15 Months

A typical day in Miles' life involves:

Stoop sitting

Hanging with friends

Eating

Playing

Miles isn't in this picture but he did play in this fountain.
And another one.  Every city should have public fountains.

Acting silly

Reading

and generally being unsafe.

Sometimes on special days we go to birthday parties,

or art festivals,

or the beach.

He watches trains,

and fish at the aquarium.

He chills out on porches in South Carolina on vacation,

or goes for bike rides with the family.

He's a pretty lucky kid with a full life so far.  

• He's on the brink of spitting out words.  He can say a bunch more now but it's a little difficult to understand him.  In his repertoire are the words: mama, daddy, reggie ("gie"), cat, bird, bike, outside, eyes, what's that ("s'dat"), and cheese.  You know, the important things.  He understands nearly everything we say to him and can follow some multi step directions ("get the ball and bring it to me"). 
• He can get his shoes when it's time to go outside.  In fact, he'll bring them to you whether you had intended to go outside or not.  Hello 6:30 am walk around the block.
• He backs up while walking and will pull push toys backwards too, to reposition them.  
• He goes down stairs pretty well.  He's even started going down forwards while holding our hands.  
• He can climb on all of the things now: the wooden desk chair in his bedroom, the couches, the step ladder, the arm chairs, the beds.  It makes keeping things safe (or out of his reach) a little harder.  
• He drinks from sippy cups.  At first he didn't get the concept of holding the sippy cup up in the air to get the fluid to his mouth, but he's finally nailed that skill down.  Thank goodness.  I wouldn't want him to be 16 and unable to drink from a sippy cup, you know what I mean?
• He shakes his head no when he doesn't want something.  He doesn't say no yet.  I'm sure that's coming.  And then that's all we'll hear.
• He's started pretending.  Yesterday, he was pretending to put toothpaste on the toothbrush and then brush his teeth. And he makes his toy plane fly.  And he makes his trucks and cars drive around.  It's pretty cool to see his little brain work.
• The cutest thing of all is when he comes to the end of the sidewalk and puts his hand up in the air for someone to hold it to cross the street.  I get all squishy inside when that happens.

Except for when we were on vacation, he sleeps pretty well.  He goes to bed between 7:30 and 8 pm and wakes around 6am.  He still takes two naps, something his young friends have done away with.  We're looking forward to one consolidated sleep period to allow for longer times to go out and do things but we also appreciate the two breaks during the day.

He's meeting all developmental milestones but hasn't gained any weight over the last two months on our home scale.  I've emailed our pediatrician and we're going to go see a gastroenterologist to make sure we're not missing anything.  And then possibly a nutritionist. I still think it's clearly a calorie deficit issue.  After hanging out with some other babies recently, it became painfully clear that other babies don't move as much as Miles.  I mean, I knew that.  But his basal metabolic rate has to be so much higher than other kids.  He moves ALL. THE. TIME.  When he sits with you, his legs or arms are going.  He's constantly looking around.  He'll only sit for a minute before he's back up and running around the house, finding a toy, emptying a cupboard or a book shelf.  I held some other babies recently and they sit, quietly, look around slowly, make a decision to move toward something and make their way over to it.  Meanwhile, Miles is chasing the 7 year old neighbor down the block.  The other stark difference is how he eats.  These other babies will go to town on some food, happily eating until the food is gone.  Miles isn't interested.  It takes coaxing and cajoling to get things past his lips.  Unless he's hungry and then we've got a five minute window to stuff as much food in there as possible.  Even though the etiology of the weight issue is clear, it still leaves me stressed and frazzled on the bad food days.  I desperately search for new high calorie foods.  We've resorted to giving him ice cream daily.  And even though I hate relying on the TV, it's the only time he slows down.  So then I face a decision about weight gain vs brain mush.  It's during these times that I feel like I'm failing Miles as a parent.  There's this little bug in my brain that makes me think that if I just knew the right trick to get him to eat, he would.  And maybe a better parent would have more success getting food into him.

But those times aren't the majority.  Most of the time, I think that Lucas and I rock as parents.  I mean, we have a kid who holds his hand up to cross the street.  If that isn't a sign of good parenting (and a good boy), I don't know what is.