Evan: 16 & 17 months

Given all of our travel, this post is coming a bit late this month.  Plus, it's a combined summary of the past two months.  But better late than never I figured!

Firsts

-couch cushion fort
-kids meals at restaurants and fast food (not proud about the latter)
-pumpkin pie (at both Thanksgiving and Christmas...he loved it!)

-stacking his stacking rings in proper size order (and clapped when he was done out of pride!)
-"dribbling" the soccer ball
-milk (or any drink for that matter) from a straw and a sippy cup
-automatic car wash (the loud water jets scared him a bit, he was definitely on alert most of the time)
-major sinus cold (we had to have tissues ready to go and nearby for a few days in particular)
-helping put up the Christmas tree (well, at least being there while we did it)

Growth and Development

Evan was still in size 18 months clothes at the beginning of this two-month period and finally most of his 18-month pants aren't too long on him anymore!  Especially with the new shoes he's been wearing now (size 5), most of which have much thicker/harder soles than his previous early walker shoes.  Though some of his clothes are too big around the waist if we use disposable diapers.  We're using size 4 Pampers baby dry. On our trip to Hawaii over a month ago we were able to still use size 3 Pampers swaddlers, but they definitely too small for him now (even though the weight range stated on the box goes well above what Evan is probably weighing in at).  Since Christmas, in which he got a handful of new clothes, he's been wearing some 24 month/2T shirts and pajamas items now.  The key thing is to have the clothes be long enough for his torso, so I'm starting to think about avoiding the one-piece PJs from now on.  This is because his new 24 month/2T ones are a perfect fit for his torso, but way too long in the legs (thus bunching up around his feet and tripping him sometimes).   By the time he grows into the legs, the top will be too short.

He fits perfectly into his cute Bomber jacket now.  John loves taking him to work wearing this!

The really big development lately is that Evan is talking.  Each day I notice a new word or two.  He says so many words that I've stopped keeping track (this past post was the last time I was keeping tally), however I can guarantee that most of his words are not understandable to anyone other than me and John.  My favorites are penguin ("pah-ghee") and belly button ("buttee"), probably because while they don't sound like the real word, they are a very good attempt at getting the consonants in the word right and they just sound so cute when he says them.  Evan has even occasionally talked on phone with me while I'm gone (saying "mum mum"), but he mostly just pushes buttons and hangs up on me otherwise.  He says "daddy" very well, and loves to repeat the things we say (yes, we have to watch out now!).

Unfortunatley, he's still doing a lot of biting, hitting, and has some tantrums.  And separation anxiety really picked up in month 16, especially when John was gone to Vegas for a few days.  After that Evan started crying when John droped him off at daycare, and some nights he doesn't sleep as well unless we lay on the floor next to his crib so he doesn't feel alone.  (There have been a few nights where one of us has put in several hours on that floor, since we fall asleep too).  Luckily he's stopped the crying at daycare, but we do still have some nights where one of us camps out next to him on the floor.  I think the latter is due to all of our travel where he got used to us sleeping in the same room as him, or having one of us gone gets him out of his routine.  It got better about a week or two after our trip to Hawaii, but then we traveled for Christmas and it's happening again now.

Mealtime

He finally tried peanut butter this past month and liked it.  Thus, most of his lunches at home include either a peanut butter sandwich or a cheese sandwich now.  He's still eating very picky, but I want to try to stop giving into his pickiness and just have him eat what we prepare.  However, the idea of letting him "go hungry" still isn't something we're able to deal with, so he usually gets a pouch or something other than what we eat if he doesn't care for it.  Rather than resorting to the standard foods he really likes to eat, like chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese.  He has no problem eating snacks either, and he loves his cheddar bunnies (an organic version of goldfish cheddar crackers).  He is always asking for "bunny", especially if he sees the box of them.

We haven't given him as many chances for eating with a spoon this past month, so we need to start doing that again to help him learn how to do that.  I just haven't felt like we've had enough opportunities where we can bathe him afterward.  Now that our travel is over, hopefully we can get brave and let him at it.

