15 Months of Wells

I'll likely do updates every three months since that more or less coincides with doctor well-checks and recapping every month is a bit much once a baby hits toddlerhood. I absolutely still refer to him as a baby though. We'll see how long that lasts.

This 15 month post is quite late because he turned 15 months on October 10th.
Wells' 15 month appointment wasn't until the 18th, though, and he weighed 23 pounds, 5 oz and was 31 inches long. He's in the 60th percentile for both height and weight.

This is kind of a little bit of everything I've been tracking for the last few months. A lot of it is just things I want to remember and sometimes I realize that moms don't often know much about what they don't experience; for example, a few EBFeeding moms have asked me if he's still on formula and I often ask them about weaning. We don't learn about what we don't have to learn. Also, I referenced a few friends' baby posts more than once when I was pregnant and when I knew nothing about babies. You never know what information can be helpful.

Formula. We stopped formula after his first birthday and I used up what was left in the cupboard (not much because I bought it week by week...I'll never understand the people who have 6 cases of Enfamil to sell/donate when their baby turns one. Like, plan.)
IN CASE YOU'RE WONDERING: I asked his pediatrician about the Toddler Transition formulas that are in the stores because no one had ever said anything about them. But they're there, so people must buy them, right? She said it's a waste of money and not to buy them.
Right now, I have alternate between 2% and whole milk for a few different reasons but he loves milk. He went through a phase around 14 months where all he did was drink milk and wouldn't eat. He seems to be on the other side of that now and back to eating almost anything I give him.

Bottles. He will drink out of anything, luckily. It's really easy to get liquid into him so we have multiple sippy cups. I've found that the Munchkin 360 and the straw cups were better for training and not as useful now: he just likes to shake them and spill them because they have handles. I like these cups for water and this one for milk.

I stopped his naptime bottle right before he turned 15 months. For weeks, he'd been down to two bottles a day: before his afternoon nap and before bed. I found that getting him out of his routine was really useful in cutting down the number of bottles per day; after being at my parents' for a weekend, he was too distracted to wander around looking for bottles because he didn't know where they were there. It was easy to cut a couple out after that.
I keep the bottles out of sight and when he wants milk (he just kind of whines and points at the fridge), I give him his red sippy cup because it's the most leak-proof and he does like to carry it around. I give him this before his nap. Sometimes he finishes it in his crib, sometimes he drinks it while walking around. He doesn't love being held while he drinks. He sees it as playtime, so I usually just let him drink on his own terms.

Many moms I've come across are insistent about stopping bottles at 12 months and I wavered on this, thinking I needed to go cold turkey. Then, a counselor/LC told me that there was no hard and fast rule and he was still a baby and it was okay to just let him have a bottle. So I just started slowly moving away from the bottle instead of insisting he be done with them all at the same time. He'll work this out in his own time and I'm not actually that worried about it. And he's still going to get a sippy cup at bedtime with milk before I brush his teeth anyway, so I don't see the difference in it being a bottle right now.

My goal for November is to drop the bottle altogether since he'll be 16 months soon. HOWEVER, my problem is: I still carry a bottle for long car trips or days out because I refuse to give him any of these sippy cups in the car because they're not THAT leakproof. That bottle ain't leaking. So...what kind of cup can I give him in the car?

Note: I'm also realizing that 90% of having a baby is trying to figure out if what everyone tells you do is actually valid or applicable to your baby.

Sleep. I wrote a whole post about sleep training. He still sleeps through the night 2 1/2 months after that weekend of sleep training at the beginning of August. Some nights he'll wake up and talk to himself at random points but he'll go 7pm-7am now without any great complications. In the last week, he's woken up once or twice a night (there was one bad night two weeks ago where he was just "up" forever), but I usually just change him in the crib, offer him a drink of water, and tell him it's time to go to sleep. *Usually* this works.

Naps. Naps are so weird. So is sleep training, though. I decided to just switch him to one nap around the 14.5 month mark because he was fighting a second nap. I can usually manipulate his naps so he'll sleep either in the morning or in the afternoon, but he won't do both. It's usually better for me if he sleeps in the morning but I know that, physiologically, he needs the afternoon nap or it's way too many hours until bedtime. So some days are better than others, depending on the schedule. I suppose it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things (no one is asked to hand over 4 years of nap schedules when registering for kindergarten) but it's wrought with decisions/questioning when you're in the middle of it.

Until I had to actually *decide* on how this kid would nap, naps were never an issue. I suppose I did things backward for 10ish months, but he slept after almost every time he ate for the first 5 months and I don't even remember when he switched from 3 naps to 2 naps. Naps were constant! I never tracked them. He can sleep anywhere if he feels like it. I'm gonna say I gave up on 2 naps at 14.5 months and he likely switched from the 3 naps to 2 naps around 6 months when we moved here. I've mentioned that I delineate time differently than a lot of first-time moms might: infant Wells was in Wyoming, baby Wells was in Pittsburgh, and now we're onto toddler Wells.

Teeth. Wells has 16 teeth, at least. So we're, I think, through the horribleness of teething for now and, while it was a rough first year in a lot of ways because he was teething so much, maybe it'll be smoother sailing from here on out. As in, he won't be as fussy because he got that out of his system.

And random things to remember:

He adores the vacuum. He follows it around, laughing and squealing. And if he can see it from wherever he is and it's just parked, he wants to be next to it, inspecting it. When he sees the carpet shampooer, he gets even more excited because it's like a vacuum on steroids.

Says "Ahh" for water. Whether I'm drinking something, he wants water, or after he drinks water. That's our universal noise/word for water. Sometimes he'll cough a couple of times, I'll hand him water, and that, apparently, also means he wants a drink. Generally, if he says "ahhh", I hand him his water or he starts looking around for it. I usually keep it on his highchair and he can reach up and get it himself.

He says "dada" and "mamamama" when he wants something. He says "Jett" every time the dogs are around and goes after Jett a lot. He tries to say "Scout" sometimes but can't get it out, so he usually calls Scout "Jett" too.

When he wants a bottle/milk, he just wails. OR he walks over to the corner of the kitchen where he knows the bottles are and points up and the counter (and wails). Pointing is huge right now. He points at everything he wants or sees.

He still waves back at himself when he's being waved at by someone else. If he sees someone getting ready to leave or if he is getting ready to leave, he'll wave at whoever is around. If I say "go", he'll wave.

Wells will go get his toys if I ask him to. He knows the names of specific ones: lamb, tractor, Larry, etc.

He loves being outside. He points and wails and runs toward the door and is inconsolable until I take him out. Luckily there's not as much to look at around here as there is at my parents' house. He cannot deal with being inside when he is there. My dad takes him for walks though and he throws rocks into buckets and looks at the neighbor dog and does all of the things a toddler would find fascinating.

Walking around humming and singing, talking and yelling. That's pretty much the norm. He's always making noise and saying words, but they're not real words.

Magnets. He loves magnets. He moves them from door to door, appliance to appliance. He's always looking for what they will stick on next.

He uses a fork to feed himself when he feels like it. Otherwise, he uses his fingers. He's not good at the spoon yet because he flips it over.

Treating the dogs. He can give the dogs treats, which is nice and, I hope, makes them like him a little bit more.

Airplanes, trucks, cars. Anything in this category, he likes to look at and point to and comment on. We live near an airport so he sees lots of planes close overhead on our walks and also can hear them from in the house and he always points to the windows.