16 Month Summary

Hopefully this month’s summary won’t be quite as lengthy as last month’s! I'll try to keep it short and sweet.

Favorite Book: For sure Go Train Go. His aunt and uncle got him a little carry-all set of 4 Thomas the Train books. They appear almost identical and yet Forest can pick out Go Train Go from the group every single time. I’m almost convinced he can read at this point… 

 
Favorite Toys: 

His dino is still king of the playroom but anything stackable is also a major hit. 

 He also loves to drive his stuffed animals around in the back of his dump truck and then dump them out. It’s very cute/sorta sociopathic. 

Favorite Foods: Cheese is still the winner. Lima Beans, Bananas and peanut butter are also big hits. 

Schedule. Still AHHHHH. He is finally down to one nap a day. We actually started to see consistent results of a 11:30-1:30 naptime and even had 4 days in a row of 2.5 hour naps. It was glorious. But then he started teething his 2 year molars (true story) and caught a head cold which has been throwing everything off again. 

But in a perfect world his schedule is basically: Wakes up between 6:30/7. Eats breakfast at 7. Has a snack at 10:30. Takes a nap at 11:30/12. Eats lunch at 1:30/2. Eats dinner at 5:30. Has bathtime at 6:30 and is in bed and hopefully sleeping by 7. 

It’s nice when it works like that but we are still having some days of super early wake up calls and super short naps. Maybe once his two year molars are in and cold season is over we will have a bit more predictability. 

Forest set his all-time nap record yesterday, coming in at 3 hours and 15 minutes! It would have been longer but I got paranoid and snuck into his room to ensure he was still breathing and accidentally woke him up. He's still the lightest sleeper on earth.

Stats: Unfortunately we had to take Forest in to the doctor around his 16 month birthday for a lingering cough that hasn’t fully subsided since he caught the flu 6 weeks ago. Because of that I know his weight is 25 lbs, 11 oz, up almost 2 lbs in one month! Not sure of his height but I’m assuming around 33 inches or slightly taller. He’s fitting more snuggly in his 24 M clothes even though his weight is in still in the 12-18 month range. 

Words: In addition to the words he had at 15 months he can now say: Moon, Ball, Bird, Barn, Up, Bye, Eyes, Cold, Sheep and Mouse. He is saying daddy pretty frequently but momma is still hard to come by. I guess 'Mouse' is just a more relevant vocabulary word than 'momma' in his mind… I'll try not to take it personally (sniff, sniff).

Forest has a pretty extensive vocabulary for his age but we’ve noticed that at any given point in time he is mainly focusing on about 10 words and will drop words he said in the past. ‘Dog’ was his first consistent word but once he learned ‘Cow’ suddenly every animal, including dogs, were called ‘cow’. He’s back to properly identifying dogs but we’ve noticed this to be a trend. He’s also gotten much better at saying ‘no’ and ‘yea’ in the proper context which makes communicating with him much easier. 

Physical Milestones: I feel like the pace at which he is meeting physical milestones is slowing down considerably. Right now we are working on walking up and down steps and he’s attempting to climb the ladder at the park. 

We are hoping that he is not going to be much of a climber since he’s had the ability to climb for some time and still doesn’t seem too interested. I have caught him trying to use the couch as a way to climb out of the playroom but with a bit of correction he seems to be leaving well enough alone (knock on wood). He’s also throwing much better and obsessed with stacking blocks, cups, etc.   

Observations: Forest continues to be quite shy. Around people he is familiar with he is pretty confident, charming and outgoing but around new people or crowds he becomes very quiet and subdued. 

I’m a textbook introvert so even though he may have inherited his dad’s good looks, he may have got my personality. My entire family is introverted so that’s some powerful genes I handed down. Nothing wrong with being quiet though! Hopefully my experience will allow me to be a good parent for Forest and helping him navigate his strengths. 

Of course, he may still turn out to be plenty outgoing. He is loving the gym daycare recently. He hops right into the workers’ arms, plays the entire time I work out and then comes right over to me when it’s time to leave and is just a-chattering with excitement the whole way home.  I’m so thankful this has become a fun outing for both of us. 

My biggest challenge: Probably just second guessing myself. This nap transition left me feeling pretty incompetent and confused. And even though he’s mostly well behaved in our household, when we go outside or out in public he is basically a wild animal. At the park he has a tendency to roam, and he will get so far away from me without even glancing back. Calling him back is futile. Same thing if we are just out and about and I let him walk instead of putting him in his stroller. 

He’s just wild with an instinct to run after anything that catches his eye. I feel myself being envious of those mommas whose toddlers stick to them like glue and seem content to hold their hand. I know Forest is independent and confident and curious and fearless and those are all AWESOME traits to have, but they can be a challenge to parent in these early years.   

I don’t want to crush his little exploring spirit but I also want to feel like he’ll listen to me when I call him to my side. I end up using the stroller a lot more than I’d like because it’s just not worth the struggle to chase him around. 

Alright, this post is still kind of long but much shorter than last month’s. I’ll try to keep these up on a monthly basis. Thanks for following along!

Happy Hollow Zoo

San Ramon is really nestled in a great area of California. We have all the conveniences of a suburb with all the amenities of Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose all within an hour’s drive (well…depending on traffic)from us. We had been to the Oakland zoo with Forest back when he was in the 8 month range. He enjoyed it, but a lot of it went over his head. 

