Newsletter: Month 20

Dear Ian, You are 20 months old and I am waaaaay behind on telling you all about it! Quick, let's get this all chronicled before my brain forgets even more than it already has!

First, we would be remiss if we did not chronicle your first trip to the emergency room. Day care called just as we were about to get you, saying you were dancing and had hit your head on a bookcase. The doctor was closed and the urgent care wouldn't do facial sutures so we headed to the ER. It was only an hour and you were a sweetheart the whole time. We said "HI" to all the nurses and played with a ball Daddy made out of a rubber glove. Some medical grade super glue and your eyebrow was all better. Congratulations on breaking everyone else's records for youngest stitches.

This month has been one of many travels. Unfortunately, none of those travels have been for you. Daddy and I went to a library conference in New Orleans just after your 20 month birthday while you stayed home with Grandma and GrandDaddy. I called GrandDaddy the first morning we were there and his report was "everything is going swimmingly now ..." Apparently around 1am you woke up and cried for Mama for an hour.

Mamaaaaa! Mama! Maaaaaamaaaaa! Mama? Mama?!

You get the point. Grandma says that after 45 minutes or so, you stopped crying long enough to say, "Daddy?" in this hesitant voice, as if maybe Daddy would come and HE would know how to find Mama.

But after that first rough night, things smoothed out. You would grouse a bit for Mama or yogurt or shoes or other random nouns while you slept, but generally stayed put. We called that a success.

Then last week, I went to a conference by myself while you and Daddy stayed home. We considered all going as a family, but tickets were $650 a piece and Daddy could think of a lot of other things to spend $1300 on besides flying to Utah. I missed you so much that first night, I slept with one of your blankets just so I could smell you. But again, it got easier after that first night and we were able to see each other on FaceTime.

While I was glad to have your blanket for my trip, you are definitely the blanket affectionado! You have started calling it a blanket but still generally refer to it as "DIS!" and are very enthusiastic about having one with you in the car, whenever we nurse, whenever you're upset and when we all go to bed. I'm so glad I bought a ton of those blankets because we keep multiples everywhere! They're lightweight, soft and just right for snuggling.

You will grab the whole blanket into your lap and hug it like a basketball. But then when we're nursing or when you get sleepy, you search for a corner and roll it in your fingers back and forth. It's pretty adorable, particularly when you repeat the word "corner" over and over.

Corner isn't all you repeat. Daddy inadvertently taught you a naughty phrase, though it was innocent enough. He was trying to teach you how to drink out of a juice box. You kept squeezing the sides to get juice out but it would erupt everywhere. Daddy said, "Ian, you don't squeeze it. That makes a mess. You suck." to which you shouted, "YOU SUCK!" Indeed.

You're learning bits of grammar. Before it was just one word. Now it's "Mama car. Daddy car." and "Mama shirt. Daddy shirt. Ian shirt!".

We drove down to Grandma and Granddaddy's the other day to surprise them. But when I pulled into the yard, Granddaddy's car wasn't there. You said "Mamaw car. Pop car?" (Grandma is Mamaw and somehow Granddaddy or Grandpa became Pop in your dialect.)

I told you I wasn't sure where Granddaddy was but you kept saying, "Pop go?" as in "where did Pop go?" We went in the house and you took off through the rooms (as much as you can take off through their house) calling out "Pop go?". We tried looking in the backyard and finally Granddaddy made an appearance. Grandma told him as he came through the house, "there's a little boy in our yard looking for Pop" and he said "who's Pop?". Grandma said, "I think that's you, so you better go see!"

You and your Granddaddy then proceeded to trek all over the backyard in the garden, the front yard to wash off my van and up and down the sidewalk. Grandma told me as you were both playing down the street, "I think he's excited about being a Granddaddy. More than he ever thought he would be."

Trust me, everything is better than we could have imagined.

Love, Mama

Newsletter: Month 19

Dear Ian, This weekend you turned 19 months old and you've started making sentences! Well, they're more like catch phrases than anything involving grammar, but we're still moving beyond grunts and pointing in many ways.

If you drop things you'll say "It's a mess!" though it sounds more like "Essa mess!" Many items also elicit an "oh what's that?" that sounds like "oh wassat?" It's kind of like living with a very small Jar Jar Binks.

We've all been sleeping much better these days and I'm incredibly grateful. Even if you do wake up in the middle of the night, there's no screaming but just some "Mama?" and then we're all back to bed. I could do this forever.

