17 Month Update

I have so many things to write but I have so little time! I am so busy….. everyday! I feel like 24 hours in a day is not enough. I feel like there is so much to do that I don’t even know where to begin. Anyway, enough about my rambling. Back to the subject. I really want to pen these down before I forget. I cannot retain any information in my head and blogging about it is the only way I can look back and remember when he did what.

So 17 months of Gaven…. FUN! and exhausting. I can only imagine it’s going to get more exhausting from here on out. I need a maid…. if only I can afford it.

Feeding time continues to be a struggle in this household. Sometimes he eats very good, but most of the time he is just refusing food. I’m not sure if it’s because I have high expectations of how much he eats or he is just a light eater. He does eat more than I expect sometimes.

Breakfast: He usually gets 3-6 oz of milk (formula or cow milk), some bread and banana, or avocado, or hard boiled egg, or crackers.

Snack: Penny usually feeds him 5 oz of milk, cheerios and pears or crackers and some sort of fruit. With us, we give him 4 oz of yogurt and some graham crackers. We usually feed him at around 10-11 am. Penny feeds him around 9 - 10am.

Lunch: Penny usually feeds him 5 oz of milk, turkey wonton noodles with mixed veggies, oranges With us, we usually give him spinach and cheese tortellini, with grapes/ blueberries.

Nap

Snack: Penny usually feeds him plain crackers or potato bread and pears. We usually feed him applesauce, bread or butter crackers. His snack time with us is usually between 3:30- 4:30 pm depending on what time he gets up from his nap. Penny feeds him around 4- 4:15pm.

Dinner: Around 5:30- 6:30pm, he gets porridge with carrots, brocolli with fish or chicken and grapes or watermelon. Or sometimes, we give him mashed potatoes with chicken and peas and some fruit Or tortellini and some fruit.

Before bedtime, he gets 6 oz of milk (cow milk or formula).

Of course his menu varies but those are the typical food he will get.

He uses probably 5-7 diapers (size 4) a day. We are not pushing his potty training because we feel like he is not ready for it. He doesn’t understand the concept yet and he doesn’t know when to tell us if he needs to go. We sometimes put him on the toilet after meal, and he would sometimes poop and sometimes not. So it’s a hit or miss thing. Will try it again later when we feel like he is able to communicate more.

He likes to imitate what we are doing. He sees us vacuuming the floor, he wants to vacuum too. He sees me dusting, he wants to do it to. I left my swiffer on a table when I was done and a minute later I noticed that he grabbed it and started dusting where I was dusting earlier. I thought that was kind of funny.

He is starting to talk more and more. Sometimes, you can make out what he was saying and sometimes he is just babbling. He says no, hot when the food was too hot for him, high chair, where it go (where did it go), dirty, shoes, ball, hi, bye, doggie. When we asked him what does a rooster say… he said cockadoodle do…. well sort of. It doesn’t exactly sound like that, in fact it was pretty off but we know what he means. lol. If you ask him where his nose, mouth, eyes, ears, knees, belly button are, he knows where to point. He knows some in chinese too… like nose, mouth, eyes and ears.

He sleeps pretty good at night. He goes down anywhere from 7:30- 8:30pm. He continues to sleep with us in the morning around 6:30 am to 7+ am. One nap a day (about 2 hours). He will not take his morning nap if he is home with us, but if we were to go somewhere, he will most definitely fall asleep in the car.

He hurts himself a lot because he climbs on everything. There is always some sort of a “boo boo” on his forehead or his knees. Not going to lie, it sometimes hurts me when I see him hurt himself bad. Then again, I am almost immune to it now. haha.

He loves the water. We took him swimming a couple times so far and he just loves it. He plays with garden hose in the backyard. Help us watering the plants… he saw us doing it and he wanted to do it too. Whenever we are hanging out in the backyard, he wants to grab the garden hose and starts spraying the plants. He usually just sprays at the same spot … hahha… my plant will die from overwatering soon. He kills a couple of my plants by stepping on them, not on purpose but it makes me so mad. He also loves playing with shovel and digging the dirt. His toy shovel of course, once in awhile we let him use the “real” shovel.

We also noticed that he has a thing for wheels. He loves wheels. He spins them and is always pointing them out when he sees one.

So many pictures to share but that will have to come in another post if I want to get this done and posted right away.

Oranges love

This little guy continues to amaze me each day. I don’t even know when he knows how to eat oranges like that…

16 Months Update

Gaven turned 16 months old last Friday. He is growing up so fast! My little man is so sweet and affectionate... and mischievous! He likes to test our boundaries everyday.

He has become quite a climbing monster. He climbs on everything and uses anything as a stool to help him get there. We can’t take our eyes off him even for a single minute. It’s hard for me to take a good picture of him now. He won’t sit still and is constantly on the move. He climbs, falls and hurts himself a lot. He once got a black eye from hitting the corner of his eye on a ladder! The black eye lasted for a couple weeks.

He loves playing with water and dirt. More so with water. Whenever we are playing outside in the backyard, he heads straight to the garden hose. Loves getting sprayed and wet and full of dirt. Boys. Maybe girls are more tame. He uses his little toy shovel to dig the dirt. Probably learned that from his dad when we’re doing gardening outside.

