Adik is now 15 months old! One and a quarter years old! Since I’m always late with the entries and happily backdating it, I wonder if I should even mention that anymore. Ah well. 🙂
[[image:2013_0329_rafe13.jpg:Hi y’alls!:center:0]]
* Mouse over the pictures for captions
We have confirmation of at least eight teeth now! Adik has four times as many teeth as Yaya did at this age, I think! And he is very close to being able to climb onto the sofa. He’s attempted it and can do it if there’s something on the floor boosting his height a little bit. It’s not long now, seriously. He runs around confidently. We have to make sure that he wears his little robeez shoes so his feet do not slip on the tile floor (a.k.a. “the brown floor”), otherwise he keeps wiping out every time he maneuvers a corner at great speed. It is really amazing how resilient he is – after a fall, he needs a bit of a hug and a kiss to feel better, and then off he goes, back to doing exactly what it was that caused the fall in the first place. He only needs comforting if it was a big fall – a normal tumble, he just gets up and carries on as if it didn’t even happen. But yes, Adik is very very mobile. He loves running to the stairs and running into the kitchen to touch the dials on the stove (oh, horror!). We have to watch him very closely. He also loves to play in the office and the barrier of not playing in the office while Mama is working, which we established with Yaya, has most definitely been brought down. Now even Yaya comes and plays in the office and it is very difficult to get them to leave when I’m trying to get some work done sometimes! I am lucky and spoiled though, in that I get to be both a working mother and a stay at home mother at the same time. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on my children’s childhoods as much as I would feel if they got sent to day care and I didn’t see them all day long.
Adik has an almost unhealthy obsession with balls and implements with which to hit them. Said implements could be a ping pong paddle, a baseball bat, tennis racket, badminton racket, sticks, bottles, what have you. When Adik sees a (vaguely) spherical object, he will say “bah-ball”. It’s quite funny. I think he’s combining the word “bubble” and “ball” but who knows! He loves when Vin bounces a ball on the ping pong paddle or hits them against the wall over and over again. He will bring you a ball and a hitting implement and say “bah-ball”, asking you to entertain him with it. He loves to use his new “vacuum cleaner” as a hockey stick to push a ball along the floor. He loves to kick or throw balls around the house. The child loves balls, and games involving balls and hitting implements. Despite bonking himself (and others) with the bats/sticks, he persists with his activities and cannot be deterred. Vin is of course, very excited at the prospect of playing baseball and other sports with Yaya and Adik.
This past month, he seems to have really gotten into books. He loves flipping through Mama’s books and Papa’s magazines (he sometimes rips them by accident), and loves Yaya’s Zootles magazines. He even makes the “awww it’s so cuuuuute” noise when he brings you his personal favorite, the Rabbits issue and loves to look at the photos of the amazingly varied kinds of rabbits in the world. He is very into Moo Baa La La La, Dinosaur vs. Bedtime, and his new most favorite book of the month, Race you to Bed (by Bob Shea, also the author of Dinosaur vs. Bedtime). In Race you to Bed, his favorite page is the one that goes “Oh no! Over the edge to bed!” He keeps going back to this page over and over again and making lovely noises when he sees the page. We sometimes cannot even finish the book at bedtime as he is so intent on going back to this page which is in the middle of the book.
