already noticed a difference.  He asks for him less and less each day and when he’s upset about something, the first word out of his mouth is usually “mama”.
• We started going to a fitness program called “Mommy and Me Fitness”.  My sister-in-law goes with the twins and we began joining them this month.  Basically, you go to a gym at a church and the moms workout while the kiddos run free all over the gym playing with all kinds of toys.  Carter loves it!  I think part of why he likes it so much is because of the twins.  He is loving playing with them right now.  He is constantly asking for Celia.  And I’m shocked at how well he says her name.  Cynthia is a bit harder to say for him.  It comes out as “CeeCee” or “Sissy”.

• The top molars that were in process of coming in last month are now officially in and we are up to 12 teeth!  I’ve already started to see a white bump on his bottom jaw (whatever the tooth in front of the molar is).  So I guess we’re working on numbers 13 and 14.
• Sleep hasn’t changed.  He sleeps roughly 11 hours at night and takes one nap during the day that ranges anywhere from 1 1/2 hours to 3 hours, but most of the time is around 2 1/2 hours.  He’s still very content to play in his crib for up to an hour before I actually go get him in the mornings and after naptime.  SO thankful for that!
• He learned new body parts.  We added toes, elbows and chin to the list of body parts he knows and we’re still working on knee and shoulder.  He also learned the big one for boys…yes, he now knows where his “pee pee” is.  Carter loves to point to things and look at us as if he’s asking us “what’s this?”.  We always answer him and that’s how his vocabulary has expanded so much over the past several months.  When I was giving him a bath a few weeks ago, he pointed “down there” and looked at me.  I didn’t respond though because honestly I wasn’t ready to go there yet.  But he kept doing it and looking at me like he was saying “you tell me what everything is lady.  Why won’t you tell me the name for this thing??”  So I caved.  I wasn’t about to give him the actual name for it, so I called it a “pee pee”.  We don’t frequently ask him where his “pee pee” is, but on the few occasions that we have (to show family members his new skill) he does point to it.  So we’re up to 12 body parts now (head, eyes, ears, nose, chin, tummy, teeth, elbow, hand, pee pee, toe, feet).
• His hair has grown so much and is finally long enough to have a part in it!!!  Hard to see in the picture below because his hair is SO BLONDE!  He gets that from me.  I had super blonde hair when I was little up until I was pre-teens and my  mom started making me highlight it because she loved my hair being blonde.

• I taught him how to give a hug and to give a kiss.  He has been learning how to blow a kiss (though he does it backwards-he says “muah” and then puts his hand on his mouth instead of the other way around) but just recently he knows that when I lean in towards him and say “kiss” that I want an actual kiss and he leans towards me too with a wide open mouth.  We’ll work on closing the mouth later.  I’m just glad he gives me kisses :)  The video below is a good video of it but it starts with going over colors…the kiss is at the end.

• Brushing his teeth is one of his favorite things to do now.  We’re lucky if he lets us do it, most of the time he wants to do it himself.  The effectiveness of this is almost like brushing your teeth and then eating a box of oreos…useless.  He also is wanting to carry around the toothbrush through the house which we’re trying to discourage because he could fall with it in his mouth and it would push into his throat. 
• Still doesn’t like diaper changes.  I should rephrase that.  He DESPISES diaper changes.  He has no interest at all in staying still long enough for me to change his diaper/clothes.  I can almost guarantee that 80% of the time, he will cry during a diaper change.
• Temper tantrums are in full swing.  This little 18 month old wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it and doesn’t like being told no.  We’ve used time outs but we need to start using them more for sure.  I’ve gotta start working on being consistent with the time out otherwise the threat of “do you want to go to timeout?” will be futile. 
• Father’s Day was this month!  Justin actually ended up going out of town later in the day so we didn’t do much but we had fun for the several hours that we did have daddy with us.

So that’s about it for month 18!  I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend (despite the constant nastiness of weather) and enjoys the rest of their week!!