A photo journal comprised of my thoughts on motherhood and other life happenings, as well as some of professional work as a photographer. Southern California is home.
Growth & Appearance: You gained a lot of teeth over this last month. I have yet to take official inventory for fear of my fingers lives, but I believe you have all your molars and canines. I pretty sure you spent the two weeks I was in the hospital teething, so at some point you owe your Papa an apology for your sour moods.
At your well-baby check-up this month you weighed 26.5 lbs and were in the 98th percentile for height. According to the doc, you’re on track to be 6’4 200 lbs. It’s weird to think of you being taller than me.
Eating: I love that we’re more laid back with your eating. We pay more attention to what you eat over the course of a week as opposed to a single day. When you’re teething, especially, you don’t eat much. You may skip an entire meal. But the following day you seem to be a bottomless pit. So, we remain laid back. There’s no tricking you into eating more anyhow, when you’re done you’re done and you get pissed when we try to tell you differently.
You hold your cup up for a solid “cheers” several times throughout a meal.
You’re still drinking whole milk and you eat everything we give you.
You don’t even look at your food before filling the palm of your hand and shoving it in your mouth. As soon as you know food is being made, you walk over to your high chair and start whining saying, “chair, chair”.
Sleeping: You’re a fantastic sleeper. You wake up around 8:30am, nap from 10:30 to 1:15pm, then again from 4-6pm, and go to bed around 8:30pm. We’re talking about moving you and your brother into the same room and I’m hoping your sleep pattern doesn’t suffer as a result. It’s out plan to move you out of the crib and into bunk beds with your brother so we can put all your toys in a room and call it a playroom.
You wake up happy, always.
Talking: You know a ton of words. Papa and I understand much of what you say, but to other’s I’m pretty sure it sounds like a foreign language. Words we understand: hot, help, down, done, sit, come, broom, outside, car, truck, cookie, dog, trash, thank you, cheers.
If you’re not able to use your “words”, you whine. And you whine a lot. Between your limited vocabulary, your whining, and your directing us by pulling or pointing, it’s pretty clear what you want. You’re a good, though relentless, communicator in that sense.
Development: I probably should have noted this last month, but boy have you discovered the world above you. A plane does not fly overhead that you don’t notice.
You are determined to get what you want and show your emotions when things don’t go your way. Toddlerhood seems to be just around the corner.
You know where your ears, hair, head, belly, and eyes are. For whatever reason, you’re having a hard time with your nose.
Your personality is fun and you’re always looking to laugh. I’ll even catch you mid-meltdown, make a funny face, and your tears will quickly turn to smiles and laughter.
You yell to get what you want. I suppose this is typical second child antics. When you finish your milk, for example, you wave your cup up in the air and shriek until someone takes it from you to refill.
You’re able to jump off your two feet.
You love to pick up trash and bring it to the trash can.
Favorites: You love to mimic Hooper. You watch everything he does and try your hardest to replicate. And so, you love stacking the toy cars on top of one another. You’re more into the cars than ever before.
You also love the “Fox Song” and drag us over to the computer often repeating “fox” over and over again.
You love your toy broom and dust pan and anything else your brother is playing with. And your giraffe… You ride that thing around the entire block. It’s on it’s last leg.
Growth: You weigh 22lbs 15oz (25%), up two pounds since your last appointment at twelve months. While I do pay close attention to what you eat and how much you drink, how much you weigh no longer holds my interest. It’s funny to hear the doctor say, “the only thing he’s below average in now is weight”. It sounds so harsh, like average is something one should be striving toward. You’ll be long and lanky like your parents, sorry. With that said you are above average in head circumference, 60%, and height, 60%. At this rate, you are predicted to be 5’11 and 160. Papa is about 6’1 and 175. I think you’ll hit quite a few more spurts along the way. You have 9 teeth, four top, four bottom, and one first molar on the top left.