We have all been going up at the same time for bedtime this month. In the past, Adik and I go up later, giving Papa and Yaya some time to settle in. We go to bed when it is already dark in the room and Adik nurses and goes to sleep. This month, Adik has gone up with Yaya, and he gets to read Race you to Bed before he nurses and conks out. Part of this change stems from the fact that Adik is now a squarely one-nap-a-day baby. He gave up his second nap pretty completely. It’s kind of weird and throws our day off somewhat (Vin very much misses his quiet afternoons with Yaya) but we are all adjusting. The nice thing is that even though we all go up together and Adik gets to read instead of getting down to business and nursing, he falls asleep so much quicker. I was nursing him for 30-60 minutes a night to wait for him to fall asleep, but since he gave up his second nap, a) his first nap has gotten longer, and b) he falls asleep within 10-15 minutes of the lights going off. Even quicker if it has been a very active afternoon. So that is nice for me. 🙂
Food status: Well, we pretty much gave up the 4-day trials. Adik has had pretty much a lot of different foods and so far no allergies that we can tell (knock wood). He loves eating what we eat and is constantly eating off our plates so this past month he has tried and loved char kuey tiau, roti canai with kuah dhal, linguini agli i olio, tangerine pieces, club crackers, goldfish crackers, random bits of chicken, egg, and other foods that we might be eating. He does also love to eat Yaya’s toast (uh oh!) and is up to trying anything and everything that everyone else is eating. Adik still nurses, but mostly for naptime or bedtime (or in the middle of the night), and he drinks up to two bottles of Pediasure a day. He can drink with a straw and loves to feed himself. He will take a handful of cheerios (a big handful) and put that in his mouth, or at least attempt to. Maybe one cheerio out of the handful makes it in and the rest is scattered about on the floor. 😀
Speech status: The same words as last month, plus “bah-ball”, and he has now gotten a few more animal noises. Sheep (baa), cow (moo), three singing pigs (la la la) – which is of course from Moo Baa La La La. He also does monkey, bird, cat, dog, elephant and horse. It’s all so much fun. He tends to call Yaya “Wawa” which is terribly amusing. He also loves to babble and “speaks” to us constantly. Unlike Yaya, he uses a lot of different consonants in his babbling. It sounds like a conversation – he is definitely trying to talk to us. This is such an exciting age!
Anyway – let’s move on to the photos of how Adik spent his 15-month birthday. Vin and I forgot to take pictures of the boy until mid-morning, truth be told, but we still took a lot of pictures so rest assured, you will not feel like we have shorted you on the pictures of our intrepid hero. 😉
[[image:2013_0329_rafe01.jpg:What can I get into?:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe02.jpg:Oooh, let’s read! I love to read!:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe03.jpg:Must lean down to kiss it…:center:0]]
He had a normal morning, with yogurt for breakfast, running around and then it was naptime. After that he snacked on different things for lunch, including some of Yaya’s circle toast:
[[image:2013_0329_rafe04.jpg:Yummy!:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe05.jpg:What else (other than balls) can I put into the elephant ball popper?:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe06.jpg:Love my ping pong paddle!:center:0]]
Adik is now big enough to pull the scooter out of its parking spot by the front foyer, and ride it all by himself!
[[image:2013_0329_rafe07.jpg:I love the scooter!:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe08.jpg:Chasing after Papa:center:0]]
I love this shot that Vin took of the kids playing on the stage:
[[image:2013_0329_rafe10.jpg:Cool and casual kids:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe11.jpg:Huh! You think so?:center:0]]
And then Adik gets an outfit change, and has some wonderful smiles for the camera:
[[image:2013_0329_rafe12.jpg:Happy with Frippo and the ping pong paddle:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe14.jpg:Here’s my happy baby!:center:0]]
Next Adik is overcome by a fit of loud and very drooly raspberries:
[[image:2013_0329_rafe15.jpg:Thptttttt!!!!:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe16.jpg:Yaya and Adik enjoy a raspberry-blowing duel:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe17.jpg:Look at all that drool!:center:0]]
And now after that quick raspberry lie-down, Adik is ready to tackle the evening!
[[image:2013_0329_rafe18.jpg:Up and at ’em!:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe20.jpg:More please!:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe19.jpg:Yaya and Adik:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe21.jpg:Adik sticks his tongue out instead of smiling:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe22.jpg:Lepak-ing (chilling) with his sister:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe23.jpg:Huh – what’s on TV?:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe24.jpg:Nothing, you say???:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe25.jpg:Maybe I’ll just hug this pillow for a while:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe26.jpg:No, let’s dance! Dance! Dance!:center:0]]
Adik goes on the stage and pulls out Yaya’s barrettes while she is on the froggy potty:
[[image:2013_0329_rafe27.jpg:Ha ha!!!:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe28.jpg:It is not time for a diaper change!!!:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe30.jpg:Plotting something?:center:0]]
[[image:2013_0329_rafe29.jpg:Another shot I love of both kids:center:0]]
It’s quite a wild ride – seeing Adik grow and develop is just amazing. Words cannot express how wonderful/scary/amazing this whole experience is, and seeing the relationship between Yaya and her little brother blossom and develop, I have no words for it. All I know is the days go by ridiculously quickly, we work hard, laugh a lot, (yell a lot), and every day is an adventure. Happy 15 month birthday, baby boy! We love you!
[[image:2013_0329_rafe09.jpg:That’s all folks! Gonna put the scooter back…:center:0]]
