Sunday, August 30, 2009

16 months old

Okay, a recap of this past month? It has actually been a fairly difficult month with Tyler. He was/did/is (whatever) cutting four teeth at the same time: a top and bottom molar and a top and bottom front tooth. It has literally taken a month for those molars to just barely break the surface and it's been hard on everyone! Obviously, hard for Tyler and he lets us know about it every.chance.he.gets. He has also gone back to several night wakings as a result of this, which is frustrating. I just don't understand how some kids breeze through teething and it seems like constant pain for Tyler. Out of desperation to get him to stop crying one morning, his breakfast consisted of Tylenol and a freezer pop (I know that sounds horrible, but it was after I tried a couple of different breakfast options and he wasn't interested in anything). The freezer pop was a temporary soothing solution and then it was back to crying. My heart just breaks to see him in that much pain. I do wish that I could place all the blame for Tyler's frequent crankiness on teething, but "terrible twos" are already paying us a visit. Dr. Anna says that it is actually normal to start having temper-tantrums at this age. Normal, but NOT fun! He throws his toys, falls to the ground, screams, covers his face with his hands.. it's just all very dramatic if something doesn't go his way. We were at Toys R Us the other day and Tyler spotted the battery powered cars from across the store. I knew it was going to be trouble considering he LOVES anything with a steering wheel and it was! He loved checking them all out and when we finally took him away, he was screaming at the top of his lungs and kicking while trying to get out of Travis' arms. It was CRAZY! Travis said, "Oh God, we have THAT kid." It was so funny, embarrassing and sad all at the same time. We left the store with nothing. :-(

Despite teething and tantrums, we still manage to have fun too! Tyler is developing a lot of imaginary play and it's fun to watch. He is always picking up invisible stuff off the ground and trying to hand it to us. We now call it, 'picking up grapes.' He will take a drink out of an empty cup and say "ahhhhh" or he will lick his hands or toy food and says "yummmmm." He plays with his cars all day, complete with every sound effect and drives them over and under things. He loves hiding and waits to scare us and he loves playing peek-a-boo.

We have a few new words(or at least attempts at words). Before bed time, we go outside to look at the moon and Geckos, which we call lizards, so he now says, 'moo' and 'li li li li' for lizards. He also says 'ba' for bad, 'bir' for bird and 'gee' for geese. It's all really cute and fun to be able to communicate with him more.

Here's a couple of pics of our big 16 month old!