Porter at Fifteen Months

Let's make this brief (teeth clenched emoticon goes here)!

Porter is a whopping fifteen months old and looks scary-big all of a sudden. A friend of ours that hadn't seen Porter since his birthday party saw us last weekend and remarked, 'Is THAT Porter?" She barely recognized the kid and I agree, he is changing so much!





LOL.



Officially walking from room to room now, which still boggles my mind since he wasn't even crawling at a year old. He is still much faster to crawl so sometimes that is his preferred mode of locomotion but I get major pride swells watching him toddle from the sunroom....to the dining room...and eventually into the family room. He will kick balls and is obsessed with knocking down block towers with clenched fists. I really need a video of this milestone, he is really determined and cute with his destruction (unless Cecelia just spent time building the tower he knocks down, then it's not cute but naughty).

Throws a spiral already;)


Watch out, world!




Sleeping pretty well but waking up with HATRED FOR THE WORLD. Porter sleeps from about 7-6:30am most days and then screams hysterical until we get him. I blame teeth for this as he sprouted another molar (making it two that are through the surface, two just under the gums) this month and another lower side tooth. I think that makes ten total teeth with at least 3-4 more *right* there. Poor buddy looks teeth-y to me.

Sorry, Memaw, I know you hate crying baby pictures. But this is just SO Porter when he is angry.


Happy when eating, though.


He naps just once a day but mornings can be a little touchy now that we regularly skip a morning snooze. Car naps sometimes happen around the 11-12 o'clock hours and they can be detrimental to our afternoon of dual napping glory. But usually I will put both Porter and Cecelia down by 1:00 at the latest and P sleeps for about two hours, sometimes less. Again, he is going through a phase of screaming bloody murder when he wakes but he doesn't seem to be in pain/hungry/dirty diaper, etc. I think he just really wants out of his crib ASAP to explore the world.



Porter is going through big time separation anxiety now and it's heartbreaking, even the third time around. He won't even go to Nate willingly anymore and gets very upset when I leave the room, usually pounding on the door once I shut it behind me (since he is also obsessed with climbing stairs along with being obsessed with his mama). He cries at daycare drop off but Lori says this is improving and he won't cry for more than a few seconds, when it used to be 10-15 minutes of sobbing after I left. My poor baby. I do not like this phase at all, ever, but I know it's normal and will get better.

Not this guy again, mom!




He's a decent eater but still thoroughly enjoys throwing his food off his tray onto the ground when he is full. He's on whole milk out of sippy cups now and I would guess he probably drinks three full cups a day. He loves peanut butter on waffles, mayonnaise on bread, any starchy carb, chicken, and pizza. Still working on cold and or wet fruits but he does seem to like apples fairly consistently.

I'm not sure if cake pops are a food group, but if they were he'd be all over that one.


Snackin', with Henry staring at the floor for dropped goods.


A team effort to keep the milk cup on his tray.


Porter-P is crazy-verbal in my opinion, the doctor asked how many words he can say and I said 'at least ten,' which is apparently a lot. But he can absolutely repeat dozens of words we say, then initiates ball, mama, Tru-Tru, choo-choo, 'mil' for milk, go, 'ga-ga' for any animal and also for crackers, 'woof woof', dada, uh-oh, baby, 'mo' for more, 'buh-buh' for bubbles, bye bye, hi, 'wa-wa' for water, 'duh-duh' for duckie, 'nigh' for night, 'deeese' for cheese, 'day-doo' for thank you, and a word that sounds like 'off' referring to his socks or shoes. So I think that's at least ten, maybe I'm forgetting some, but the point is that Porter is a chatter box. And he's a screamer with shrieks that make my eyelids twitch.

Old man in a station wagon;)


He hates diaper changes and hates sitting down in the bath. I'm blanking on other things he hates, so that's a good sign of a happy kid!


This kid is still a stupendous dancer and will drop a mad beat whenever he hears a tune. He loves being outside and is constantly pointing and saying, 'oooooooh!' at anything that catches his eye. He climbed up playground stairs and then sat down on his bottom, sliding down a slide all by himself today---that sort of blew me away. I've caught him purposefully pestering his siblings when they are on their iPads/Kindles for quiet time. Porter will walk up to each of them and poke them in the face or the arm, trying to irritate them. They tolerate his pokes fair but I definitely have to intervene before baby brother pushes their buttons a little too specifically. Porter loves the swings, loves to climb stairs, and still finds the tiniest, most non-baby friendly objects to shove in his mouth (i.e. dust bunnies, small beads, tiny legos, etc). Since he is all over the place and is curious, he absolutely keeps me on my toes and needs undivided attention much of the time---which is an obvious challenge with three kids outnumbering their mom so often.





Cecelia loves to give slightly aggressive hugs to her baby brother and I catch her carrying him around more than I'd like to admit. Truman makes a point to kiss and hug Porter before Cecelia and myself when he goes to school, and T still seems crazy-proud of his baby brother. It's absolutely one of the highlights of my experience as a mom to see these three kids interacting, loving each other, growing up together, moving through childhood together. Sure, there are plenty of moments when two of the three kids are crying (ten points for a triple wail-fest!), when they are whining or fighting or just being unkind to each other. But overall, having Porter as our little caboose in this family makes so much sense and he's such an awesome finale to the baby years.

Agressive, spinning around hug by CC.


Kisses by Truman, unprompted.


These three...




Because right about now is when I would normally get pregnant with another baby, if we were following the same pattern of our past 'family planning' tendencies. I'm surprising myself with how content I feel with our family of five though, and maybe this should be a separate blog post someday. But that Porter, he sure would be tough to beat in the sweetness/googly-eyed-over-baby department.









At his fifteen month well-child check today, he received four shots including his flu shot. Then he gets one more Hepatitis A shot at 18 months and then nothing else until he is four years old, since this is how our Pediatrician spaces the vaccines. Kind of hard to imagine my buddy at age four but then again, it's hard to imagine when he was a newborn, too. Porter weighed 24 pounds even which was 68%, is 31.75" tall which was 71%, and his head was 77%. I love that they give us the BMI now, which is a healthy 16.76. He's in size 5 diapers just because I ran out of size 4s and found a box of 5s in the attic from when Cecelia potty trained. His 18 month sized clothes are getting fairly snug, so the 18-24 or just plain old 24 months seem to be the best bet for his fall/winter wardrobe. I finally bought the kid a pair of real shoes now that he's walking around and I believe they are a size 5.





What a difference a year makes:



Oh, my Porter-P, Port-Sport, Portsies, Portie, or Por-tuh (if you are Cecelia). We love you so much it kind of hurts. You are the awesomest babe we could have dreamed up for our family, never ever change.

xoxo Mama