15 (1/2) months old

Jacob turned 15 months old on the 7th of this month. Wow, where has the time gone? Everyday I see more "little boy" in him and less "baby". He is such a joy to be around and we have so much fun everyday!

We went to the doctor for his 15 month checkup on Friday. He weighed in at 25 lbs, 4 oz (60th percentile), his height is 31 3/4 inches (70th percentile) and his head circumference is 18.8 inches (70th percentile). All in all, the doctor thought that he looked great. She did still bring up the issue of him seeming to cock his head to the right more than to the left and that his face doesn't seem to be entirely symmetric (sometimes his right eye doesn't open as wide as his left). She talked about the possibility of getting a CT scan done so that we could be sure that there was nothing wrong with Jake's head, but in the end, we decided against it. I am 100% confident that there is nothing wrong with him, but I understand that the doctor is just trying to cover all of the bases. She said herself that he appears to be right on track (or even ahead on some things) regarding gross & fine motor skills. And, when she said that at his age he should be saying 2-3 words and I told her that he has 20-30 words that he can say, she agreed that he is doing just fine!! She did give him an antibiotic (amoxicillin) for a sinus/ear infection that he has been battling for a few weeks now. (We have all been sick and I was just waiting to see her for his well baby visit instead of scheduling a separate appointment).

Developmentally, Jacob is doing awesome. He is literally running all over the place and he LOVES to be outside. He would swing all day if I let him and he really enjoys playing in the dirt or with the stones in our driveway.

He is also pretty fearless and loves to climb on pretty much anything! Just the other day, I watched him climb up onto the chair in our living room (I tried to get video of it, but of course he didn't do it again once I had the camera on). He can jump, clap, dance, turn around in circles (and make himself dizzy!), play "chase", go up (but not down!) stairs by himself, do a "sort of" wave bye-bye, and get on and off some of his ride-on toys. He also loves music and will try and "sing" along sometimes. He is also now proficient at buckling the top buckle of his carseat (and he insists on doing it himself - like a lot of things these days!!) He is very independent! And, he will play very well independently too. Sometimes he will sit in the living room and play with his toys or look at books for a good 15-20 minutes. I love watching him play by himself. In those moments, I can just see his imagination flourishing!!

Speaking of books, Jacob LOVES to read! It is the first thing he wants to do when he gets up in the morning - he goes straight for the bookcase and starts pulling books off the shelf! He will pretty much listen to any book, although his attention span is not really that long so the shorter books are better. I sometimes think his favorite part is turning the pages to see what is coming next. He will pick out a book, hand it to me and then climb into my lap to listen to me read it. Then when it is done, he'll either put it back on the shelf or drop it on the floor and go pick out another one. Those are some of my favorite parts of our day!! He is such a cuddle-bug and is super affectionate when he wants to be!

Jacob is also very good at listening to direction and doing what I tell him such as "Go get X and bring it to me", "Sit down", "Stand up", "Drink some water", "Let's go into your room" or "Give Mommy a kiss". He also understands some questions such as "Do you want to eat?" (he'll go to his highchair), "Are you ready for night-night (or a bath)" (he'll go into this room), or "Where is the [insert toy name here such as ball, car, etc]?" (he goes and gets the toy that you are referring to). It amazes me every day to see the things that he understands and knows that I am saying. His mind is such a little sponge right now and he is taking it all in!!

Jacob's sleeping habits haven't changed much and they are still great. He did drop his morning nap in early August (right after we came back from our beach trip). It was a hard transition at first (he wouldn't sleep in the mornings if I put him in the crib, but then he was super fussy around 11am). It took about 2 weeks to get to a point where he could stay awake (and not be really fussy) long enough to eat lunch before his nap. For awhile, I was feeding him lunch around 11:30am and then he was in the crib by noon, but now he is on a much better schedule. His daily schedule looks like this: wake up between 7:30 & 8am, eat breakfast and then play/go to playgroup/run errands, eat lunch between noon & 12:30pm, go down for a nap around 1pm and (most days) sleep until 3:30pm, play & eat snack after nap, eat dinner between 6pm & 6:30pm, bath (every other night), brush teeth, read stories and in bed between 7:30pm & 8pm.

Jake is still eating great too and it helps that he now has 11 teeth! He has the eight in front (four on top and four on the bottom) and three in the back. He is definitely a drooler and therefore he has to wear a bib everyday so his shirt doesn't get soaked (sometimes we go through two bibs in one day!). I will be VERY happy when all of his teeth come in this drooling stops!

As you can see, Jake is getting much better at feeding himself with a spoon and fork. He's still not perfect at it and it makes quite a mess sometimes, but he loves doing it by himself (and it makes it a lot easier for me too!)

