Lachlan - 21 months!

Unfortunately, blogging has become a pain in the butt with our laptop which uses Windows 8...still not sure how the rest of the world is managing to get by using it cause it just plain old SUCKS to the point that I can't do the simplest of things anymore.  I'm not sure if I need to switch to a different blog site that is better compatible or what to do to fix it, but all of these posts take me 10 times longer to do than they should.  Throughout the month, I will just save notes to a draft blog post so that way I don't forget things...then at the end of the month I clean up the wording and add pictures and post it for all to see.  This month I'm just giving up messing with it...for the last 30 minutes I've attempted to modify the text below and it just simply won't let me....my curser just disappears!  So instead you just get my notes in draft form...some which may not even make sense, but oh well!  At least I managed to get some pictures added!

Well, he survived his first full month as a Texan!  I really can't believe how quickly he is approaching 2 years old and wish I could just freeze him at this age a bit longer.



Struggled with daycare dropoffs, but seems to have fun most days.  Has a twin Boom.  Love having camera to check on things and see what he is up to.  Eats like a king there- can't believe the nice food he gets served!

Mornings stress me out a bit and I have it so easy that we have no set schedule since I work from home and really don't need to shower or get ready too much.  He doesn't like most of his new shoes and still wants to wear his old ones that are too small or falling apart, so that is a battle.  Then I have to apply sunscreen and he hates that.  So then we finally get out the door and then is another battle to get him into the car and into his carseat.  It just eats up so much extra time and is frustrating.

Loves to count and picking up on it.  Stacked blocks and clearly counted from 5 to 10.  Loves the ABCs even more.  He will stop dead in his tracks of what he is doing if he hears the ABCs.  He attempts to sing along and definitely knows pieces of it.  He LOVES Elmo still and will sing along to Elmo's World.  He just still loves all music and the action songs.  He really likes ring around the rosie and the mulberry bush, but we try to minimize that since it involves us up and moving around too!

Huge improvement with using silverware.  At daycare he doesn't really have anyone helping him so is forced to figure it out if he wants to eat.  I make sure to use a bib at home cause it slides off the food sometimes, but he gets most in his mouth.  Figured out how to hold the bowl or container with his other hand to help spoon it out.

Has started waking during the nights crying. This is pretty unusual so thought maybe he wasn't feeling well or was just scared being in a new place.  However, it keeps happening about twice/week.  The problem is that even once we go up there, he is wide awake FOREVER and then goes nuts when try to put him back in his crib.  We've laid on the floor up there with him and also next to his crib and he is okay with that...but not ideal way to get sleep when 7 months pregnant or a husband working long hours.  We've tried the PNP in our bedroom, but he wanted none of that.  We've tried bringing him to our bed and he is happy there and not crying, but the problem is that he does not sleep.  We'll give him 1-2 hours and he is still awake, so he just can't lay down and relax with us.

Loves looking for airplanes and birds in the sky. Also loves listening for cars, trucks, and motorcycles...and he can look out his bedroom window to see them.

It's amazing all the stuff he knows and picks up on that we don't even point out or teach him.  I swear every day he amazes me with something he says or knows.  Like he knew that I'm Amy and daddy is Dustin.  He can work a few puzzles he has where the hole does not show the picture of the piece, so he has to figure it out based on the shape and surroundings.

I mad him a lego table and he spends SO much time here building towers and choos-choos.  Most of our blocks have the alphabet on them, so he makes sure to get all the letters facing the correct way.  He gets a little frustrated sometimes when he can't get one on easily or the tower collapses, but he is getting better at working through it.

He is understanding more and more in his books.  He will sometimes read to himself and is my favorite thing to listen to him do.  He is so good at imitating my tone and actions.  I'll be able to pick up on key words throughout the gibberish.  He also loves acting out his books-- he will insist on standing up for Let's Dance Little Pookie so he can do the actions.  For goodnight moon, he has started to point to the objects on the pages as I say them.

