13 months

Another month in the books! I wrote this post a few days ago, but we are lacking in photos this month. We took a bunch tonight though!

The past several months were about movement, and although Caiden continues to improve in that area, this month seemed to be all about learning. He can turn on all of his toys that have buttons and do cool things. He can usually operate a light switch. He knows what door knobs do, he just can't reach them yet. I can ask him where's my (nose, ear, etc) and he will point to it. He is learning rules and is usually patient with them (shoes are put on to go outside, hands are washed before/after eating, etc). He is such a fun little guy and makes us laugh constantly. He even cracks himself up! He has a stubborn streak for sure though, and let's us know when he is upset!

Turning on his twilight turtle

Reading books

Activities: Caiden loves chasing games, hide and seek, and jumping on people who are lying on the floor. He also likes to help out. If he gets mad about something, all I need to do is ask for him to help. For example: he might be upset about coming inside after playing in the yard, but as soon as I ask "can you close the door?" he snaps out of it and happily obliges.

Skills: More of the same in the movement department- walking, kicking/bouncing balls. He is adding climbing in though... he has been attempting to climb more things which is a little scary! His vocabulary is starting to expand, a sample of the new words we have heard: book (boo), truck (tuc), tree (tee), duck. He tries to say fish but all that comes out is 'ffffff'. Very cute.

New discovery: splashing water. He loves bath time so much more now that he knows how to splash!!

Ignore my nose rub in the background!

Food: Some days Caiden is a rockstar and eats everything we give him down to the last pea. Some days he even wants seconds (and thirds). Other days, he will throw everything on the floor without even trying it- even if it is the same stuff that he gobbled up the day before. We tried introducing him to regular milk this month, but he is just not interested. We have tried everything, but he just pushes it away.

Sleep: Two steps forward, one step back. We did a pretty serious round of sleep training this month. It was TOUGH, but as a result sleep has been going really well save for a few days this week. Some new teeth coming in made for crummy sleep those nights!

Sleepy day

Caiden has a couple of teeth coming in, and hasn't slept well all weekend. Today, after a less than ideal night's sleep, he only got an hour's worth of napping in. He was a tired guy all day!

Towards the end of lunch he was struggling to stay awake. He started out just being quiet and a little goofy

Then he started nodding off in between bites

By the end of the meal he was seconds away from passing out

After we paused to take a few photos, it was straight to the crib for him.

Later in the day... it was dinner time. What do you get when you cross a tired, teething baby with marinara sauce?

This:

He was already a mess,why not throw in some green drink?

And, after this meal it was straight into the bath tub.

Learning lessons

This morning I got a call from daycare.. yet another incident report. They wanted to let me know that Caiden had been sticking his fingers in his friend's mouths all morning, and eventually one of them bit down. Dan and I got a chuckle out of that (Caiden is fine, by the way). Hope he learned his lesson and will keep those fingers to himself from now on!

Graduated!

It's official, Caiden has graduated from the infant room at daycare. Last week he spent increasing amounts of time visiting the toddler room, and this week he was a full time toddler "friend". So far, so good. I'm still not thrilled with the one nap situation, but other than that it's been a good transition. Caiden loves his new friends and being reunited with his old friends who graduated from infants before him. He loves doing everything they do- and in fact they have made him eat better at mealtime and are showing him how to use his sippy cup (something we've been struggling with). His new teacher, Tasha, reports that he is super easy at naptime, even putting himself to sleep on his mat when he sees it! We haven't had any tears at drop off either. I bring him into the room full of friends... and he is off! See ya, Ma! There are such fun toys for him to play with, friends to interact with, and fun activities all day long. We get emails at the end of most days with a few photos and descriptions from what his classroom was up to.

Legos with my friends!

Playing the drums!

We do have a few kinks to work out- it is always an adjustment when someone new is taking care of your child. It's also a slightly new routine to our mornings which of course means I haven't been on time to work all week! We'll figure everything out though and I am sure it will be smooth sailing again soon.

Funny guy

 Here are a few of the things about life with Caiden that make us laugh!

1) A few weeks ago, in an effort to encourage Caiden to eat food that he doesn't like, I would pick a piece of the food off his tray and eat it myself, exclaiming how yummy it was. As he started reaching for the food I thought I was successful... until he leaned over and put it in my mouth instead of his own. He still enjoys trying to feed me parts of his dinner. Sometimes he fakes me out though- pretends like he is going to give me food but at the last minute throws it in his mouth. He thinks that is pretty funny.

2) Recently, this has been happening:

Time to get some bigger pants?

3) If there is anything soft on the ground (a blanket, pillow, stuffed animal), he'll collapse on it and snuggle with it for a few seconds.

4) He waits outside the bathroom for whoever is in there

Happy Halloween?

Happy Halloween!! The town of Acton cancelled Halloween because of the snow storm over the weekend. A combination of wet, heavy snow and trees with leaves on them was disastrous around Massachusetts. We are very lucky that we had landscapers remove a few trees from the side of our house last week, otherwise we would have had damage to the house for sure. We lost a few more trees and lots of branches to the storm.

We had been looking forward to having Caiden help us hand out candy to trick-or-treaters, but oh well. We still donned him in a pumpkin outfit to feel festive.

"Dah" for Dogs

Caiden didn't show too much interest in the farm animals a few weeks ago, but he sure was interested in a friend's dog yesterday! He's been noticing dogs in books recently, and "dah" is now another word in his limited vocabulary.