Logan 14 Months!!

Logan 14 Months:

Between working full time (which means driving to Tucker and back to Douglasville each day) and playing with Logan and Maddy when I get home, I have had zero time to work on this blog in six month. I really wish I had found the time, somehow, but all I can do know if to try my best to find the time moving forward.

After reading over my blog for Logan’s six month’s birthday, I realized how much he has changed!

Schedule:

7:30 a.m. Wakes up and nurses for about 20 minutes. Last week, I just started giving him a bottle of whole milk in the morning right away he nurses.
8 a.m -9:30 or 10 a.m. Logan goes back to sleep with Daddy while I go to work. On the weekends, he’ll crawl into bed with us for about 1-1 ½ hours.
10 a.m. -1 p.m.-Play time!
1 pm. -1:30pm- Eats lunch, usually a balanced meal of home-cooked fresh vegetables, fruit, lean meat, and yoghurt or cottage cheese and watered down juice
1:30-4: p.m. –Playtime! He plays really well by himself, but he also loves when we play with him. If the weather is nice outside, he loves to walk around and pick up sticks and rocks (such a little boy!).
4 p.m.-5:30 p.m.-Naptime
5:30 p.m Snack and playtime until Mommy gets home around 7 p.m
He just stopped his dinnertime nursing this past week.
7:30 p.m.-8p p.m.- Dinner, which is whatever Mommy and Daddy are having, plus added fruits and veggies we always have on hand for him. He loves cheese pieces with his meal too.
8:pm-8:30 p.m –Playtime
8:30 p.m. -9p.m – Bathtime with Mommy
9 p.m. -9:30 p.m. nurses and then bedtime

Favorite Foods: By far, his favorite food is bananas. He can easily eat an entire banana, no matter what size! He has gotten really good at stabbing the banana pieces with his toddler fork. And he can even pick up a lot of small food pieces with his fork. It takes him a few tries, and he has this new facial expression- a cute little serious frown of concentration- but every time he successfully picks up a small piece with his fork and carries it to his mouth without it falling, he breaks out into this huge grin. Then, he puts down his fork, laughs and claps for himself! It’s so cute to watch, and we clap right along with him!

Besides bananas, he loves grapes (cut up into about 5 small pieces), beets, tomatoes, cottage cheese, regular hard cheese, (mainly cheddar), Cherrios, applesauce, broccoli with melted cheddar cheese, watermelon, spaghetti with whole wheat pasta and ground turkey, and sweet potatoes. However, he is an excellent eater who will eat most anything, no matter how spicy the food. In fact, last week I ordered a veggie and pineapple pizza, and I picked off the toppings for him. He had about 8 pineapple pieces, 8 banana pepper slices, and even a few onions along with his own separate dinner! As he was eating the peppers, he kept licking his fingers and didn’t even want his drink! Recently, I made mango salsa chicken. Nothing is too spicy for me, but this jar salsa from Sam’s Club was pretty darn spicy! I wasn’t even planning on giving any to Logan, but he reached over and grabbed a few chucks of the mangos and peppers off my plate and stuffed them into his mouth. He loved it! He ended up eating several spoonfuls of it! My mouth was definitely feeling the heat, but he didn’t even act like it fazed him. He is definitely my son when it comes to a love of cheese and spicy foods!

We still use the BabyCook to made fresh veggies, but we no longer have to puree them. He is so healthy and will try anything. I made Tilapia and he really liked that, and he just had salmon for the first time and enjoyed that too. For snacks we give him a wheat teething biscuit, or organic fruit and veggie puffs, no sugar added raisons (one of his favorites) or veggie rice cakes. He is right in the 50% percentile for weight.

He has only had sweets twice, on his first birthday, and on Chase’s first birthday (our neighbor across the street)! He’s never had fried foods, and he loves having sweet fruits for dessert.

Games and Fun: He absolutely loves to be chased. To instigate this chase, he will grab something that he knows does not belong to him, such as our cells phone or the remote control, and he will take off running and laughing. We will chase him around and around the kitchen island five or six time, and then we will switch directions on him and almost catch him, and the game will start all over again! He is now in charged of giving Maddy her daily treats. He’ll give her the first piece no problem, but then for the second piece, he takes off running and giggling and makes her chase him all over, licking his hand, trying to get the treat from him. Eventually he always lets her have it!

He also loves, loves, loves to be tickled, most especially when we slightly bear down with our teeth. His favorite tickle spots are his feet, his thighs, his “corn”, the backs of his legs, the sides of his tummy, his tummy, and his chest.

He also loves getting into mischief! We have had to put locks on the cabinets and drawers, but we ran out and so there are still a few unlocked ones he easily manages to find. He will throw things out of drawers at lighting speed! He immensely enjoys banging all of the pots and pans on the ground, especially the baking pans! He likes to stack up all the round baking pans, and then throw the entire pile against the floor.

He intently watches Maddy’s water bowl, and on the rare occasion we forget to put it back on the counter (poor Miss Maddy no longer has water available to her all day long!), Logan is there dumping all the water out all over the floor and himself before we can even blink. Of course, he always finds this incident immensely funny!

He loves to act like a big boy and try to grab the leash from me and walk Maddy all by himself. He’ll even take the leash and walk what appears to be an invisible dog! ☺

His favorite toy is his play Iphone. He puts it up to his ear and walks all over the house, makng this cute little high-pitched “huh” sound.