Loves walking backwards, doing happy feet, jumping, and flips!

Taken to a monkey at school

Calls pacifier a nurse, started calling us Mommy and Daddy....love it!

Stopped throwing food and even brings his dishes over to the sink

Every time after he sneezes he says Bless You.  Will not say it if someone else sneezes.

Old house tour

 While we do absolutely love our new home, it's still a little sad thinking about the short time we got to spend in the home that we thought we'd be in for a very long time.  We were slowly making progress of getting the rooms decorated and to feel like home, so thought I'd share the pics of how it looked when we left.  (New home tour to come soon!)

You can see back in this post HERE links to our floorplan.

Outside- only change we made was painting the front door dark brown (was a light cream, the same as the siding and garage doors)

View after walking in the front door- had a nice open 2-story foyer.  We loved the wood floors- they were the hand-scraped style, so were rough with imperfections-- great for hiding all the dings when Lachlan threw things.

To the right of the front door were 2 glass doors to go into the office.  It was very bare and minimal!  I added the 3 things on the wall to stage the house, so normally looked even worse

To the left of the front door it opened to a large dining room.  Normally this room was empty and Lachlan would just play with some of his toys in here.  To help stage the house for selling, we borrowed this dining set from our generous friends.

We loved having the master bedroom on the main floor. This was new furniture we bought when moving in and upgraded to a king bed, which I thought I'd never do but now can't imagine not having all that extra space!  This was one of our more put-together or finished rooms that I had worked on.

Master Bath- we liked the size and layout of the bathroom, but never got around to doing anything.  I had in my mind to paint it or really wanted to do something different with this large mirror, but never made it that far!  We did put up some Gila film from Lowes on the window which was a good cheap solution to still let light in, but gave us privacy.

Our tub was huge and jetted, but unfortunately we are not big bath people and it was rarely used.  I think I used it 1 time.  We did use it several times for Lachlan when he was just an infant and laid on a sponge cause was was easy to climb in there to wash him.  The shower was nice sized, but Dustin really wanted a tiled shower and this one was all marble.

Here is the family room- this view would be if you walked into it from the foyer.  We LOVED the giant size and the large windows (although it did get warm when the afternoon sun hit it)!

Another view of the family room- you can see how open our floorplan was with the upstairs here.  It also opened up nicely into the dining room and kitchen area.  Dustin was really bummed the hardwood flooring wasn't in this room, but after having a baby I think he realized how nice the soft carpeting was for all the house you spend on the floor!

Kitchen- LOVED LOVED LOVED it.  There were TONS of cabinet and it was a really nice large space-- I feel like it looks much better in person than what this picture shows.  There was so much granite, beautiful tile backsplash, and under-cabinet lighting.

Another view- got spoiled with the treat of double-ovens...now can never imagine going back to one!  The door by the ovens led to a walk-in pantry that was also huge.

This is where we ate all our meals.  From where the shot was taken, there were sliding patio doors leading to the backyard.  Down the hallway on the left there was the planning desk, half bath, coat closet, laundry, and garage entrance.

Planning desk area, which really was just dumping ground for the mail to pile up.

Crazy enough, this was one of my favorite rooms- the Laundry Room!  The picture doesn't really capture the size and convenience of everything, but I loved having a really large utility sink in there.  Definite must-have with kids!  And then there were so many cabinets and drawers for storage of all our household cleaners, tools, and other random things.  It had a large counter on the left side for folding clothes (or storing junk).  We had a clothesline about that counter which was perfect for letting the cloth diapers dry.

Main Floor Half Bath.  Nothing special about this room- long term I wanted to paint it and do something with the mirror.

Now, let's head upstairs to take a look around....

Loved most of the oil rubbed bronze lighting and fixtures in the place

Lachlan's room was one of the few rooms that I had really put effort into making sure we completed sooner than later.  This was the view walking in the door.

You can see this opens up into the Jack-n-Jill bath setup.

Each bedroom had their own vanity area.