When I took him to meet Talia, Kye, and Tal’s mom at the Gulf Breeze zoo in Florida, he was a great age (13 months) and the zoo was a much better scale for little ones with plenty of interactive exhibits. 

A friend mentioned that San Jose had a pretty similar zoo which was more of a park-like setting and geared to 1-5 year olds so Jon and I added it to our list of things to check out. Since his last Friday off coincided with picture perfect California weather, we decided to go for it. We made the 40 minute drive to San Jose to Happy Hollow Park and Zoo. Kids under 2 get in free which was a plus. 

We immediately headed to the petting zoo area which was quite impressive. Kids were allowed into an enclosure with docile goats and are provided with hay for feeding and brushes for grooming. You can also purchase kibble for 25 cents in various spots. 

There are also sheep, mini-horses, chickens, etc in their farm section. Right off the petting zoo is a toddler friendly playground if kiddos need to burn any additional energy. There is also a carousel and an education center where zookeepers and volunteers give talks on various animals at the zoo. There was a snake exhibition going on while we passed by but Forest didn’t seem too interested. Thank goodness he is much more into cuddly creatures at this point in his life! 

We headed out to find some furry mammals but got sidetracked by another massive playground area. Forest is very into slides right now so we let him play a while on the playground while we relaxed in the shade. 

He was very disappointed that he was 3 inches too small to ride the roller-coaster that borders the big play area. He kept freezing when it would start and point excitedly saying ‘CAR! CAR!’. 

At the rate you’re growing, you’ll be big enough soon, bubs! 

Knowing that we’d be facing 5 o'clock traffic soon we decided to start speeding through the rest of the exhibits which include a crooked house play ground and a few animal enclosures including some Fennec foxes! 

I think I was more excited than Forest even though he was wearing his fox shirt for the occasion. There was some construction in front of their habitat so unfortunately we couldn’t get a good photo op of Forest with his (momma’s) favorite animal. Once we saw the foxes we headed back toward the entrance. We stopped to let Forest ride the carousel. 

He chose to ride the lemur, naturally. He was really excited when we first got on but then got impatient when it didn’t start moving for a few minutes. Once it got going he was all smiles though. I was so bummed I didn’t take my iPhone on board to get a shot of his precious face but Jon at least took some shots from the outside. I was gonna let him ride for a second time but we didn’t want to get pushed back too late with the risk of traffic awaiting us. There was also a huge bridge walking path outside the park but we decided to save that for another day. 

We left right around 4 and it ended up taking us 1 hour 45 minutes to drive the 40 miles home. Ugh this Bay area traffic is no joke! 

Soooooooo….we loved the park and wish we had more time to spend there but next time we will be going in the morning to try to avoid bumper to bumper traffic all the way home. I can’t wait to go back! My play group has a play date to the Oakland zoo planed for next week so I can't wait for that either.

Look Who's Talking: 16 Months Old!

Time just keeps marching on and day by day our baby/toddler hybrid is tipping the scales more towards toddler than baby. He’s a 16-month old, play-ground playing, vocabulary-building ball of pure energy and silliness. Here he is to outline his various interests (and disinterests) at this fun age. 

Hey guys! Pretty soon I won’t need my mom to dictate these guest posts to you because I’ll have the vocab to tell it to you for myself. But until then, she’s still my go-to gal for toddler translations. Let’s do this thing. 

Dislikes: 

1) The sun in my eyes.  Which is unfortunate because also on my dislikes list are: 2) Sunglasses and  3) Hats. You can see my dilemma. Did I mention I live in sunny California? Sigh… 

These days I'm pretty easy to please so aside from getting sunlight in my eyes or seeing a peach on my feeding tray, I'm basically at peace with the world. Let's talk about the good stuff. 

Likes:  

1) Sticks. I don’t know why my mom keeps wasting money on toys when there are unlimited amounts of free resources on any sidewalk in town. 

2) Water fountains/bird baths/puddles/etc. Basically anything I can splash around in, especially if it provides enough water for me to completely soak myself. It’s not a successful day unless my mom needs to change my wardrobe at least 4 times throughout the day. 

3) Cars. I used to hate car rides but now I don’t mind so much, #1 because I get to ride inside a car. How cool! And #2 because on car rides I can point out all the other cars on the road. I don’t know why my mom and dad stress about traffic jams. They are fine by me. And have y’all heard of parking lots? Pure heaven. 

The only buzzkill is that my mom refuses to let me run into parking lots/streets to touch all the cars. She says parking lots and streets are where cars play, not babies. Well if playing with cars is wrong, I don’t want to be right. Luckily, I have a few toy cars to play with so I can get my fix. 

And my parents got me these spectacular vehicle-themed fridge magnets which are pretty awesome sauce, though I don't know who invited that plane to the party. 

4) Going down the slide (on my own). 

My mom kept hovering and ‘helping me’ go down the slide until finally my dad came to the park with us and told her to chill out and let me do it myself. Well I sure surprised her by getting on my booty, kicking my legs out in front of me and scooting right on down the slide. I did that enough times for her to let her guard down before I resumed my preferred sliding method of going down head first.Just keeping you on your toes, momma. Look alive!

 

Ok, folks, that’s me. I’ll see ya in about a month!

This picture pretty much sums up how easy these little photo shoots are these days...;)