The slide that his Gramma gave him for his birthday is also a big hit! When she watches him while Zack is at school and I’m still at work, she frequently takes him to Walmart to look at the fish, which he is fascinated with!

He loves to play outside and wave at all the cars as they drive by.

He will dance to any music by bouncing up and dance with an enormous smile on his face. His favorite tune is the Law and Order opening theme song. He will stop what he is dong and starting bouncing up and down in perfect rhythm. Even if he is crying, he will still bounce up and down and cry simultaneously. It’s like he can’t help himself- he just has to dance! He also loves pushing the music buttons on his Elmo Christmas songs book. He will hit one song button, then walk over to another toy and play with it and dance simultaneously until the music is over, then walk back, push another button, dance some more, and continue.

He loves his Elmo and Mickey ride-on cars. He hasn’t quite yet fully gotten the hang out of moving himself along (or maybe he just chooses not to), because he loves for us to zoom him all around the house, quickly turning and speeding up and quickly stopping, all while he blares the horn repeatedly!

His favorite character is Elmo, which is why we gave him an Elmo themed birthday party!

Personality and Development: He is a very sweet, very loving boy. He loves to walk up to Maddy-Girl and just hug her and kiss her, and if he’s tired, he’ll snuggle up next to her. He also loves giving his Mommy and Daddy hugs and kisses.

When we touch his nose and make noises, he LOVES to touch our nose and then giggle with delight when we make snorting sounds.

He is a very independent little dude at times. He is so pleased with himself that he can feed himself, that he gets very angry if we try to feed him or take his utensils away. Thus, mealtimes take much longer now, but we enjoy him trying so hard to build up his coordination.

He knows exactly what he wants and he has no problems letting us know. If he doesn’t get what he wants or something gets taken away, he will scream and fake cry (no tears), although sometimes he gets himself so worked up that the tears will come. He most especially wants our I-phones and the t.v. remote control (even though he has and old one with the batteries taken out).

I try my very best to speak German to him most of the time we are alone. He is beginning to understand me, which is really neat! He only says MaMa and DaDa right now, which is normal but not advanced. He is well-advanced in all physical aspects, but when a baby is raised bilingual, they are often slightly behind on language development for the first few years, but then they are so much more ahead.

Sleeping habits: He only truly stared sleeping through the night all by himself in his own crib about one week ago. The past several months, he would wake up around 12 a.m. -2 a.m. and jump up and down in his bed, screaming, and rattling the bars in his crib like he was in a jail cell. He would not calm down, no matter how long we let him cry it out (usually we’d wait about 20 minutes but sometimes up to 40 minutes), but he would never settle down and soothe himself. Then, last week, he just randomly started sleeping through the night. Before, I would always have to nurse him to sleep and then wait about 20 minutes to make sure he was in a deep sleep before placing him down in his crib (or else he would wake up and we’d either have to start the whole process all over again, or we’d give up and put him to bed with us). But now, he is drowsy but still awake when I finish nursing him and put him in his crib, and he’ll fuss for about 2-3 minutes and then fall right back asleep. And a few times throughout the night, I’ve heard him on the baby monitor, but he’s soothed himself right back to sleep within minutes! It’s about time! ☺ Two weeks ago we just now started putting a few stuffed animals in the bed with him, since the SIDS danger is basically non-existent at this point.

Socialization: Because he doesn’t go to daycare, I’ve really tried to start giving him play dates. We’ve met my friend Elena, and her son Michaels, who is a couple months older than Logan, a few times. Once, we all went to Monkey Joes. We’ve also played with my friend Cara’s nephew, whose about 2 months younger. And we just started getting to know our neighbor, Chase, who is about 1 ½ months younger than Logan. A few weeks ago, we signed him up for Mommy and Me tumbling class every Thursday night, and he really enjoys playing with kids his age. He absolutely loves, loves, loves (I cannot stress enough how much) the trampoline, and his teacher, Miss Amanda, always calls him “Smiles”, because he NEVER stops laughing and smiling the entire half hour session. He has learned how to summersault (with help), walk on a balance beam (with help), run across a trampoline (no help needed!), and also hang from the Monkey Bars. I must take a minute to brag here. You are supposed to be 14 months to even start this class, and the ages range up to 3. He started right at 13 months, the youngest one, and he is the only one anywhere near his age who can entirely support his weight all by himself on the Monkey Bars! Everyone comments on how extraordinarily strong he is, and he just grins from ear to ear, hold himself up for several minutes, and then just drops down to the mat and wants to do it all over again!

He also jumped two times in a row during floor time at Tumbletime. I have been told that most babies do not learn to jump until at least around 20 months. He saw Miss Amanda jump, and he just decided to do it too!

Adventures: The past month he has been to both the Atlanta Aquarium and the circus. He had a blast looking at all the fish, and he loved the freedom of being able to run all around the place! At the circus, he was so adorable! He knew just the appropriate moments to clap, and he would get so excited when the entire audience would clap right along with him! He almost fell asleep during the last 15 minutes, but once they brought out the trampolines, he perked right up! Go figure!

Logan, if you ever read this, you are the light in your mommy and daddy’s eyes. You have made our world complete and perfect, and we have loved watching you grow these past 14 months. We love the family that you have made us, and ever since we found out we were pregnant, we knew we would soon be the luckiest parents in the whole wide world. You have far exceeded our dreams in every way. You are such an amazing little individual, and we can’t wait to share each little new discovery and adventure with you.