Tonight we got to try out the pool and thankfully no one drowned. I told your Grandma and GrandDaddy they better have swimsuits because if they babysit you, they're gonna have to get in the pool. You would swim around in my arms and then says "down!" I kept trying to explain that down would only lead to a lot more water that you were ready for but you just kept asking. I'm still not sure what you thought would happen, but we did some floating and splashing and you would occasionally squeal out "BUBBLES!" like it was the best bathtub you had ever seen.

We went up to Maryland this past weekend so you could wish Megan happy birthday. I just can't get over how you are such a little boy now. Whenever you see another toddler, you call out "baby!" Anyone who is your size or smaller is obviously a baby. There was another little boy and you had a "baby!" off calling back and forth to each other.

But you're a big boy. When we go to restaurants they ask if we want a high chair and we have to explain that high chairs are for babies and we obviously don't have a baby anymore. I just bought a new pack of bibs only to find out that bibs are also for babies. We sat at dinner tonight and you ate meatloaf, homemade mac & cheese and fruit all with your little fork. As you took the fork from my plate and masterfully navigated noodles to your mouth, I realized we're in a whole new world now. And it's amazing.

Love, Mama

Newsletter: Month 18

Dear Ian, Last week you turned 18 months old, on Good Friday even, so we took the whole day off to celebrate. From that day forward, you have not had a decent night's sleep. This particular milestone was not in the baby books.

We took you to your well baby checkup and they said you look great. You are 35" high and just shy of 20 lbs. You're in the 97th percentile for height and they said you have all the physical attributes of a 2 year old. As we joked "why can't your 2 year old talk better? Because he's only 18 months old!"

The pediatric assistant said that I shouldn't nurse you anymore at night because it's bad for your teeth. But a) I don't agree that breast milk will rot your teeth and b) if it made you sleep better I'd give you donuts twice a night.

You go to bed easily around 8:30 or 9 without a fight. But around midnight or 1am, you start wailing and are pretty inconsolable for several hours. After a series of Google searches and asking everyone we can and clever deductive reasoning, your father suspects you are just going through a book of all toddler sleep disorders and working your way through it chapter by chapter.

We thought it was teeth since you're drooling and you don't like to lie down (molars can put pressure on your ears). We thought it was night terrors since you don't seem to be awake but are crying and flipping out all stiff-legged. We thought it was a growth spurt since you are eating more in the evenings. We thought it was just one of those things. But really it doesn't seem to matter why it is, we're just doing the best we can to get through it together as a family. For now we take shifts holding you in the recliner. It's not a perfect system but it works.

While our lack of sleep has taken a front seat lately there is still a ton of other stuff going on. You are learning new words every hour. You say please! You said sticker the other day. On Easter Sunday you learned how to say hockey and now yell "HOCK-EEEE!" HOCK-EEE!" every time it comes on the TV. You even recognize it on the radio. Since it's the playoffs right now, you're getting plenty of hockey time.

You tried your hardest to say Grandma and Granddaddy today but those are tough because they sound so much like Mama and Daddy. But you seem to understand who they are by "name" even if you can't say it.

You love riding in your seat on the front of my bike. The first time I tried it, you were not so keen on the helmet, but now you run to the bike whenever you see it. I admit at times to wishing I could hide the bike when I'm not up to pushing all 30 lbs of you around the neighborhood, but I remind myself these days are fleeting.

There's a lot of waiting for you to do things yourself. You have to buckle your own seatbelt, you want to "lock" the front door with our keys. We can't feed you soup or yogurt anymore but have to just hover on stand by while you do it. You will knock down people to get to the front porch and feed the neighborhood kitty. You even "helped" with our garden this week, mostly by throwing dirt around.

This is a great phase in that you understand most everything we say. It can just be hard on all of us because we don't understand everything you say. As your father's friend once said, this is the age when we're convinced you're speaking Korean. It's also frustrating because we're convinced you understand we're telling you that you have to sit down if you want to eat more guacamole, yet you continue to hop on the chair with an impish grin.

The weather is getting warm and we're spending tons of time outside. I'm so happy to see you enjoying the outdoors. Maybe the next time you wake up in the middle of the night we should see if camping in the backyard would make you sleep better.

As always, it's great to know you. I look forward to seeing all the new things you learn this month.

Love, Mama