Timothy Update: 16 Months Old!

Climbed up by himself!

Around 15 months, Timothy got the hang of walking! He had been working on it for a while, walking with anything he could push, holding our hands. He took his first few steps back and forth between us right after his birthday. He just gradually started taking more and more steps on his own until he was walking good distances. It took a while for him to figure out how to stand up without pulling himself to standing on something, but now he can stand up just by bracing his hands on the ground and straightening up, so I consider him to have mastered walking!

His favorite word is 'ball' and the "bum, bum" that I mentioned in his 12-month post has turned into "broom, broom!" with an added lip buzz and is definitely supposed to indicate car/truck sounds. "Uh-oh" is still very often used. He says "dada" and "mama" much more regularly now, and also says "bup!" when he wants to go up... up on the sofa, or to picked up. He created his own signs for 'up' and 'bump' which is really cute. He taps his head with his open hand for 'bump' and he uses it whenever he trips or falls, even if he didn't bump his head. He has also started saying "bye!" when he waves, which is so stinking cute! Especially since he says it like, "By-ee!" He also signs and says "potty" now, but he says it "pa-ee" which sounds a lot like "bye" so I'm really glad he also signs! That makes the difference so that I actually understand what he is communicating, versus really not being sure what he intended to say just based on the sounds. 

He is obsessed with books! (Not just for potty time. All the time.)

Although he can sign and say "potty" we are still working on him understanding to ask for the potty whenever he needs it. If I ask him "where does pee-pee (or poopy) go?" he points to the toilet and says "potty" so he definitely understands where it is supposed to go. He sometimes points to his diaper and says "uh-oh" when he has had a miss. He does ask for the potty sometimes and more often lately! We were out on our grocery shopping trip and he asked for the potty, so I got our travel potty out and set up in the back of the car, and he used it. Then again at our second grocery store stop he asked and used the travel potty. We've also gotten him some underwear, which is nice because it's easier to have a pottytunity just pulling down pants and underwear versus having to unsnap and snap up a cloth diaper every time.

Easter fun with cousin Edison!

He is usually very friendly with any interested strangers or talkative cashiers we encounter when we're out running errands. He smiles, waves, and sometimes even says "bye" when we're leaving! We try to encourage him to be friendly and outgoing.

We had tried taking him to parks a few times, but usually the swings were the only aspect he seemed to really enjoy. Lately he has started enjoying slides though, which is very convenient because our neighborhood playground has several slides, but no swings unfortunately. We have to drive to find swings.

Climbing stairs with Grandma

He has been very consistently sleeping through the night ever since his 1st birthday. Usually a solid 12 hours, sometimes even 13. Naps haven't been quite as nice, he's been sleeping less during the day and seems to be trying to drop the morning nap and just take afternoon naps.

He sleeps so well at night that he even slept through the middle-of-the-night lip sweeps we had to do after we had his lip tie revised. Thankfully, this revision was successful, unlike the one we had done when he was 1 week old. The dentist also confirmed that he actually appears to be missing tooth #8 (which we were waiting and waiting for...) since teeth numbers 9-16 have all now erupted and there is still no sign of #8. I'm missing my two adult central incisors, so I wouldn't have been surprised if he had been missing some adult teeth down the road, but I had my central incisor baby teeth, so I wasn't expecting him to be missing any baby teeth. The one he is missing is also a lateral incisor, so I'm not sure if he actually inherited that from me or not. 

So proud of himself! 

Helping is extremely fun and exciting for him, so we have been trying to encourage that. He still loves helping with laundry. He also helps fill the bird feeders, and is always thrilled to notice birds outside. Matt built him a learning tower (Pinterest IKEA step stool hack) for the kitchen, so now he's learning to sort silverware into the drawer. He's also figured out how to operate light switches, and is convinced that ceiling fans should *always* be on. 

Playing with measuring cups.

(The learning tower addition hasn't been painted yet here)

Climbed into the chair by himself too.

