It's a boy for sure!

I went to our 18 week ultrasound and sure enough, it's indeed a 2nd boy. Mark's a boy maker for sure. Here's an ultrasound off our new lil' pumpkin. He was very active on the ultrsound, squirming and kicking up a storm, just like Myles. We're very excited!

Mark goes to Gymboree

Myles is obsessed with "knock, knock." That was last week. Now he's progressed to "Come in," chirped in a sing-song manner that you could recognize whatever the words. We're working on "Who is it," which is turning into "who are you" and something else unintelligible. He's also singing the ABCD song with replacement words since he's not up on the lyrics. He knows all his letters, yet not in song format. And he mixed up the phonics sounds for some letters, eg., S is "ssss", C is often "kuh," etc. He knows the phonetic sounds of all the letters as well. We got a Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD from the library which he adores. I've been trying to find one without the phonetic sounds so that we can disconnect those a bit.

In other tangled up things, he's started saying "thank you welcome." We'd say thank you all the time, so I started saying you're welcome, but now he thinks it's one long stream.

Our schedule was hectic this week so we couldn't do Gymboree on the normal day. I had the 18 week ultrasound on Monday. It's a boy! A healthy, beautiful, active little boy. But it blocked Gymboree, so we went on Saturday and Mark came along. Here are some shots.

Horses hats and Geese

3rd time on a horse. Still lovin' it.

Feeding the pigeons and geese at a park.

Halloween

Harvest festival at a pumpkin farm.

Boo at the zoo with friends.

Myles was DJ Lance Rock from Yo Gabba Gabba.

More 2

My aunt Bessie tickling Myles.

Myles playing with his Arkansas cousins.

My dad's first visit with Myles since he was a newborn.

Myles at the harvest festival.

2nd time on a horse. He loved it.

And then we rode the trains.

September/October in photos

Sharp dressed man.

Reading Goodnight Gorilla before going 'night night.'

My friend Charis visited Myles late this summer and turns out to be a pro baby wrangler, all on instinct.

Myles is already trying to fill his daddy's shoes.

Myles and Mark in the ultrasound room, seeing our new baby for the first time.

It's almost Thanksgiving already

Wow. October flew past. My trip to Arkansas to visit my grandparents really took a chunk out of it for sure. The trip was great. Myles got to meet about 9 other male cousins between the ages of 2 and 7. He preferred the 7 year olds. The effect of Mark letting Myles knock him down while wrestling means that Myles thinks he can topple anyone, regardless of size. So he made the 2 and 3 year olds cry and moved on to the 7 year olds. And when they tossed him around like a sack of potatoes, he didn't cry, he just climbed back on again.

It was great, but I'm glad he's not surrounded by that type of roughhousing frequently - he'd become a little thug. He not only got to meet his great-grandmother and great-grandfather, he got to see my dad again, who hadn't seen him since he was about 3 months old. What a shock for him. He went from seeing a baby to a full-fledged toddler. He's sort of macho, so he was impressed with Myles' showing of testerone.

Yesterday Myles slept through the night til 7:30! Seven thirty I say, people! His best so far is usually 6:30 just before Mark wakes up for work. He then has to stash him someplace for an hour until I get up when he's leaving for work. Today, I hear, "all done, dada." I'm thinking he's complaining about a tv show ending in the living room, but nope, he's in his crib still! Glory be! All ye nations sing and rejoice. Sleep!

I think he usually wakes up due to poop and I've been avoiding giving him any apple juice or juice in the evening, but he's been the king of diarrhea due to teething for the last couple of days regardless. We were sick for the last two weeks so things have been thrown off, but he's a great eater now. He'd started to really drink a lot of rice milk once he learned how to use a straw cup, but after Arkansas he got sort of iffy about milk. We temporarily switched to almond milk since rice milk didn't seem to exist there and he wasn't having it! I however, have now switched my morning drink to hot vanilla almond milk, sprinkled with cinnamon, nutmeg and maybe a pinch of turmeric. Yummy! Works well with rice milk too, but the almond milk already has a nutty aftertaste. Hot chocolate without the chocolate. I'm a little afraid of chocolate since this pregnant is fraught with stuffy noses, nasal headaches and migraines. I don't want to add an actual migraine trigger if necessary.