Just a few weeks ago, after our busy travel season was over, we went cold turkey on the bottles.  It took two days of him getting very little milk (down right refusing it and getting pretty upset about us trying to give it to him in a cup--how dare us!?) and then miraculously one morning he woke up and drank all of the milk from the cup.  It's been going pretty good since then, as it seems each week he is starting to drink more again.  He still doesn't drink as much as he did per day when we were using bottles, but usually drinks the cup gone in the morning and at night before bed, and sometimes has a bit here and there with meals or snacks.

I sure love my little cutie!

Sleeptime

Besides the separation anxiety/post-travel overnight sleep interruptions, his sleeping patterns have also finally shifted to just one nap per day.  He started refusing his morning nap several days in a row, so we just slowly started putting him down later.  Now for the past couples weeks he's just been taking one nap in the afternoon, usually just after lunch.  These past weeks since our Christmas travel, he's not been going down for it very well though, but after a few check ins by us he usually gives in and falls asleep or else he ends up napping in our bed with us.  Sometimes if we delay his nap and try again later, he goes down easier.  His bedtime is still 8pm, and for a few weeks recently his wake up time had adjusted to be closer to 7am (and sometimes later!).  I think the extra overnight sleep also helps accommodate him having just one nap per day.

Playtime

Since Evan sleeps less during the day, he has a lot more time for playing.  He loves to play chase and hide/seek with us.  He'll come find me when I'm hiding and then have me chase him.  He also still loves to destroy things more than build them.  In fact, he really enjoys destroying towers that I've built with his mega blocks or other blocks.  He always makes a "awww" sound when he does it, probably because that's the sound I make when he does it!  I hope we can get him more interested in building, otherwise I can totally envision him being the boy in class that runs across the room just to knock over another kid's tower.  He also likes to ask for help now (using sign language and by saying "ep"), and one instance where it became somewhat of a game was with his orange train tracks.   He's ask me for help to put the tracks together, just to then pull them apart (and then repeat the process with me).  I know that the destruction phase is important for them to learn how things go together, so I humor him and didn't mind doing this "game" with him, however I do hope he'll start to try construction on his own soon.

Nonetheless, he does get frustrated somewhat easily when he's doing tasks that take skill and concentration (putting shapes through the shape sorter, stacking blocks, etc), and when this happens he squeals, throws everything down, and messes it up with his hands moving them back and forth very forcefully.   I try to encourage him to try again, but he's often onto something else by that time.  He does get very proud of himself when he accomplishes a task all by himself, as he smiles and sometimes claps when I tell him "yay, you did it all by yourself!"  I hope he'll strive for more of those moments of pride as he gets older.

Chilling out watching some TV on his new soccer ball beanbag that we got him for Christmas.

We've also got ourselves a little couch potato; Evan loves TV!  He knows which remotes ("mote") you need to turn certain things on, in particular the PS3 where we have several videos that he loves.  His absolute favorite right now is the Gigglebellies ("bah-ghees") songs/videos.  I didn't like these at first, because the animations looked a bit trippy to me, but he loves the colors, the songs are catchy, and most are kind of fun to listen to.  We also we have a long playlist of videos from Youtube, including songs from Super Simple Learning and Hoopla.  The Baby Signs and Baby Einstein videos are less appealing to him now, compared to the musical cartoons, but those were his real entree into watching TV.  No matter what he's watching, the songs are often stuck in my head all day!

Watching something exciting on TV while holding the PS3 controller/remote.

Evan loves playing in his play room ("pun-um"), snuggling his plush toys, playing with (or rather throwing) balls, playing with magnet toys on the fridge, and taking baths (in which he has a lot more bath toys now too and we often take him in our jacuzzi tub with one of us, which means there are "bubbles" that he loves).

Hanging out with all his soft and furry friends (aka plush toys).