March 11th – March 17th

Monday, March 11^th

Nala time at the park and running around after Daddy

I have no idea why swatting the St. Patrick’s Day decoration was so hilarious, but apparently it was pretty funny!

Tuesday, March 12^th

Haircut time for Landen! He did such a good job.

I was finally able to get Landen to waving bye-bye and blowing a kiss on video. So cute!

Wednesday, March 13^th

Eating blueberries for breakfast.  The video cracks me up.  In the beginning you can hear him say “bee-ew” which is his word for “berry”.

I dressed Landen in his overalls and couldn’t help myself from taking a bunch of pictures. He just looks so precious.  John even got out his camera and took a few shots in the evening.

All of the sudden Landen discovered this duck in is bedroom.  He’s obsessed!!

I can not tell you how many times we’ve watched this video – over, and over, and over again.  Landen LOVES to see himself and cracks up laughing every time he snickers on the video.

Landen now loves to throw his diapers into the diaper pail.

We stopped by my mom’s for a quick visit.  It happened to be the same day that the Vatican elected the new Pope.  When he emerged and the crowd started clapping on tv Landen got very excited and clapped along with them.

My favorite Target buddy

And my two favorite guys

Thursday, March 14^th

Waiting for dinner at East Side Mario’s

Covering his ears again

Yummy ice cream!

Reading my Jake book before bedtime

Friday, March 15^th

Landen was so excited about this little pack of makeup brushes I gave him.  He always wants to play with my real make-up accessories so I decided to give him a set of his own that I wasn’t using.  He loves it!

Cheers Daddy!

Bubble time!

Saturday, March 16^th

Lunch time!

After naptime we decided take Landen to the Cabrillo Aquarium.  He did pretty well.  After seeing a few tanks with fish he wasn’t too interested in them but he liked looking in the touch-tank. 

We stopped for a few minutes of swinging but he wasn’t really into it.  Landen is much more of a slide kid.

Sunday, March 17^th – St. Patrick’s Day!

Green lunch – avocado!

Goin’ for a stroll

March 6th – 18 month checkup!

We went for Landen’s 18 month checkup with Barbara on 3/6.  It was largely uneventful and everything looks good!  We won’t go back for another well-child visit until he’s 2!  Here’s a rundown for this visit:

• Weight: 28 lb 1 oz (77th percentile)
• Height: 35 in (98th percentile)
• Weight to height ratio: 48th percentile
• Head circumference: not measured

• Height: The nurse and Barbara both agree, Landen is a big boy!!

• Bottle: We told Barbara that he still refuses to drink milk from a straw cup even though he'll drink everything else that way.  She said it's very common and not to worry about it too much.  He'll get there.

• Speech therapy: She was very pleased that we got his speech therapy set up and we now attend on a regular schedule. He's already improved to a 14 or 15 month level (from 8 or 9 months when he was tested).  He knows about 8-10 words that he uses unassisted consistently (he should know closer to 20 and starting to use 2-word combos).  She said even if he would have eventually caught up on his own, it's great that we're being proactive about it.  You just never know what will self-resolve and what will grow into a larger issue.

• Sick: We told Barbara about Landen being sick for a couple of weeks.  She checked his ears and said everything looks good now.  After describing his symptoms she said it sounded like to same stuff that had been going around.

• Vaccinations: Landen was a lucky-duck this time because he didn't get any shots!!! There was still a little bit of crying due to stranger anxiety but he did pretty darned well.

That's it!  It was really pretty quick.  We didn't have any concerns to talk about this time so we just chatted with Barbara a bit and we were on our way.  Keep your fingers crossed that Landen doesn't have any reason to go back until September!

March 4th – March 10th

Wednesday, March 6^th

Macaroni with peas … yummy!  Open WIDE!

Thursday, March 7^th

Fell asleep eating lunch

Friday, March 8^th

Passed out!

Saturday, March 9^th

Dancin’ in the kitchen

Sunday, March 10^th

We love how Landen leans to the side when we ask him to smile

Sleepin’ with Daddy

What’s in this hole?

Cooking with Mommy

 

March 2nd – 18 months old!!

Dear Landen,

You are now officially a year-and-a half old.  That’s absolutely crazy!  From this point forward you’re closer to being 2 than 1.  Whoa!!

We’ve been working on teaching you different body parts and now you can point to your mouth and your feet in addition to the other ones you knew.  You catch onto them so quickly now.  If we ask you where the ball is and you don’t know, you’ll put your arms up in an “I don’t know” motion.  You’ve started covering your ears when we’re somewhere noisy like a restaurant.  You especially love it when we cover our ears too.  You love to spin around and around in circles and then stop and feel the wooziness.  Luckily you haven’t taken a tumble doing that!  Walking backwards is also a new trick.  In the middle of the month you turned the doorknob to get into the bathroom but it hasn’t happened again so it may have been a lucky fluke.  If not, we’re going to have to do some more child-proofing!  Mommy was so impressed one day at lunch when she gave you a bowl of corn kernels and you were able to feed them to yourself using a baby fork!!  You love to eat freeze-dried fruit now but only if we tell you it’s a cracker.  Daddy taught you to satisfactorily says “ahhhhhhhh” after taking a drink so you do that quite often now.

You are very shy around people you don’t know, but you’re always willing to give someone a high 5.  When we tell you say bye bye you always blow a kiss, no matter who it is.  When shopping with Mommy at Michael’s you picked up a wooden stamp out of a bin and stamped your shoe with it – just like the tumbling teacher does on your feet each week.  We thought that was so smart of you!!  Whenever we cross a street or walk through a parking lot we say “run run run!” and you take off (while holding our hand).  You LOVE it.

You’ve become quite the little helper around the house.  You’ve learned how to throw away the newspaper and a plastic bag in the recycling can.  We have to keep an eye on it though because you’ve put other things in there too.  One of your favorite things is to “clean” with a dry sponge or baby wipes.  You like to help Mommy fill and carry the laundry basket from the laundry room to the bedroom.  And you move the kitchen stool around from place to place in the kitchen so you can get access to the kitchen counter.

You’ve added a couple more words to your speaking vocabulary and they all sound very similar to one another.  Apple = “bapple”, water = “bahble”, and bottle = “bobble”.  We really have to pay attention to know what you’re referring to!  At the beginning of this past month you had your first speech therapy appointment.  You cried in the beginning when the therapist, Karen, wanted you to sit in a chair but Mommy sat next to you for reassurance.  You had to sit for over 30 minutes, which we think is a bit long, but you did well.  Afterwards it was snack time and you had 2 mini Oreo cookie pieces.  It was your very first Oreo and man did you love it!!  We’ll keep going to speech once a week and move it up to twice a week eventually when they can fit you in.  Unfortunately, one of your friends at speech was sick one day and you came down with it a few days later.  You had a cough and runny nose.  When you cough hard you rub your chest so we knew it hurt.  You even threw up once!!  Being sick is no fun.

We love that you’re making some progress both in what you understand and what you’re able to say.  We hope that next month brings even more progress!  We love you!