He is not eating as much food as we would like him to. The most stressful part of taking care of him is getting him to eat enough. knowing that he didn’t gain any weight from his 12 month and 15 months check up makes it even more stressful. Every meal time, I have to “force” him to chow down as much as he can. We also started him back on formula, Enfagrow. After talking to a few mommies out there, we think it’s best to put him back on formula since he is not eating much. Formula has more nutrition we think. He drinks it out of straw cup. It is not recommended to put him back on a bottle since they can grow attached to it. We have already successfully taken the bottle away from him when he was 12 months, and there is no way we are putting him back on a bottle. I talked to my ped, and he suggested that I put the formula in a straw cup. So right now, he takes formula twice a day and cow milk twice a day. Total intake of milk is about 22 oz. We should probably drop his milk intake to get him to eat more solids. Will see.

His current favorite book is Brown Bear. It use to be Good Night California. We read the book together every night over and over again. He likes to point to the animals and say “what’s tha……t?”. Although it sounds more like “what’s sa…????”

His sleeping habit has gotten worse. He used to be able to fall asleep on his own at night. We would say our good nights and turn off the lights and close his bedroom door behind us. Now, he wants us to stay with him and rock him. When we step out of his room, he starts crying for us to come back in. not fun. He also wakes up earlier and earlier so he can come to bed with us. We need to probably start sleep training again, which is hard now that he is older and more alert of his surroundings. And his bloody murder cries in the middle of the night just kills us. We have given in the past couple nights. We should really start be firm and start sleep train again. Hopefully we can start getting some rest and peaceful sleep again.

He can say a lot of words now. He just started saying “no” recently… probably learn that from us since we are always saying no to him. He also said “high chair” which sounds exactly like high chair. He understands a lot of things we say. He knows to put his dirty clothes to his hamper when we tell him to.

His 15^th month is fun and tiring.… I can’t wait to see what his 16^th month brings us!

Gaven’s Second Hair Cut

This time, from Janet. I must say, she did a much better job than us. Gaven’s first hair cut from us can be found here.

Lots of distractions to keep him sitting still.

Free finally! Running around Janet and Jimmy’s backyard after the hair cut.

Gentle Barn

We went to Gentle Barn a few weekends ago. Learn more about this place here.

Gaven met and petted horses, turkeys, pigs, cows, sheep and goats. He was going to smack them at first. John taught him to be gentle and pet them. He finally got the idea that these pets are not for smacking but for petting. Yes, that’s my kid. He smacks everything.

And oh, he was going to play with their drinking water too!

Makella’s 2nd Birthday

Makella turned 2 a few weeks ago. We had the pleasure of attending her “tutus and ties” birthday theme this year. It was very hot day and I’m glad that we put on some sunblock on Gaven before we went there.

Gaven didn’t really get to participate in most of the games and activities this year. Next year, for sure….

Front room painted

Finally! We went with Cobblestone Path by Benjamin Moore. We bought Olympic Zero VOC paint and had Lowes paint match the color.

 

Don’t mind the wet patch on Gaven’s pants. His diaper was too full and leaked!

We love the color. Now, we just need to put more lights in and add crown molding!

Gaven loves the beach

then again… who doesn’t? He was afraid of the water at first. The fear went away after all of us (Jimmy, Janet and us) showed him there is nothing to be afraid of.

He ran into the ocean a couple times! He fell in the water and screamed… but he still loves the water! The water was freezing cold and yet that didn’t stop him. It was a fun day.

15 Month Check Up

Gaven’s 15 month’s check up:

weight: 22 lbs

height: 32 inches

He had 2 shots. He didn’t gain weight from his 12 month’s visit, grew 1/2 inch taller. Doctor isn’t too concerned about his weight even though he is in the 20-25% percentile in weight. We have been trying to feed him more food but he doesn’t seem to be very interested. Doesn’t eat much which frustrates me knowing that he didn’t gain any weight at all. He has this very bad habit- he would spit his food out if you continue to feed him when he is done eating. He would open his mouth to eat it but then push it right back out with his tongue. Drives. Me. Nuts.

Daycare- He loves his daycare to death. Throws tantrums every time we pick him up. Some days are better than the others, but most of the time, there will be a lot of fighting and screaming, and arm flailing going on. Seriously, people are going to think we abuse him at home or something. I think he likes the routine there and having many friends there. He has a set of routine over there and knows exactly what to expect every day. With us, we just kind of do whatever we want to do. We take him out shopping with us, run errands and do stuff. We don’t just sit at home and have a set of routine. So he doesn’t know what to expect each day with us. Books/ Internet says kids his age loves routine. So that’s the only explanation I can think of. Or he just doesn’t like us that much.

I took so long to do his 15 month update that I don’t remember what else to write. Let’s see….

The doctor told us that we can basically feed table food to Gaven now. Anything we eat, he can eat. I find that he is not ready for that yet. He still prefers to eat soft food. He doesn’t like to chew his food. So I still continue to steam his fruit for him, ie apples & pears.

He continues to sleep with us at around 6 am in the morning. We love it but I am sure this will come back and bite us one day.

He is beginning to test our limits more and more. He throws food on the floor despite us telling him no. He ignores our “no’s” and continues to climb and stand on chairs.

Each day, we see him grow into this little person in front of our very own eyes. It’s amazing to see how much he has grown. No doubt there is a lot of hard work and sacrifices made, he is still the best thing that ever happened to us.

Egg Hunt- Round 2

We did round 2 at Debbie’s house. Sunday, we went over there for round 2 egg hunt and lunch with the family.

He did a lot better here, because cousin Jasmine kept handing eggs to him. Jasmine would find eggs and put them in his basket. Jasmine and Jacob were not allowed to grab the eggs out in the open because those were for Gaven. hahha… so he had a lot of help here.