From the very beginning…
Year 02
24 months aka 2 years!
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Okay, so I’m a little behind with this post. Granted, Ian is now officially 25 months and technically closer to 26 months, but it’s been a rough two months. Ian spent his second birthday with his head over a bowl and mama and daddy laid up in bed. Since his birthday fell on a Thursday this year, we were so looking forward to celebrating with our Mom’s Group, but that didn’t happen. I think we made it up to Ian though with the three various birthday parties and the ton of loot he got. He also had his first pool party with Gramps, Aunt Lori and Uncle Jayson and had a blast.
But now, on to the good stuff. Normally, I include a current picture along with the last birthday post, but I’m doing the one year vs two year shot. Hasn’t my little monkey changed a lot? At his 2 year well check up, Ian weighed in at 27.25 lbs, which puts Ian about 3 lbs heavier than he was this time last year. The monkey is now 34.5 inches inches long, which puts him 4 whole inches above last year. This all puts him in the 25-50 percentile for his weight and the 50 percentile for his height. His head is 19.5 inches, which is only about a half an inch bigger than last year and it puts him in the 75 percentile. Ian didn’t receive any immunizations this time around, which I am positive he was extremely thankful for.
So what has happened in the last year? Oh lots, but it really doesn’t seem like that. Not like it did the first year. Ian had mastered the walking by his first birthday, but he moved right into running as soon as summer started. It’s so cute watching him run. Some times he even prances a little.
We spent a lot of time at the zoo last year, well, more than I have in the past 10 years. We went to the Cincinnati Zoo with Aunt Lori and Adrian and we spent a couple of days at the Detroit Zoo. I’m so totally planning on taking him to the zoo more this year.
Ian is definitely talking up a storm now. It really doesn’t seem like it’s that big of a change, but considering this time last year he was just mastering mama and dada (while referring to us) as well as hi and bye and then compare that to what he’s doing now…it’s huge. We no longer have to guess what Ian wants and his vocabulary is growing every day. He’s already up to simple sentences. Plus he knows anatomy now too.
The other huge thing that I’m loving his is alphabet recognition. Ian can not only say his ABCs, but he recognizes them too. I can hold up a letter G and he’ll say “G”. He even sings his ABCs (although he’s not crazy about G-P). He’ll just randomly start singing and he’ll even do the “now I know”, but he’ll end it there waiting for us to join in. Jesse and I are ecstatic about this and I kind of hope that we’ll get him reading by his third birthday.
Over the past year, Ian has so totally fallen in love with books. He loves to read and will constantly bring books to us to read to him. Every night and before his nap, he gets read to and he gets mad if we can’t do it one night. He’s even gotten to the point where he’ll recognize the library and loves going there. We started going there when he was just 4 months old and have made bi-weekly, if not weekly, trips to the library ever since. Just in the past couple of months, he’s gotten to the point where he’ll pick out his own books to check out and wants to help me when I take them up to the counters. Seriously, he loves books and loves going to any kind of bookstore. We were just in Borders today and when I mentioned going there, he was all ready to go and took off without me.
Ian has also fallen in love with Sesame Street. We had introduced him to the Muppet Show when he was still crawling around, but we started showing him clips of classic Sesame Street skits and he fell for the Count! My god did he fall for the count. Then I started getting DVDs from the library and he fell for Oscar, although his name is Phooey. We were watching a Telly the Monster and Oscar the Grouch do Siskel & Ebert and all of Oscar’s remarks involved “phooey”. So he is forever going to be phooey for Ian. Ian is loving the other characters to, especially Cookie Monster, but Jesse and I are thankful he hasn’t fallen for Elmo. He does like Elmo, but he doesn’t keep Ian’s attention like the Count, Cookie Monster or Oscar does.
Ian has also been going nuts for Thomas the Tank Engine and Disney’s Cars. We’re liking the idea that he’s going crazy for more than one icon at a time. Ian is constantly switching between the three, but it’s giving us a bit of variety. He has his Grover and Cookie Monster that he sleeps with at night, his Thomas train set that he plays with during the day and his movie of choice is Cars.
Ian finally made it into the snow for the first time this past winter. We really never took him in while we were at the apartment (stupid dogs), but he had the snow pants and the whole ensemble, so in he went. He had fun with it.
Remember when I said Ian had figured out the running idea? Well, he also figured out how to jump.
We did start potty training right after Thanksgiving, but it wasn’t really the time to do it since it tapered off during the Christmas travels. Ian was doing awesome for awhile there, but then he jumped off the band wagon and we’re just now getting back into it.
Jesse decided he didn’t want to have to mess with his hair anymore, so he went out and got a hair trimmer. Now we do both Ian’s and Jesse’s hair with it and all of Ian’s curls are gone. I tried growing them out again recently, but Ian decided he wanted his hair like daddy’s and went even shorter than the last time we did it.