I had just started with a Whale theme in the bathroom and doing a Navy, Aqua, Red color scheme.  I had bought some aqua paint the week we found out we probably would be moving, so held onto it and brought to the new house instead!

Here was the Guest Bedroom.  We pretty much just put our belongings from our old bedroom at the loft into here.

This is a full bath in the hallway that was for the guest bedroom or when we were using the loft/bonus room.

This was our gigantic bonus room where we hung out a lot in the evenings to watch tv/movies and a ton of Lachlan's toys were up here (strategically hidden behind the couch for picture purposes)....but normally looked like a 1.5 year old ruled the place!

Another view-- we loved how it was all open to the family room below.  Lachlan loved dropping balls through the spindles and then one of us throw it back up at him.

And that completes the tour!  Definitely miss things about this place, our new home is very similar and has some features that I even like better...so it has all worked out.  I didn't have a good shot of the backyard, but we never used it to play- it was very sloped and Lachlan just had no interest in being back there.  We only got to use a few times, but we also had a great neighborhood pool that we are definitely missing now with this heat!

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Lachlan - 20 months

Lachlan turned 20 months last week and it has been an eventful month to say the least...

Stats

• Some of his summer clothes are getting a little snug, so just wears a hodgepodge of 18 and 24 month sizes.  
• I think all 4 of his incisors have now came in.
• Just got his feet measured and he is a size 7 now.  His old shoes were 6 and I was concerned they were getting small since he had them for a while.

How smart is Lachlan?

• More improvement with using fork/spoon- He can generally eat a container of yogurt, pudding, etc but needs help towards the end to get the last parts.

• He definitely is picking up on counting.  It's not correct, but he is starting to get the hang of it.  I'll hear him pointing to things and saying what sounds like numbers...like five, six, seven.
• He just LOVES the ABCs- he wants us to sing it all the time.  He can recognize in general what letters/words are and will point to a word and say "ABCs."  He likes to do this on his highchair- he points to Evenflo and says ABCs!  He's been stubborn lately and won't repeat the letters after us and only wants us to sing them.  Sometimes he does seem to chime in as we are singing and do a string of a few letters, so I think the song may be starting to sink in.
• He's a little iTot!  He is getting pretty good with mastering the iphone and ipad.  He knows to hit the home button when he is done with an app.  He can scroll through the pictures/videos and uses his pointer finger to hit the "play" triangle for videos.  He watches some things on youtube and knows when the video finishes to select another video on the side if he wants more.

Favorite Things

• OUTSIDE- He can say "outside" so now he has a definite way to tell us when he wants to go out.  We had an exceptionally cool summer in St Louis so he was able to get some outside time at the end of July....but the weather in Texas has been brutally hot.  He still has spent a lot of time outside here, but we just have to try to limit it.  Grandma Betty taught him to say it is "Texas Hot!" outside.  One day he touched the concrete and said it was hot....so then he bent down and starting blowing on it to cool it off (just like he does his food)....funny guy!
• PICTURES- He now knows how to ask for the iPhone-- he just says "pictures."  I can't imagine another kid just loving to look at pictures the way Lachlan does.  Although he is getting pickier and will tell you "NO" if you try to play a video or pause on a picture he has no interest in.  Once the pictures get really old, then I'm not sure he understands they are still pictures of him and he just says "baby."  

Random Other Bits:

