William: Fifteen Months!

While it's too much work to try to keep up with monthly updates (considering I'm still running over two weeks late on this one), I figure I can still post updates whenever we have a well-visit at the doctor's office (since that's the only way I know William's height and weight anyway).

William weighed in two ounces shy of 22 lbs at fifteen months and measured 30 inches, although there is probably a little leeway in those measurements because someone was not feeling very cooperative at the doctor's office (I'm pretty sure he remembered getting his twelve-month shots because he started screaming as soon as we got back to the exam room). He's wearing size four diapers and primarily twelve-month clothing, although there's always some discrepancy among the varied brands. He's also (finally!) up to eight teeth; after cutting all four top ones a month or so before his first birthday, he went on a three-month hiatus and didn't start cutting numbers seven and eight (both on the bottom, opposite sides of his middle two) until just after fifteen months. We're pretty sure he's working on some molars right now, but nothing has broken through yet. Sleep has also been pretty fantastic lately. He sleeps from 8:00 pm to 7:00 am and goes down for his nap at 12:30 pm for anywhere from two to three hours. He still fusses a little when we first put him down, but usually only long enough for us to leave the room and close the door. It took some battles to get where we are now, but I'm definitely loving this sleeping stage.

While we might have expected William to put on more weight between his twelve and fifteen month visits because he eats All.The.Time, he is also ALWAYS on the move. He pretty much wore through his first pair of shoes in a matter of three months, partially because he always wants to go outside and knows no limits once he is there (rocks, mud, puddles--everything is fair game for this kid). He even started climbing the ladder up to the slide on our play set, which caught both Darrell and I by surprise. Stairs are also no problem for our little guy; I think we used the baby gate at our new house for two weeks before realizing was futile. William learned pretty quickly how to crawl down the stairs, although he is now trying to master walking down them (which makes Mom and Dad a little bit more nervous--but he's always really good about holding on to the railing and going slowly, so we let him do it).

Talking is still, well, a little behind. He does a fantastic job of communicating, but only through sign language, pointing, and grunting. We've more-or-less agreed that William's first word was "dada", pretty much because that's the only word that he'll (occasionally) repeat on command. And he definitely seems to understand who it refers to. I'd pretend to be jealous, but he's such a daddy's boy that it doesn't surprise me in the least.

A few favorites worth noting: He LOVES his bat and ball. Or really, balls and anything that resembles a bat. He will spend at least ten minutes a day hitting/pushing his balls around the house using everything from a Swiffer dust wand to a wooden spoon. Another favorite "game" is pouring stuff into and out of bowls, cups, buckets, etc. He will spend pretty much an entire bath pouring water back and forth between cups. He also really enjoys books and a lot of times will just pull them off the shelf and page through them on his own. And once he finds a favorite book, he typically insists on having that one read before naps and bedtimes for multiple days in a row (we actually went out and bought a book because he fell so in love with a library book that he refused to fold his hands for bedtime prayers until we had read that book). While he will pretty much eat anything we put in front of him, blueberries are easily his favorite food (there may or may not have been an incident on the 4th of July where he ate an entire pint before 9:00 am. I swear we tried cutting him off multiple times, but he wasn't having it).

I don't have any "staged" photos of him at fifteen months, but I did find plenty of random pictures from the past few months that haven't made it on the blog.... Enjoy!

Go Twins!

The aftermath of a (rare) picky meal where all he wanted do was spit the food out of his mouth

Playing before bedtime!

Isn't that shirt awesome? Mini-nerd alert :-)

Mom wouldn't let him eat any of the candy at the parade, so he decided that he would load up on stickers instead

A rare morning nap in the stroller--he's so innocent looking!