17 Months Old!

I don't know why but 17 months sounds so much older than 16 months!  It feels like this has been such a long month, too.  As I looked back at my notes for what to write about in this post some of these things feel like they're from ages ago.  But nevertheless, here we go....

For a couple of weeks you were all about Daddy.  You would hold onto him and push me away when I would try to take you.  I tried not to let it bother me and for the most part, it didn't.  But you've also been fighting sleep like a gladiator and there were a couple of nights where I was left feeling like I was just the bad guy and he got to have all the fun.  I'm happy to say this phase seems to have passed and I'm once again feeling fully loved.

When I remember I try to let you drink out of a normal cup (no lid) at the end of dinner when you are going to be headed to the bath anyway.  If I hold the cup you do great, but when I let you hold it yourself you pretend to forget that it needs to be to your lips and you just tip it up with the rim well under your chin, spilling it all over yourself.  I say you "pretend to forget" because you have absolutely no problem drinking bathwater out of cups and toys in the bathtub and find great joy in doing so.

Both of your top canine teeth came in bringing you to a total of 14 teeth.  And the bottom canines are likely to break through any day.

You learned how to hold on around our waists with your legs, which I have to admit, I love.  If I try to put you down but you're not ready to be put down you hold on tight with arms and legs.  It's pretty adorable.  Of course there are times when I really need to put you down when it's not so cute, but it still feels good to be needed.

For awhile you were demanding to be held nonstop and for some reason you got the idea that if I didn't pick you up on your schedule, the best way to get your way was to bury your face between my legs and fight your way through.  This didn't really accomplish what you were aiming for, but it DID successfully prevent me from doing whatever I needed to be doing as I was always trying to keep a free hand on you to make sure you didn't push your way straight through and fall face first onto the hard floor.  Luckily this seems to have passed as well.

You mastered a mean downward dog this month (that's a yoga reference in case anyone is not familiar).

You love to stand in front of the fan and let it blow on you.  I blame this on Daddy.

You had your first fever.  For 3 days you were running a temperature between 100-101, which I felt was very high until I started doing some due diligence and my research considered this a mild fever.  You seemed otherwise fine, though I could tell you just weren't quite yourself.  On the third day I called the doctor's office and they told me to wait until 72 hours had passed and if you still had the fever then I should bring you in.  Like clockwork, it was back down to normal within 3 hours of the phone call.

You have become a big fan of the pointing game.  You point to something and want Daddy or me to tell you what it is.  Often you do this with body parts, but it can also be pictures in books or just things in the room.  We love your eagerness to learn, we just wish you didn't like pointing at eyeballs quite so much.  I also find it interesting that you sometimes point with your thumb.

On the subject of pointing, you have developed your own way of telling me what you want, particularly at mealtime.  You sit in your highchair and point to things on the table making a kind of whiny "mmmm" sound.  It's kind of cute, but also kind of not so cute when I can't seem to identify what it is you're wanting or if what you're wanting is something you can't have.  You do it other places too, but I think it happens most when we're eating.

I have started letting you spend more time in the kitchen with me while I prepare meals.  I had to do a little rearranging in the cabinets as you love to dig through the ones you can reach, and I'm still pretty strict about no kitchen access when the stove or oven are on, but I let you roam as much as I can while I do my prep.  And I've started trying to find ways to get you more involved as well.  I let you carry hard boiled eggs and help me crack them.  You got to watch/help with the entire process of making egg salad and, for the first time ever, you ate it!  You get to have tastes while I get things ready and the job of putting ice in my drinking glass is officially yours.  You seem to really like "helping" and if it can get you to try a few things you otherwise wouldn't eat that's just an added bonus.

You have become kind of obsessed with sitting on the couch.  Which I don't mind as long as you are sitting.  But of course you don't want to stop there.  You want to climb higher and you've learned that you get attention when you do so.  I tell you over and over that you can sit on the couch or lay on the couch but not climb on the couch or stand on the couch.  Our couch is not up against any walls, it's just free standing in the middle of the room.  So I have long been scared of you falling over the back.  And it finally happened.  You were sitting on the couch looking at books and playing with toys one day and you were doing great.  I needed to get something from the kitchen and before I left the room I hesitated and looked at you again and decided that you were doing so well I didn't want to interrupt.  Sure enough I hadn't been in the kitchen more than 2 minutes when I heard a thump, pause, and then the wailing began.  I rushed around the corner to find you laying on the floor behind the couch.  You weren't hurt at all and didn't even cry as much as I thought you would.  I think it just scared you more than anything.  We hoped that would be enough to stop the climbing.  It wasn't.  So as of this week when you start climbing and I've stopped you more than a couple of times and you still can't be deterred, I just started moving the couch against the wall, facing the wall, so that you can't climb up on it at all.  It made you very angry the first day I did this, but I'm okay with that.

Last week you said "dog."  I consider this your first real word.  When you get up from your nap we always open the blinds and stand at the window for a few minutes to see what's going on outside.  On this particular day there was a woman pushing a baby stroller and walking a dog and I started to talk to you about her and then you just said "dog" and then "doggie."  Later that day we saw pictures of dogs and you said it again and since then it's just a regular thing, usually "doggie" as opposed to "dog," but both make their appearance.

And this week, during a rousing game of the pointing game with Dad, you said "couch."  You pointed to his phone and he said it and you tried to make a "fff" sound.  Then you pointed to the couch and he said it a few times and you started with "ouch" then after a few tries got out "couch."  I find this a funny progression of first words:  mama, dada, yeah, no, dog, couch.  But we'll take it anyway.

Finally, you love to give hugs and kisses.  And we love it too.  Now when we ask for a hug or a kiss you almost always oblige.  I always tell you I love you when I give you kisses and now if we just say "I love you" you will pucker up your lips in anticipation.  Other times you come to us and pucker up to let us know that you want a kiss and I just adore it.  I assume you trying to kiss people other than Mommy and Daddy is probably not that far off and I'm not sure how to explain that it may not be appropriate to kiss just anyone, but it hasn't happened yet so we're going to just revel in the kisses for now.