• We moved from St Louis, MO to Dallas, TX this month and I couldn't have asked for Lachlan to be any better....I was just shocked at how well he handled everything and how easy he made it for us.  He had to deal with constant change and it didn't phase him in the least.  My parents came to stay with us and help out the last week of August.  Dustin and I had to fly to Dallas for 1.5 days to close on our new house.  Then a few days later, the movers came to pack up everything and load up the truck.  Lachlan really didn't mind too much that everything was in boxes and looked completely different.  We then went to stay with Dustin's mom, but had to leave Lachlan for 2 days while we went to Chicago for my cousin's wedding.  A couple days later we then left for the drive to TX and split it into 2 days.  I couldn't believe how great Lachlan was in the car-- I barely had to reach back and give him toys to entertain him.  We listened to some kids music, he paged through books, played with his laugh n learn puppy, and then the best thing ever......we revealed a new dvd player with a 2 hour Elmo's World video!!!!!!!!!!  You should have seem the smile and amazement on his face when that happened.  So that video really was key and helped kill almost half the car ride.  We got to the new house and he seemed to have fun-- we taught him to just run in circles screaming in the empty rooms (cause wasn't much to do here)!  He had a blast though!  We'd keep telling him this is Lachlan's house, but anytime we'd ask him if it was he'd say NO.  After about 2 weeks of living here, if we ask him if this is Lachlan's house, he'll now say YES!
• He had his last day of daycare in St Louis on Friday 7/26.  They had just been so wonderful and so good to Lachlan, so it was super difficult for me to feel like I was pulling him away from such a good environment.  Every single day he was excited to go to school and very rarely ever cried or was clingy to us when leaving him there.  The teachers all signed a beach ball for him and the kids in the class had their handprints on it, so that was a cute little going away gift.  I was already really having a hard time and sad his last week there and had been dreading the very last day.  It killed me cause I felt like he must have known/sensed something was up the last day cause I asked him to give hugs to everyone when we left and without hesitation he hugged all his friends in his room and they weren't just like quick hugs- it was some of the most real hugs I've seen him ever give to people.  We still hadn't visited any TX daycares yet, so all I could think about is how I'm going to find him a new place he loves so much and new friends....hopefully that all works out!  The day we came to TX for closing, we visited 2 daycares close to our house and both seem excellent, so was hard to pick between them both.  He'll start 8/14, so just after he turns 20 months.
• I'm scared to jinx myself, but after going through a really bad biting phase, he seems to have stopped.  He was not in daycare for several weeks and there were no bites.  So I'm hoping it maybe was just related to him teething...and he is getting better with using his words, so I think that may be helping that he can talk rather than resort to chomping into someone. 
• He still has little mad tantrums every now and then.  I think its cute cause he'll get frustrated and then just starts stomping his feet in place...most of the time they are over nothing- like he doesn't want to come inside or he wants to go outside.
• Still has a bad habit of throwing his food off his tray if he doesn't like something or is done with this meal.  Same with his cup.  Nothing seems to work with stopping this- so lately I try to just ignore him and give no attention or reaction when he does this.  Then I take away his tray and just tell him he must be all done.
• Has started telling us "poo poo" when he either farts, tries to poop, or actually does poop.  We never really worked him on this, he just started doing it.
• If I tell him daddy is sleeping or he sees someone with their eyes shut, he says "Shhhhhhhh" and he puts his finger to his lips, except every single time he also shoves his finger up his nose.  I keep trying to show him that you just put your finger over your lips, but he doesn't get it and continues to pick his nose each time.

Pictures from this month:

Loves taking Puppy for walks.  Every time puppy topples over he says "Uh oh" and sets him back up.

Lachlan really enjoyed the big moving truck....and getting right in the way of the workers

Last family picture at our Eureka house :(

Had a BLAST laying in the packing paper and just running through it

Lachs found mardi gras beads in one of the boxes we unpacked.  He worked all by himself to untangle each strand and then drape it on him.  The funny part was watching him attempt to stand up after all these beads were on.

One of his favorite things to do at the new house is to stand at the bottom of the stairs like this and peek around the spindles just smiling and playing peekaboo.

Lachlan - 19 months!

Stats

• Mainly wearing 18 month clothes still.  
• He is getting his top left incisor tooth in and maybe some on the bottom, but is so hard to get a look!

How smart is Lachlan?

• More improvement with using fork/spoon- I've let him practice scooping stuff like pudding or applesauce and he sometimes lucks out and gets it on the spoon, but still needs a lot of help.  He enjoys using the fork and is better with that than the spoon- he is fairly good at stabbing things with it.