Feeding: We started what I refer to as Operation Feed Hooper Different Foods and it’s worked. Mama had to redefine her goals and settle for a mere taste as a designated success, but at the end of the month I can say you have tasted and tried many new foods and several were even enjoyed. The happiness it brings to put together a meal and then have you enjoy it is indescribable. I think it’s innate, a transfer of the fulfillment from breastfeeding to filling you up with other good nutrients. I suppose that’s why woman are typically putting the food on the table. Whatever the case, you’ve tried new things. It’s the small victories…
You’ve taken to holding your own bottle. I’m not sure how, it seemed to happen overnight. It’s much easier now to hand you a bottle of milk and let you roam around leisurely with your cocktail as opposed to having to sit down and feed you. You are, however, quite keen on dumping your bottle upside down and leaving a milk trail wherever you go. You enjoy this even more when you notice Sarah following oh so close behind in anticipation of your spillage. At some point the bottle just becomes a toy and then I start to miss the days where I cradled you on the sofa as you gulped down your bottle. These days I have to follow you around and clean up and remind you “milk for Hooper, not Sarah” and prompt you to “put it in your mouth”, which are just the words sons want to hear from their mothers. Just as I’m writing this I had to get up and retrieve your bottle from the drawer of DVD’s you hid it in. You have me questioning if this bottle training was really a good idea and worrying about what the future of using a cup is going to be like. Not sure what we’d do without Sarah. Her attention to things on the floor is very much appreciated.
Sleeping: You’re still the sleep champion. You go to bed about 9pm, wake up about 7:30am. Then you nap from about 10am-12pm and again from about 3pm-5pm. You refuse to take much of a nap when you’re at your Nina’s house. Not sure why. All I know is that you conk right out as soon as you get home and we usually have to wake you for dinner. We still have the monitor in your room, I can’t seem to part with it. It feels like a life line.
Talking: Life just isn’t like the movies where things happen and there’s no debate or doubt about it. First steps are clearly first steps and first words are practically used in sentence form with the perfect meaning attached. With that said, you’ve said a lot of things. Not consistently and not always coherently. You said what we thought was “doggie” a while back, but I have yet to hear that again. Your Nina said she heard you say “cookie”a long time ago. I think I heard a version of cookie a couple days ago. You say baby and point to your belly. Baby is your first two syllable word. You also say “boom”. Sometimes I think you’re saying “broom”. It’s hard to know. But you did fall on your bum the other day and then proclaimed “boom”. You also took the broom out of the closet and said “broom” repeatedly, rolling your “r” like someone south of the boarder. So maybe you are saying both boom and broom. You refer to Sarah’s food dishes as “nay nay”. The only sense I can make of this is that every time you run toward that food dish we say “no no”. Any phone is referred to as “ma-ma”. Not sure if this is because you recognize me as ma ma and associate the phone with hearing my voice or if you just like to call the phone ma-ma. You say “papa”, but it’s pronounced as both a secret and a question. You try to repeat “Nina” when I mention you are going to Nina’s house. It comes out as “Nay Nay”, so I’m not sure you are trying to say Nina or if the dog bowl is all that’s on your mind. Maybe you can explain all your gibber gabber later. When I can tell you are poopin’ your pants I say “ca-ca” and you repeat “ca-ca” and grab your diaper. Perhaps potty training is in the not too distant future. You also say “ball”, “ca” for “calm”, “gone” after you throw things on the floor, and I swear you say “Was dis?” when you hear a strange noise, like the garbage man coming (Lisa, maybe you were right about Evan… haha).
Development: You have quite the sense of humor. You’re finding more things funny and are starting to repeat the things you get a kick out of. You like teasing Sarah and having her chase you. You break out into a big ol’ giggle session when she nips your little butt playfully. Not sure how this will pan out when you don’t wear diapers anymore. That may turn your giggles to tears. The difference between now and before is that before you found us funny, now you find yourself funny. You’re able to easily entertain yourself these days. You personality has grown exponentially. I was fairly certain you were right handed, but as of late, you’ve been using your spoon quite often with the left hand. You throw a ball with whatever hand has the ball in it. Again, more ambiguity. You are good at following direction. Your new trick is turning around. You think it’s funny when we say “turn around” and you make a 360 degree turn. You also like doing rolls. Yes, I’m teaching you forward rolls. You do so many in succession that you come up a little dizzy and I worry about you holding your food down. You can climb up your high chair like it’s a latter and love climbing onto my desk chair to move the mouse around and stare at the computer screen.
On Becoming a Big Brother: Clearly you have no ability to conceptualize the meaning of a baby growing inside me. What you do understand is that mama has a belly we refer to as “baby”. You like to pat your “baby” as well. You may not understand it all, but you certainly are intrigued by my belly and like to lift up my shirt and poke my belly button. Multiple times a day you prompt me to show you my belly and you proceed to give the baby unsolicited hugs and kisses which melt my heart instantly and make me think that while you are not old enough to “get it”, on some subconscious level the wheels are spinning. Your behavior appears totally innate and makes me question my overpowering logical side.