I mentioned in the previous post that I was really hoping his hair would become curly, and it definitely has! He has really adorable curls now, and though sometimes I am afraid it's getting a little too long, I really can't bring myself to cut it yet. Sometimes when he's tossing and turning he will wake up from a nap with a matted mess on the back of his head, so I know it'll be too long soon, but when I do cut it, I will definitely just do a little trim and not cut off all the curls!

He's getting more talkative, opinionated, busy and energetic! He's still very sweet and cheerful most of the time too, though. I can't believe he's getting so big! We love our sweet little guy. It's so fun and amazing seeing how fast he's growing and how smart he is.

Timothy's Twelfth Month!

My goodness, I can't believe my baby is a year old. He's so big, smart and has so much personality. This has been such a fun year watching him grow. We're so blessed!

We're STILL waiting on that 8th tooth, but I can see his 1-year molars bulging in his gums and getting ready to break through, so maybe they're going to come first. His tooth emergence pattern has really been odd!

He was saying "uh oh" quite a bit earlier this month, but it didn't seem to be necessarily in response to an accident, like something falling, so I wasn't sure that it wasn't just a sound effect. Now he's obsessed with saying "bum bum" and if that's supposed to mean something, I'm sure I haven't figured it out. But, I am convinced that he says "ball" intentionally! He held up his ball to me and said it so clearly, I was amazed. He seems to be trying to talk. We're still working on "Mama" and "Dada" though, which are the words we are probably most eager for him to say!

Sharing french fries!

Signing he has added "all done" and "ceiling fan" to his repertoire. He also loves waving now, and does it at our request almost every time we ask. I think his waving is really adorable, he so gently flaps his hand up and down. A couple of mornings he was having his morning milk in the recliner downstairs, and he kept sitting up to wave across the room at Daddy who was finishing up breakfast in our open kitchen.

Timothy has mastered the straw spout for his sippy cup, which is great because now he can help himself to water. He's also become obsessed with sticking his tongue out, and showing us his mouthful of food when he's in the middle of chewing. I'm not sure where he picked up these manners! Good thing he's so cute that it outweighs the grossness. For now...

His hair is starting to curl a bit in the back sometimes, and I'm super excited about that! I had curls when I was little, and Matt's hair is curly, so I'm hoping Timothy will have curly hair, at least for a little while.

Unfortunately, the 12-month sleep regression is here, and he has been waking up once, sometimes even twice a night occasionally! He doesn't wake up every night though, and the past 4 nights he's given us undisturbed sleep, which was the best Christmas present we could have asked!

Loves closing (and opening) doors of all shapes and sizes. When he first started doing this I was worried he would smash his fingers, but he is very careful when he pushes large doors shut. When he goes in our bathroom to take his bath, he likes to close the bathroom door behind himself, and Matt jokes that he needs privacy... even though both of us are in the bathroom, and there's no one else in the house! 

He's still working hard on walking, and loves walking with anything he can find to push (since we don't have an actual walker toy for him) like our bar stools or his high chair. The high chair legs are rather wide, so his has trouble getting far before he gets stuck on something, but the bar stools work pretty well. And then, of course, he loves whenever anyone will hold his hands and help him walk!

Giving Daddy kisses

Laundry is Timothy's new favorite thing to help with, and I'm thrilled that he's already "helping" with chores! He will help throw clothes in the washer, help toss clothes in the dryer, push the button to turn the dryer on, and pull dry clothes out of the dryer. It's pretty cute!

This month being the Christmas season gave us lots of fun outings, plus a surprise first snow of the winter! 

Aunt Deborah made the trip down from VA to give Timothy and Edison some very fun vintage toys, and we had a wonderful time celebrating Christmas together!

Christmas Eve with the Hargett side, we had the special treat of cousins coming down all the way from Michigan! Little Elsie is a few months younger than Timothy, and she gave him several kisses, and just generally liked hanging out with him. So cute!

Then we enjoyed Christmas morning with the Bass side and Timothy and Edison had lots of fun sharing each other's toys. The most exciting Christmas present was the news that Edison is going to be a big brother, and Timothy will have a new little cousin in July!

Thanks for following along with Timothy's first year! Now that he's a year old, I'm planning to stop trying to do monthly posts, but hope to still make updates occasionally... like whenever he decides to start walking! 