Oh wait! I completely forgot, Ian graduated to a toddler bed right before his birthday. How could I forget that. He had been ready to go that route around Christmas, but we were holding off a bit, but by the end of January, we knew we had to do it. One weekend, we converted the crib to a toddler bed and Ian has been loving it. There was a while where he wouldn’t get out of bed until one of us came to him, but he soon learned that he could get out when he wanted. We’ve actually started putting the gate back up in the hallway and leaving his door open at night. This way, if he does need to get up, he can run into our room instead of crying until one of us gets in there. It’s been working out well. By the time he makes it to my side of the bed, I’m awake and will usually carry him back to his room, where we’ll rock for a bit. We have had barely any problems with him getting out of bed instead of going to sleep at either his naptime or bedtime. There are occasions, but I was expecting that.
I know both Jesse and I have been slacking quite a bit when it comes to adding posts to Ian’s site, but hopefully we’ll start getting better about it. I feel like I’m forgetting something, so I’ll leave you with links to his 18th month and 15th month posts. If I have missed anything, it’ll appear in those.
More Videos Uploaded
0It’s been awhile since I’ve uploaded any videos onto YouTube, and thus here, but I finally got a chance to do it last night. There’s about 10 from this past month that were added, so instead of posting them all here, you can find them at our YouTube Channel.
Happy Birthday Ian!
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Ian turns 2 today and boy did we celebrate it in a way none of us wanted. All three of us came down with some kind of bug today and I think Ian is the only one really bouncing around. Granted, he wasn’t this morning…at least not until he threw up all over me. That is not a pleasant sensation first thing in the morning, especially when it happens in your bed. However, after that episode, he seemed to have bounced back. He wasn’t as cuddly as he normally gets when he is sick, but he was a lot more subdued. Jesse and I have been hit the worse – why are we always both sick at the same time?
Either way, we still celebrated Ian’s birthday today (with his party on Saturday) and he received Clarabel and Annie from the Thomas the Tank Engine train set (trackmaster style). He really enjoyed them since he wanted to go play with them instead of having any birthday cake (which I think shows he’s still not feeling 100% better).
Ian has his 2 year check up next week, so I’ll do one of my more detailed posts then.
No… I mean Yes…
0I had this exchange with Ian the other day:
<me> Ian, go give that to your mother. <ian> no. <me> ...WHAT? <ian> yes. * ian walks towards jackie
Nakedness
1What is it about nakedness that toddlers find so amusing? Ian, for the first time today, decided he didn’t want to wear any clothes. He took off his shirt and about 10 minutes later, the pants went as well. He even picked out the shirt he was wearing. He wanted to wear [Donald] Duck, so that’s what he wore. But then he takes it off an hour later and doesn’t want to put it back on.
At least he hasn’t figured out how to take his diaper off yet.
Cloth Diapers
015 years
Has anyone ever tried switching to cloth diapers while they were potty training?
We’re trying to get Ian back into potty-training mode and he’s fixated on the characters on his diapers and I really don’t want to buy any more. I got to thinking, why not switch to cloth diapers. They are reusable (after washing) and they feel like underwear. They’ll last through accidents without using rubber pants (which Ian absolutely hates and I think part of the reason he’s regressed) and it’ll cost a lot less than buying diapers. Obviously I would still use the disposables while we’re out and about, but with Jesse having the car 4 out of 5 days during the week, we’re home far more than we’re out.
I’ve also heard of cloth diapers that have velcro already on them so you don’t have to use pins. Does anyone know where I could find some?
Ian’s Toddler Bed
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Yup, you saw that right. Ian has graduated to a toddler bed. Jesse and I had been contemplating moving him into one for quite awhile now. At first, we thought about doing it during the holidays, but then something came up and we decided to wait until his 2nd birthday. Well, a couple of weeks ago, our minds were changed once again. Ian loves getting in our bed and pulling the covers up and “going to bed” that we couldn’t logically put it off anymore. So while Gramps was up one weekend, the men changed Ian’s crib to a toddler bed. Ian is loving it and he’s been awesome with it. The night we changed it over, he was all set to hop into bed and go to sleep (without taking his bath).
Since then, he’s been doing really well with it. We really haven’t had a problem with him getting out of bed and giving us a problem with going to bed (knock on wood). We still go through our nightly routine and when he’s put in bed he generally stays. Now there have been a couple of times where he starts to crawl out as we’re leaving the room, but generally we just need to turn around and tell him it’s bedtime and to go to sleep and he’ll crawl right back in bed.
With that said, yesterday was a different story. He did not want to take a nap (even though it was obvious he needed one) and he did get up a couple of times. He did end up getting in a nap, but he never made it back to his bed. I went in to check on him after 20 minutes of silence and found him curled up on the floor with his blankets. We’re thinking he slept there purposefully since he had both of his blankets wrapped around him (he’s been having growing and teething pains simulatneoiusly).
