Fifteen Months

It has been a few months since I've done a monthly update, but there's so much going on in LB's life right now, I couldn't help but give a little update.

Other than a couple typical toddler runny-nose incidents that were snotty and messy, but didn't seem to bother him one bit, he has remained 100% healthy.  Hooray!

We're starting to get a lot more words.  I read a few articles that mentioned children with MCADD can have speech delays and since LB wasn't really talking at all, I was starting to wonder whether I should ask the pediatrician about it.  Then, all of a sudden, we went from a vocabulary of "this," "that," "yes," and "daddy" to a whole lot more words -- ball, catch, dog, juice, night-night, mommy (hooray!!), kiss, and probably a few others I'm not remembering right now.  In any event, I'm a whole lot less concerned about his speech than I was a month ago. 

He is definitely a boy on the move!  He has been walking since January, but is very adept at it now.  He can walk/run easily on all surfaces and doesn't trip and fall all that often anymore (this makes me happy because one of my least favorite things is when my boys face-plant on the concrete - it just makes me cringe to watch it and not be able to stop it).  He is also discovering climbing and can successfully work his way up onto all sorts of high furniture - the kitchen table, the couch, the beds.  He has also figured out that if he can't get up onto something, he can always go grab the step stool from the bathroom (the one his older brother uses to reach the sink) and set it beside the item he'd like to climb -- voila! 

His favorite toys right now are all things sports. He loves all types of balls -soccer, foot, basket, base, bowling, golf, etc. - along with all the long sticks that accompany them.  He can swing a mean golf club with pinpoint accuracy on your shin.  He can play catch with us for 15 minutes at a time and not tire of it one bit.We are convinced that he is going to be our sporty kid because he is literally obsessed with this stuff.  Thankfully, I've been very encouraged by stories of families with older MCADD kids who are successfully able to participate in sports, so the thought of him playing a sport doesn't make me as uneasy as it used to.

He also loves dancing and will bop along to music.  He loves books and brings them to us one after another, happily pointing at the pictures and nodding along to the parts of the story that he apparently agrees with most.  He gives the most wonderful drooly open-mouth kisses while saying "muuuuaaa!" that absolutely melt my heart.

With all of his activity, I'm very grateful that he is eating well and enjoying a wide variety of food. One of his favorite meals is our family's tradition of Saturday morning oatmeal pancakes. He also loves things like cottage cheese, apples, PB&J, pineapple, macaroni and cheese, butternut squash, meatballs, just about any recipe for chicken, tortillas, hummus and lots of other fruits, veggies and grains.  

We've figured out a good bedtime snack system that's working pretty well.  Since our dinnertime is usually pretty close to bedtime, it was hard for us to get him back into the highchair for a sit-down snack so soon after dinner at a time when he'd much rather be romping around with his big brother.  So, now we're giving him a sippy cup of whole milk and a snack cup about a half hour before his bath that he can carry along with him during the romping. The snack cup contents vary, but it's usually some kind of whole-grain cereal or crackers (cheerios, graham crackers, peanut butter sandwich crackers, belvita breakfast wafers, etc.).  He'll drink and snack pretty happily, but at the point that he starts spitting the crackers out, we know that he's full to the brim and we don't force him to eat any more. However, we will hold onto the sippy cup of milk and let him drink that as we're reading his bedtime stories (the last step of our bedtime routine before lights out). 

We have officially weaned him off of the bottle during the waking hours, but he will sometimes have a small 4 oz bottle of toddler formula when he wakes up hungry at night.  During most night wakings, he will soothe himself back to sleep within a minute or two, but on the nights where our evening routine was a bit off (which happens to every family from time to time), or nights that we know he didn't eat as much of his dinner and/or bedtime snack as he normally does, we'll happily mix him up a quick bottle when he wakes (we keep the can of formula in our room along with a pre-filled bottle of water). If his fussing lasts longer than a minute or two, it's usually cured quickly with a small bottle. Sometimes he'll drink it all and be satisfied and sometimes, he'll only drink a few ounces before pushing it away and snuggling back into sleep.

Sleeping has really improved in the last few weeks, too.  About a month ago, he had slept through the night a total of 5 times, but now he's sleeping through the night much more often - at least 2-3 nights per week.  He's been working on cutting some molars, so that might actually be factoring into the sleep disturbances more so than the poor sleep habits we've established through his first year MCADD feeding schedule.  I have friends with children of similar age (not affected by MCADD) who are experiencing similar night restlessness due to teething, so it makes LB's sleep seem much more "normal."   

All in all, things are going great and we're excited for all the fun we'll have this summer!