Fifteen Months

{hanging in there so far, bleeding is under control and I feel a little stronger each day. The couch is my new best friend for now and I'm trying to sort out my thoughts. Thank you for the prayers, I feel them!}

I happened to take a lot of pictures this month, so watch out! The month of May was eventful and full of awesomeness for Mr. Tru. Let's begin, shall we?

-We celebrated my second Mother's Day together, even though I barely remember the first so it basically felt brand new this year. Truman looked especially dapper for his mama that Sunday.

-We had a fun first birthday party to attend, for the one and only Eli, where Truman and his daycare buddy Henry decided to hug for the camera. Dying over this one.

-And of course we had his Daddy's graduation to celebrate, an event that I envisioned in my head since the day we found out we were pregnant with Truman. I always pictured a little boy running towards his daddy, all dressed up in his doctoral robe, after the ceremony. But of course, Truman didn't make it the whole ceremony and needed a nap before that vision could actually happen. Still, it was such a fun day for our family.



-Probably the single biggest milestone Truman has hit in his little life thus far is that he became a full-time walker this month! He took his first wobbly steps at about 13.5 months in April, and then by about the second week in May, a little bit after he turned 14 months, he was off to explore the world by foot. I really thought he might not walk until 18 months but he proved me wrong, yet again. I love seeing this little blob in the corner of my eye toddle by me and into other rooms of the house. It's just a little alarming when I scan each room and can't find him anywhere, but luckily our house is small enough that he can't hide for too long.

-Now he is into this new 'thing' of the week where he'll walk around and throw both hands up in the air, like a freaking champion. I love this new trick.

-other new amazing tricks? Talking on the telephone. Even pretending to hold an imaginary phone up to his ear when he sees mommy or daddy talking on theirs. He's very popular on the phone, of course.

-finally learning to stand up from a seated position without pulling up onto anything. He did this just a few days ago for the first time and I freaked out. So proud of him! This little photo series captures the event nicely. I was trying to do something cute for Fathers' Day but the pictures aren't my favorite, so I'm scrapping it, but I still like these shots.

Favorite new hobbies include:
-playing with his shape sorters. He gets really intense with these and claps for himself when he gets the right fit.

-making imaginary soup with his wooden blocks. Or really, playing with our pots and pans for any reason, stirring, tasting, and making lots of noise. I am not kidding when I say he will do this by himself for about 45 minutes at a time. AMAZING attention span for cooking. It makes the dirty cookware worth it.

-and he's always been obsessed with buttons and technology, but this month he became crazy about our keys. It's hard to get them away from him, as he pushes every button to make the cars honk, unlock, and even start the engine with my automatic starter. Whoops!!

-This month he also began an new signature facial expression: The Scowl. It's hilarious and I think he pops it out for us about 100 times per day, as if to say, 'Mom you are SO annoying'. Might not be so cute when he's a teenager, huh?

-His personality just keeps emerging every day and boy, oh boy, we have an entertainer on our hands! I think his elementary school teachers might have a few parent-teacher conferences with us to say, 'Truman is a great kid but he's just such a class clown!' I mean, just look at these faces he makes at us in order to get a good laugh:

-and speaking of his personality, I think we have entered the 'temper tantrum' phase. This is a picture of when Truman's world ended, because we took away Henry's leash from him.

Seriously, isn't that an awful face? If we ever take something away from him that he's just not ready to give up, we get this face and instant tears. He's headstrong and stubborn and wants what he wants RIGHT NOW. Ooooh, boy. These next few months are going to be fun.

-Truman is starting to talk up a storm, although I think most of the time he's speaking his own language we can't always understand. Definite words with meaning include: DaDa, MaMa, Duh-Duh for Henry dog (his favorite member of the family!), Yeah, Ni-Ni (for night-night), and Na-Na (for banana). Other strangely suspicious sounds include Li-Lou for 'Lori', Garf for 'Woof', and Ya-Ya for 'Grandma'. If I say a word, like 'granola bar' for instance, he will try to say it with his own muffled pronunciation, that matches the inflection of my voice perfectly and has the same amount of syllables. He will sign 'more' and 'eat' and 'milk' and 'all done' all the freaking time, and mostly he loves to point and grunt at what he wants from us. The best part of his communication with us? He knows what the word 'fart' means. If we say, 'Truman, did you fart?' he will start grunting and pushing. I find this fact both hilarious and disturbing, don't you?

-he can point to his belly (fave), his nose, his mouth, his ears, and will squint his eyes when we ask about them. I love that he is understanding us now although it's a little scary, too. When he sees mommy and daddy kiss he will make kissing noises and smile. He'll pet Henry like he's seen us done before. It's wonderful to interact with him like a big kid now.

-He got all four molars this month and they were totally wrecking our lives for awhile. It's so cute to see his fatty molars in his mouth now but dang, that also sucked. He has 11 total teeth now, an odd number since the bottom right side tooth is still in hiding. No canine teeth just yet either, so I know we have more teething drama ahead of us.

-as far as daycare goes, we have finally rounded the corner from those dreadful separation anxiety days and Truman now LOVES daycare. When he sees his daycare bag out on the table he'll point at it emphatically and then start waving 'bye bye' like crazy. When we drop him off, he willingly goes into Loris hands, smiles, and waves goodbye. Lori has been writing in Truman's book for the past few weeks that he 'had a great day today'. You have no idea how wonderful those words make me feel, after so many tears and hard days at daycare. I guess he is best buds with his daycare friends there and loves to play himself silly. This big step makes working part time SO much more tolerable.

(I love this walking shot for some reason---the posture is just hilarious)

-we finally got rid of the last bottle at night and Truman now drinks all his milk from a cup! This is another sentence I did not expect to write anytime soon, but we just decided to get rid of that bedtime bottle one night and it was fine. I'd guess he drinks about 16-18 ounces a day now and loves his sippy cups to death. That was a transition that was difficult for all of us but we survived, just like they said we would.

-in the place of the bottle-attachment, however, we do have another obstacle in it's place. The dreaded pacifier made it's return with a vengeance. You see, for the first 13 months of Truman's life he really didn't care about the paci. He'd throw it out of his crib at night immediately, and we'd keep one clipped to him at daycare for extra comfort and he would usually take it there. But then when the molars hit, and he had a cold, and mommy was going through some majorly sad times, we just decided to try the paci again at night for comfort. Whaddya know, it worked like a charm and now I think we have an addict on our hands. It's not THAT bad, really, since he only gets it for naps and sleeping at night, but still it's just one more thing we'll have to break him of later on. I'm not too worried about it though, since our Pediatrician said that breaking the bottle habit was more important than the paci, saying he doesn't suggest getting rid of that one until 18 months. He said if we got rid of it too early and Truman did need to suck for comfort, then he would just become a thumb-sucker anyway, which is harder to break. So for now, we are still giving the paci willingly for sleeping and little buddy sucks the crap out of it. Gotta pick your battles, right?

-baby boy has been sleeping like a champ with that paci, though, probably since he is burning so much energy walking around now. He's definitely only taking one nap at home (still two good ones at daycare though) and it's usually at least 2 hours long. He'll go down at 7 and not wake until 6:30 or so, which is SO much better than the 5:30 wake up call he was giving a few months ago.

-this month we kept looking at Truman, and would say, 'He is just SO big.' We cannot get over how tall he is, how grown up he looks, and how much he has changed in the past month. It's just crazy and when we have our 15 month well baby appointment next week, I will not be surprised if he's much taller than his percentiles from the one year check up. I mean, look at this---isn't he basically a teenager now?

Fifteen months old and tons of fun. We love you, Mister Man!