Timothy's Eleventh Month

Daylight Savings Time. I've always hated it, but being a parent has just made it even worse torture. Timothy was on a rock-solid schedule, so I wanted to try gradually working towards what we wanted bedtime to be after DST ended. Unfortunately, my parent brain was in poor condition and I started trying to work his bedtime incrementally earlier, when what I should have been doing was moving it later so that when we fell back his sleepiness would correspond with his original bedtime. Since I was doing it all wrong for almost the whole month in advance, we barely had time to undo my damage before DST hit. Timothy spent almost 2 weeks adjusting, he wanted to go to bed at 6pm (because it was really 7pm) and he woke up at 6am, even if we tried to keep him up until 7pm. He was grumpy, naps were all wonky. It was awful. Thankfully, we have survived and now he goes to sleep at 7 and usually doesn't wake up until 8am!

He's started giving kisses occasionally, which is simultaneously cute and a little gross, because they are very slobbery. Also, he sometimes acts like he's going to kiss me and then bites my cheek instead, so that's a bit scary.

We have an apple slice magnet that he's been enjoying, and he's actually figured out how to stick it to the refrigerator or the dishwasher, and understands that he has to put it up with the correct side facing or it won't stick. He doesn't seem to know which side is which without trial and error, though.

Peek-a-boo!

He likes pushing things around too, anything that can easily slide, like the large green plastic bowl that I let him play with in his personal kitchen cabinet, or board books across the carpet of his bedroom. It's really cute! 

Finally, all the clapping of our hands has paid off and he's learned how to clap his own hands, and will often do it when we request! He's even starting to get the idea of when he's supposed to clap when we sing "If You're Happy and You Know It" to him. 

He is very pleased with himself, just smeared his food in his hair!

He still likes throwing his food on the floor, but I do think he's finally starting to understand that he isn't supposed to throw it. He seems to be doing it a little less frequently, will sometimes respond to our "No's" by bringing the food back onto his tray instead of dropping it, and occasionally makes it to the end of the meal without dropping anything until he's full, and then the throwing is just a sign that he's done. I wish he would learn to sign "all done" instead! He does regularly sign "milk" now and asks for it often during diaper changes that would be right before a feeding anyway.

Still waiting on tooth #8's appearance. There is still tons of slobber, but no evidence that it's coming any time soon. I find that a bit odd, since I thought teeth were supposed to come in pairs. But then again, Timothy's tooth emergence pattern hasn't been particularly standard, so I guess I shouldn't be concerned.

The "EC" stuff hasn't been going so well lately, and I've had many days where I wished I hadn't even heard of it. It's just so annoying when you know what it's like not having to clean out poopy diapers and wipe a poop-covered bum while the poop monster tries to roll over and crawl off the changing table... but instead of pooping on the potty, he refuses, and poops in the diaper 10 minutes later. If I had just accepted that scraping poop out of cloth diapers was going to be my life for the next couple of years, it would be less irritating than sometimes having the experience of not having to deal with it, and sometimes having to clean 3 or 4 a day! I haven't been able to figure out what makes the difference when he is sometimes completely happy to use the potty, and sometimes hates it.

For Thanksgiving, we first traveled up to VA the day before Thanksgiving, and walked around Williamsburg a bit before spending the night in an AirBnB that unfortunately had terribly uncomfortable memory foam mattress beds. Timothy slept fine, though!

Then we headed over to join my family for Thanksgiving Day on the Eastern Shore of VA. It was COLD but we were toasty warm inside with a fire and Timothy ate tons of turkey. We had a long drive home and got home very late, but Timothy mostly slept the whole way.

On Sunday we hosted the Bass side Thanksgiving gathering, and it was lots of fun!

Now we're ready for Christmas! Just got our Christmas tree tonight. Our little day-after-Christmas baby is going to have his first official Christmas in 29 days! And he'll be a whole year old in 30 days. Oh dear. He's growing up so fast!

I can't believe I'm actually posting this on Timothy's actual 11th month birthday!