The one thing we were hoping he would figure out sooner still hasn’t happen though. Now that he can get in and out of his bed when he wants, he still waits for one of us to come get him after he wakes up. He will sit in his bed for 5 minutes calling us instead of getting out and playing. We were hoping he would be content to getting pu and playing in his room for awhile, so Jesse and I could sleep in a little more on the weekends, but that’s a no go at the moment.
So Ian has officially gone into a toddler bed and we no longer have a crib.
Toddler Picks!
115 years
I’ve come across a couple of books that Ian just love and I had to share them. The first one is Fisher Price’s Little People Let’s Go to the Zoo!. It’s a great board book that doesn’t have a lot of reading content, but it has a ton of things for Ian to check out and do. Here’s the book description:
Featuring lots of new animals, Let’s Go to the Zoo! teaches colors, counting, matching, and more in an entertaining way. With surprises hidden behind dozens of flaps, kids will want to visit the Fisher-Price zoo again and again!
It’s fabulous and they are right. Ian loves going back to this book just to check out what’s under the flaps. Even though there isn’t that much to read, I can make it up as I go. I can ask him what the lion says or the tiger and he’ll respond (he loves saying RAWR!). Each page is something different too. The first one deals with sounds, the second one has colors, the third has numbers, the fourth deals with motions, and the last page is all about matching up the babies with the mommies. Ian loves looking at the babies (he loves pointing out all babies) and he’s pretty good with matching them up too. When he got this book for Christmas, I wasn’t expecting too much, but damn is he enjoying it. I have a feeling I’ll have to end up replacing it because he loves reading it so much.
The second book that Ian (and mama) is going nuts over is B is for Bear by Roger Priddy. Ian is a huge fan of the Usborne Touchy Feely books (i.e. That’s Not My Dragon by Fiona Watt and Rachel Wells) and this one is along that same line, but it’s all about the alphabet. Whereas the Usborne Touchy Feely books are simple and repetitive, this one is a little more indepth (for a toddler) and it’s great. Each page has a different letter of the alphabet with an image and one of the images has something he can touch. There isn’t something on each page, but it’s not needed because he loves running his hands over the entire page and finding the “hidden treasures”. One of the things I like is that the sentences aren’t all the same. While there is still the rhyming theme going on, I’m not reading the same 5 words over and over again (like in the Usborne Touchy Feely books). This is the other book that Ian has been reaching for a lot lately. Plus it’s one of the bigger board books so Ian can put this in his lap and read on his own (which I’ve seen him do).
Another set of books that has Ian jumping for joy round the clock are the Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends stories. He’s been going nuts over trains ever since he got a domino laying train for Christmas and these were a godsend. The best part about the books, they are short and sweet. Each book contains 3-4 stories and Ian has no problem sitting through one or two. And, not all the books contain 3-4 stories either; there are a wide selection of content for the books. One of the more simplier books, Catch Me, Catch Me! only uses 50 words to tell the story about a race between Thomas and Gordon. Another great aspect of these novels are the DVDs. Now that we’re reading so much Thomas the Tank Engine, I had also picked up a few of the DVDs so Ian could see the trains and they are great. He loves watching the trains on the TV and I love it because each segment is only about 5 minutes long. These stories are perfect for his attention span and it increases his vocabulary.
The last book that Ian tends to go back to time and time again is Matthew Van Fleet’s Spotted Yellow Frogs. The book itself is really simple, but he loves being able to pull out the pages and looking inside. The basic idea is that on 8 different pages, there are 8 different colors and patterns, that when you turn each flap reveals an animal of that color and pattern. Then the last page is a huge fold out page where each of the animals are part of a mural, but all of their patterns have been changed. Ian loves the “flap” part of the book. He’ll sit there and we’ll go through it 4 or 5 times before he gets bored with it. Plus, they don’t have just one animal under each flap, but multiples so we can also count how many are there. It’s not that complex, but it’s another great story we can make our own. Ian can do the sounds of the animals, count how many are there, tell me what the colors are, etc etc.
So those are Ian’s favorites at the moment. He has other books he likes to read, but these are the ones he keeps going back to and I’m really glad they are in my collection. Although, I have a feeling that once the Thomas DVDs go back to the library, I’m going to get into trouble.
The Count
0And you thought I was lying when I said Ian liked the Count….
You know how I said that while Ian does like Elmo, he asks for either Cookie Monster or the Count more, yeah, this should prove that. Ian wanted to watch the count when we got home tonight and Jesse decided to video tape him asking for “Count”. Yeah, by the end, Ian was losing his patience.
Yeah, this was one of the first times we danced to the Song of the Count and Ian loved spinning…if you couldn’t tell by me almost running into one of the walls from being so dizzy.
Ian loves dancing to any song sung by the Count. He has so much energy when he dances like this that it tires us out waaaay before it tires him out. This was the third time this morning I believe.