He's also not nursed (it was down to once a day before nap, mostly comfort nursing) in about 3 or 4 days now. Yay! I was pretty sick of that. He's getting to the point where he hasn't even asked and when he does use a word that he uses for milk, I can hand him the straw cup filled with rice milk and he doesn't freak out. Sometimes he initially cried for 20 seconds, but quickly sucks it up and accepts the milk. I'm not even attempting potty training 'til December or January. We're still just trying to get the vocabulary down - to get him to express himself and understand what we say about poop and pee and diapers. I'm sure it helps if he can tells us that he's got to go before he does it, so the more we get him talking, the better. When we do potty train, it'll probably be us staying home for a week, with him running around naked with no diaper for the beginning.

Facebook has made me not so good about updating this blog. I think I like the instant feedback I get versus writing here and never knowing if anybody's read it or not. But I'm going to go back and put in some non-worded picture posts of Halloween for you all. Cheers.

Progress

Is happening faster than I can document. He ate grapes for the first time on Thursday, has settled into a vegetarian lunch of green beans and peas and maybe some chicken if he's looking for more. He ate sliced bananas for the first time (used to refuse any banana out of the skin) on Friday. Started using a fork on Saturday. Ate pizza crust (first substantial amount of bread) last night. Just grabbed it off my plate, dipped it in his turkey gravy and ate it that way, making his own bread and dip combination. By the second breast crust, he was gnawing it plain.

Fed himself a COMPLETE bowl of oatmeal today! Of course he's wearing about a 10th of the bowl, but he did it by himself and even grabbed the normal cup of rice milk that had a straw in it and got the straw in his mouth and drank it without spilling the cup! Not even a baby cup with a top, just a plain old cup. He started out with food slowly - he didn't like much, but he's making up for it quickly.

We've also entered the realm of parental influence. He used to do what we asked him to. Now he doesn't. BUT, he now does what we do. So he'll see us do stuff and mimick. So rather than ask him to eat something, it's better to just eat it yourself and let him see.

Still working on the potty. We announce what we're doing whenever we're on the potty. He gets that much. I'm not going to really try and train him until January. The weaning and simultaneous molars coming in and the sleeping in the bed all night is a lot at once. He slept til 6 am today. After a year and a half of nightwakings, you'd think we'd be grateful, but we're still trying to get him to sleep longer! Gotta get some sleep before the new baby comes.

I really like how long it took him to grow up. It goes fast and Myles really milked babyhood as long as possible. He didn't rush to food, or sleeping through the night or walking. He took his time and now looking back, it's almost over and he's not even 2 yet. We get one more shot at this and then that's it for babyhood. I always thought that babies grew up so much slower than dogs, but really, not so much. They get pottytrained much faster than babies, but other than that, they only have then beat by maybe a year in terms of cognitive understanding and language comprehension. Max was fairly clueless for the first year of his life.

We had an ultrasound yesterday and everything looks good. We go back in 5 weeks for another one and we'll probably see the gender by then.

Now off to bathe him. There's so much oatmeal stuccoed to him that I should just hose him down!

Mark and Myles at a playplace

What a big boy!

Myles circa September

Being pregnant has really sapped my energy and enthusiasm for blogging and posting to Facebook, so now I'm severely behind on updating pictures and stories of Myles. So be prepared for a bunch of disjointed posts trying to catch you up!

Here's Myles above with his Paddington Bear he got from his great-aunt Margaret in England. He's just now getting into stuffed animals, so Paddington's getting some use. He also has a bear from Kenya that he likes to kiss.

His food progress is great. If he'd been eating this way all along, weaning wouldn't have been a problem. He seems to be a sensual eater, so he's got to actually get the bite. He hated purees and skipped them completely. Everything needs to be chunky and whole and bitten into, so here's a great example with him and the corn on the cob. He eats bananas the same way (you can't cut them into pieces - he's got to bit it off the stalk in the skin) and grapes as well. He loves the sensation of biting things. He's also discovered peas. And initially, they needed to be fresh frozen peas, pan-sauteed. He wouldn't eat soggy peas from a can or heated in water. But yesterday I tried microwaved peas and he accepted them.

He's a juice fiend now too now that he can use a straw and a juice box. Which is good, because he's iron-deficient, so we hide his liquid iron supplement in apple juice. He's discovering the allure of sweet - finally at 18 months! Yesterday he said the word 'cookie' which surprised me because we don't eat those much around here, but apparently it made an impression.

Boy is making progress

Myles is making lots of big boy progress. We haven't nursed ONCE today! Yay! Not without struggle, however. I am currently wearing a turtleneck - he can't have any access to the boobs at all or he'll claw at my clothes. I was wearing my robe backwards for most of the day.

12 week belly picture

Okay, I've been informed by Mark that this picture makes my stomach look rounder than it actually is, so don't freak out yet.