February was a month of many changes, although I think I've said that for about three months straight at this point. We had both lows and highs this month, with the lowest point being when Truman had his first really bad sickness. He had been congested for about a month and the doc kept saying it was just a long-lasting cold, so we dealt with it---until he woke up one morning with a fever of 102 and insane crankiness. I took him in and they thought they heard a very slight rattle in his lung, so they wanted to do a chest xray to rule out pneumonia. Let me tell you that the process of giving an 11 month old a chest xray is pure torture and I still get chills thinking about how much Truman hated it and I want to cry remembering how hard that was for both of us. I will not go into the gory details but it was bad, very bad. The xray results weren't 100% clear but the radiologist thought there was the beginnings of a small pneumonia (!) so we got antibiotics in case it was bacterial and headed home to recuperate from such an awful appointment. My babe didn't start feeling better until 48 hours after the meds but thankfully he made a full recovery and even got rid of the pesky congestion that probably caused the pneumonia in the first place. Truman was out of daycare for a whole week and I was home with him for four days in a row, with a little tag-team action from Nate and my mother-in-law with a shift in my hours so that I could be home with baby boy most of the day while still seeing my patients in the evenings. If we learned anything at all from this horrible week it was that having a sick baby (like, really sick---not just the same old cold that he gets about once a month) is an absolute nightmare. I cannot imagine having more than one child being sick at any given time, either. Also, it's amazing how quickly priorities fall into alignment with a sick kid---I did not care about anything else in the world except for making Truman feel better. It was stressful and tiring and scary but thankfully T is totally back to his normal self now.
(the sick week---jammies all day long, and red/watery eyes). :(
That was the low, but the good news is there were many highs besides that! The obvious one was his fantastic birthday party complete with a visit from my mom and Memaw. Also, Truman went from just learning to pull up and just learning to crawl on all fours at the end of January to a talented motor skilled baby by the end of February. He pulls up quickly, without losing his balance, on basically anything now. He will crawl on all fours with crazy coordination, as if he and Henry are running a race against each other. He also mastered furniture walking and can move from couch to couch to ottoman to highchair to pretty much anything at all. He'll also take a hand off the furniture, bend over and pick toys off the floor without falling over. So one month he can barely pull to stand and the next he is all over the place like a big boy. It's crazy to see him standing up in his crib when we go get him in the mornings and I love that we can trust his balance enough to let him stand up and 'walk' around the furniture without us being right there to catch him. I still don't think he'll be walking all alone for a few months but we'll see---he seems to move fast once he masters a skill.
One 'first' that he had this month was going to the local zoo! We got a seasonal pass for Christmas and on the first semi-warm day (we are talking temps in the 40's which felt like a heat wave, trust me) we decided to scope it out. Truman loved the big animals and was a total trooper with the cool air. I can't wait to go again this spring when it's warm enough to lose the winter coats!
His one year stats are as follows: 23 pounds, 7 oz (61st percentile); 31 inches (85th percentile); and head circumference of 47 cm (70th percentile). So we still have a healthy and mostly tall baby boy. It boggles my mind to think that he has gained 16 pounds since birth which means he tripled his birth weight and grew 10 inches in length! Isn't that insane to think about? He's in 18 or 24 month clothes still and I noticed the 18 month footed jammies are getting rather snug. He's eating well for the most part but he's still pretty moody with foods. Sometimes Henry gets 90% of the meal and sometimes he gets none. We are onto all organic whole milk in bottles at this point as my breastmilk freezer stash officially ran out two days before his birthday (sob). He still nurses each morning and maybe another time during the day but I don't even feel let downs anymore and I doubt he's getting anything at all. I figure if he still wants to nurse for a few minutes just for comfort then that is okay by me, too. I can be his appetizer before a fatty 6 ounce bottle no prob. All I know is that losing the pump and not mixing bottles with breastmilk and cow's milk is pretty much the best thing ever. So.Much.Easier!!
Truman is still going through a bit of separation anxiety and according to our Pediatrician we should hold on for dear life until about 15 months. Great! Truman cries every single day I drop him off at daycare, even though I'm as fast as can be getting the heck out of there. Some days it only lasts 10 seconds and some days it lasts 10 minutes or more, as per Lori. I can't let myself dwell on his tears when I leave or my heart will seriously break into a million pieces, then I'll quit my job, and we'll have to live on the streets in return. So instead of that scenario I try to be tough and push it out of my mind knowing he will be just fine once he calms down. But the bad thing is that it's not just crying at drop offs because now he's gotten to be really clingy with Lori and wants to be held all the time---which is not feasible in an environment with other children present. Luckily he's gotten a little better in the past week but he still prefers for Lori (or me, if I'm home with him) to be within a 5 foot radius or else he'll just crawl over to lessen the distance himself. I hope and pray this phase moves quickly and thankfully some days he is absolutely fine playing alone, but those days when he is really needy are pretty rough.
But if I'm trying to look at the bright side, I have to say that even though he needs to be close to me or Lori, he actually does really well in social settings. He doesn't mind strangers at all and even at the party with about 15 other people there, he wasn't freaked out in the slightest. In fact he really likes people and is quite the social butterfly, even doing well in the church nursery with a bunch of strangers without his mama in sight. So who knows---maybe he just has both good and bad days with separation anxiety.
With an increasingly mobile baby comes more boo-boos, I guess. He took a face plant into his toy box one day while walking around the furniture and his poor chin shed a layer of skin. I hate seeing him get hurt but I know there are many more ouchies to come with my rough and tough boy----but I do not like that part of the game, FYI.
He still has 6 teeth---two on bottom and four on top. I think he'll sprout a few more bottom teeth this month, though. And it's so weird to see him with big old teeth like that! So old!
One of the biggest changes we've seen in T-man this month has to be his communication abilities. I really think this kid gets what we are saying most of the time and he can imitate our sounds with frightening accuracy. He'll shake his head NO vigorously whenever I ask him to do something that doesn't suit him which is funny but not really, you know? He can definitely say Da Da and Ma Ma with intention and I think we are working on 'Doggie' for a third real word. He finally started to sign to us and his favorite is 'more'----as in, he'll sign 'more' at all hours of the day: in the bathtub, at dinner, during a diaper change. I think he equates 'more' with food and the boy is always hungry, I guess! 'All done' is almost there and I'm working on 'I love you' next. He can do the 'touchdown' gesture on command (cutest thing ever), points at any and everything, and is really into slapping his head as if to say 'Doh!' I just love watching the wheels of his brain turn as he tries to figure out what I'm saying and he has his own babble-language to express his needs.
This kid is certainly getting a personality on him and already has an awesome sense of humor. He loves to chase Henry and one day we even caught him sharing an animal cracker with the dog, like a good brother. It was the classic 'I take a lick then you take a lick' back and forth that you see on TV, right on our kitchen floor. He thinks it's hilarious if we play keep away from him, ripping toys back away from his grasp, and he loves to play peekaboo, too. Mostly, his favorite activity is still looking at his own pictures and videos on the computer. It's almost an obsession, really. Have we created a monster, or what?
I think that is it for month twelve. Bring on lucky #13!