And sometimes he insists on using a "big" fork instead of a little one.

He is pretty much eating anything and everything that we eat. He has his standards that he eats every day for breakfast and lunch, but at dinner he usually eats a little bit of what we are having. These days his breakfast consists of every other day either oatmeal (the flavored instant kind) or toast. He also always has some sort of fruit with those things. For lunch, he generally has cheese, meat (either deli turkey or cut up pieces of chicken), raisins or figs, some sort of cracker (ritz, animal crackers, or goldfish) and fruit. For dinner, in addition to eating some of what we are eating, he usually has yogurt and/or avocado. He loves carby things like mac n cheese, bread & crackers, but he'll also eat things like spinach that you wouldn't think a 15 month old would eat! I haven't given him anything to drink other than water or milk. He gets a cup of milk when he wakes up (in the mornings and after his nap). Sometimes he drinks all of it right away and sometimes he only takes a few sips. It just depends on the day. If he doesn't drink much, I give it to him either for breakfast or dinner so that he can finish it.

The most amazing thing to me about Jacob right now is his vocabulary. He is talking, talking, talking!! Of course, some of it is gibberish that I do not understand, but he is also saying a lot of words. In the past month or so I have heard him say the following: dada, mama, outshide (for outside), toes, shoes, no, yes, uh-oh, night-night, car, truck, down, hot, cold, bye-bye, cheese, sharp, shout, cacker (for cracker), fishy, snack, teeth, eyes, nose, shirt, stick, milk, t-t (for tv), splash, a-n (for amen), itch, duck, quack, dog, stuck, toast, kitty, tiger, nice, hat, bath, eat. I would say that some of the words are things that only Keith and I would understand since we are around him so much, but he also says some very clearly (and correctly in context).

And, it amazes me at the number of words he will try to repeat if I say "Can you say X"? He will usually try to say whatever I said and a lot of them come out correctly. Like on Friday when he repeated "doctor" while we were in the waiting area - I was pleasantly shocked! We are working on animals and their sounds, but the only one he will really do right now is duck & quack, that is his favorite (and apparently the only animal living on Old McDonalds Farm in Jacob's world!!). He will also pant like a dog if you ask him what a dog says (and he loves dogs and has no fear whenever he sees them!!) I am also trying to get him to say peoples' names, but he doesn't seem to want to do as well with those.

In the behavior department, he has gotten better with some things and worse with others. He still sometimes tries to push the limits with touching things he isn't supposed to or doing exactly what he tell him not to do. His favorite "defiant" behavior these days is throwing his food or cup off of his tray when he is finished eating. He will hold a piece of food over the side of this tray and when I say "Don't drop that!", he looks right at me and drops it (and then says "uh-oh" all innocently!) He does it a lot and it is very annoying!!! But, he has also gotten better about not throwing a tantrum every time I tell him no (for awhile he would throw down whatever he was holding or slap at me or Keith if we told him no). He doesn't get as upset now when we tell him no and he often just stops whatever he is doing and walks away.

We have started using the "time out" method of discipline and it seems to be working somewhat well. I am more of a proponent of spanking, but Keith wanted to try this first. I am not 100% sure that Jake understands what time-out is or why he has to sit there, but we are working on that. Whenever Jake is defiant, we sit him down, tell him why he is sitting in time out and count to 30. At first, he would try to get up or cry when he sat him down. But, now he will actually sit there and wait until we tell him to get up. I will even walk away from him or do something else while I am counting and he is good about not getting up most of the time. There are still some times when we have to lightly force him to stay seated, but these are few and far between now. We are working our way up to making him sit for a minute (things we have read say that you should make a child sit in timeout for one minute times their age. For example, a one year old sits for one minute, a two year old sits for two minutes and so on.) Like I said, I am not sold on the "timeout" method of discipline, so we'll see how this goes. All in all, Jacob is a really good child (and I am not just saying that because he is my kid!). He definitely has his moments, but for the most part he is a good listener and he does what we tell him to do.

I am sure that I am forgetting something about Jacob that I really wanted to get down on paper! I have been such a slacker lately at posting these monthly updates but I don't want to forget all that he is doing at this age. His personality and abilities change so quickly that I want to be sure to capture everything so I can go back and re-live these moments in my mind. This is such a fun age and although I would love to stop time, I am really excited about seeing the future and watching Jacob change and grow into more of a little boy. I've said it before and I'll say it a million times more....I am SO blessed to be Jacob's mom and I truly cannot remember my life before he was a part of it. Life is definitely different now, but I wouldn't change a thing!