• He always gets his body parts right when asked to identify them and will now say the word on most items too.  Feet, Belly, Hair, Eyes, Ears, Nose, Mouth, Elbow, Bebo, toes, hands, teeth (new), tongue (new), knees (new), pee-pee (new).
• Can identify a ton of objects in books.  It is just absolutely crazy how we'll quiz him on the objects on a page and he knows nearly everything...just blows my mind!  I'm to the point where it is just impossible to list all the words he knows and such!
• Daycare claims multiple times that Lachlan repeatedly counts to 5 as he plays with things...we are still very doubtful of this!

Favorite Things

• LEARNING- He enjoys us counting and doing the ABCs.  In books, he still loves being quizzed about things...and he'll point to any objects on the page he doesn't know so we can tell him what it is.
• ELMO- the boy is still extremely obsessed over Elmo
• PUZZLES-  It was killing me how freaking expensive puzzles are...or I'm just looking at the wrong stores!  Lachlan has a few, but just absolutely LOVES them and was needing more.  We hit the jackpot cause his generous Uncle Keenan gave him a bunch of old puzzles...Lachlan has spent HOURS this last week mastering them.
• SONGS- He loves when we sing action songs for him to do motions with or when we play a kids station on Pandora.  He really loves he ABCs...and loves a few books we have where I can point at the letters as I sing.  He loves Itsy Bitsy Spider and does the hand motions.  He does If You're Happy and You Know It- claps his hands, stomps his feet, shouts hooray, wiggles his ears, pats his head.  He does Wheels on the Bus- wheels, door, wipers, horn, driver, mommy, baby, and grandma.
• LEGOS- He calls them "blocks."  We got a simple set of the Duplo Legos and he has just been engrossed with trying to build things with them...and also enjoys taking them apart.  He has a little bit of trouble getting them lined up right, so I help out a lot to get it lined up and then tell him "push"....he thinks it is so hilarious when I say push, and he'll sit there and wait for me to say it and/or will yell out "push" too.
• MOMMY- most days lately he shows a definite favoritism towards me, which is so sweet, but annoying at times where I need for him to let Dustin or someone else hold him or play with him.

Random Other Bits:

• Issue with biting still at daycare.  Lately he definitely seems to do it purposefully to be mean- e.g. another kid has an object that he wants.  I know it will eventually pass, but is getting very frustrating. 
• He has finally started giving some real kisses rather than just blowing kisses.  I used to be a little scared of his real kisses cause was so afraid of him biting, but I realize now that he knows what kisses are and I don't think he would bite.
• We took him over to a friend's house to watch fireworks for the Fourth.  We weren't sure he was going to be able to stay awake, but he made it!  We thought it was funny because when he heard some random fireworks go off before the show started, EVERY SINGLE TIME he would exclaim "Oh nooooo!"  We thought he was going to do it during the whole show, but once they started, he was just frozen sitting in my lap and had no comments!  Towards the end he finally threw in the towel and snuggled into me and closed his eyes and fell asleep....but the finale awoke him and he of course wanted "more!"
• We've experience a few really mad tantrums lately, so that is no fun....but sometimes does make me chuckle.  His latest is if he gets really angry, he goes to our bedroom and SLAMS the door shut...and then doesn't want anything to do with us.  Most of the time his anger is over an ipad, iphone, or tv because we cut off his usage...so it is to the point that we feel like we just can't ever let him use the ipad/iphone cause of that tantrum that follows!  The problem is then if he sees us with it...so then means that we can not get out anything in front of him.

Typical Day at 19 months:

• Same as 18 months

A few pictures from this last month:

Loves riding on dad's back or making dad do pushups with him on top!

Seeing big "choo-choos" at the Transportation Museum

Where's Lachlan?  Still one of his favorite games

Shouting HOORAY for If You're Happy and You Know It

And Lachlan was excited to discover he'll be having a little SISTER!