24mth check-up

For the record Tobo is now 25 lbs (14%) 34.5" tall (50%) and his head is 19" (38%). He's finally over the 10%. Our new doctor at kp was happy his growth was following a normal curve. It was nice to get out of the 10% range.

I feel like we use to do these check ups every 5 minutes, now it will be a year before we are at the doctor's again, God willing. This is the first check up that didn't involve ANY shots. (We got the last H1N1 with nasal spray) Tobo was polite, followed directions and was a really good sport through the whole process. The doctor was mighty impressed with his listening and attentiveness to her requests. She looked over the little questionnaire they give you to evaluate his development and all his stuff was good with only a few things missing. She then tells me that these tests span a developmental range above and below what a 2 year old should be able to do with fine motor skills, large motor skills, comprehension, etc. and that Tobo is doing really well for his age. Great. My kids a genius. Excellent. As an off comment I mention what he had just said before she came in (looking at the instruments on the wall) dis doctor, he tall guy. Well...she's impressed with this little piece of deductive thinking (as am I) and says we have nothing to worry about. Then just before she leaves she says something like 'you're so smart will have to keep any eye on you buddy". and I say: "yeah..wait what?" And then she says that sometime when kids are so far along mentally that they will lack social development, usually after 4 years old. So we should just be aware of it, but everything else looks good. I'm thinking: you just couldn't let him be brilliant and leave it at that? I think it was just an off comment. It was just an odd thing to say. I didn't mention that we've encouraged him set traps in the house for wandering heros, practice his BWAH-Ha-ha-ha laugh and I guess we just can't get a fluffy white cat. Gracious!

birthday week: day2: a really useful engine

Today was Tobo's actually birthday. We had a quiet day at home. He stayed in his pj's till about 1p and stopped playing with his new fire engine only long enough to introduce his trains to each other. He repeated the thomas the tank engine storyline from a morning video in Toboese (alotta nouns with haphazard verbs.) He spent an hour or so in underwear (completing his thomas ensemble) then went down pretty easily for a nap in the afternoon. I think part of the reason he was so calm today was Paul was home sick with us, so everyone was right where Tobo wanted them to be. After nap, we ate dinner and opened birthday cards. So quiet day. We read a number of books about birthdays, but didn't really have a party per-say.

birthday week: day1: the paper trail

Not by design but by circumstance, we are going to end up celebrating Tobo's 2 year old birthday all week. In light of that fact, I've decide to try and post for the next 7 days about what we're doing and how it went. Today is Sunday, daylight saving time begins and the day before Tobo's actual birthday. We decided to open presents today, after nap since Monday is a bit hectic. Notice the nice paper trail. Tobo has figured out how to open presents a little bit faster than at christmas. Today included gifts from Gr.Aunt Nancy, Godmother/father Tara and Richard (and gaggle of god brothers), our tiny yet *expensive* tank engine (yikes!), and Thomas & Friend dvd's from Gram gram and Papa in florida. He was very please with all of it and proceeded to play with everything until dinner time.

We have a number of activities planned (well, thought of) for when his grandparents from the farm our out later in the week, which I will reveal as we go along.

how much he's changed

So apparently it took me 2.5 months to recover from blogging daily to want to write again. This week I've had a few ideas that popped up. Nothing got written down, but at least I was thinking again.

Tonight I've been going over all my iphoto and deleting duplicates - specifically 4000 duplicates since I copied my iphoto library over apparently twice when I was reconstructing this laptop. While I did this, I realized that I am not updating as much as I use to about all him. (or really about anything) Going back over the photos (some of which are hard to determine what is the extra because we took _so_many_ photos of tobo as a baby) made me think about what a little guy he use to be.

He's just shy of three feet now, very verbal and apparently a goal-oriented child. This is going to make potty training a synch, the books tell me. He's at least very interested and we're going once or twice a day, depending on how much effort I feel like putting in to it. He's got it in his sites so look out. Stress Free Potty Training has been a godsend, btw.

He gets that there is a concept of friendship, sort of like he understands that something called cooking happens in the kitchen. He is very much into Thomas The Tank Engine and has started humming something that sounds suspiciously like the theme song. I of course am also humming it so, really whose to blame? He sings something that is like his ABC's (who needs E-F-G?!) and something like twinkle twinkle, itsy bitsy spider, and so on. He spends his day between stories, trains, cars, puppies, and legos. He demands to watch tv every day including football, lions (as in mutual of omaha wild kingdom), thomas, most of which we try to limit to no more than an hour a day. He often demands to talk to gram-gram and papa either by phone or computer. He is starting to chill out about the sitter, both monday nights and during the day wed and thur. We put up a chart to track what's happening in the week. As soon as I put up pictures of who and what we were talking about, he's separation anxiety came way down.

He climbs everything. He throws everything in to the trash if you don't watch him. He spends about 2 minutes a day in time out for random infractions. He's been known to put himself in time out but this is becoming less and less. In short, the twos are coming. We're about a month away from his birthday. I'm hoping to take him out to some place fun that is not overly stressful for his birthday but most of the places I'd like to go won't work for a March birthday. I think we'll probably celebrate small for the actual date and then do something bigger in a few months. Like tiny town or the train museum. I also need to get him in for his 2 year check up with our new doctors and finish up all the shots.

I just can get over how much he's changed.

tobo update: 18mths

So I'm sitting here having breakfast with my late sleeping toddler - he once again slept in to 9am [ed note: this is because he spent 4 to 5am talking to himself] - thinking it's been a while since I wrote. It's been a busy couple of weeks. We had our 18mth check up, a fever, first time with the sitter, first time in the walker room, new couch and saying goodbye to the rocker. Also apparently, this is becoming a monthly blog.

So, the 18mth visit went well. Tobo is 32.5" in height, which is 47% for his age; He weighs 21lbs 6oz, which is 6% (we gain a percentage point from last time); and his head isn't that much bigger. (18.5" or 25%). All of sudden we are no longer in the 10% range of everything. When you see him next to other toddlers, you can't really tell the difference.

His doc's visit went well, so he immediately turned around and picked up the local variety of ick-with-a-fever. It was a really strange cold, no other symptom but the fever. I thought it was just a reaction to his shots for the first day until he didn't cool down. It was still awful since there was very little we could do other than give him tylenol drops and wait it out. He eventually cooled down about 3 days later. What is sad is that probably next week we have to go back for flu shots. :/ In the middle of all this sickness, he's also still cutting teeth. What's scary is he can actually ask for tylenol now ("ty" *nod*) at night if asked. [ed note: Maybe we depend on that too much.]

He also has started throwing tantrums more. Yesterday he was in time out twice: once for banging on the table, and once for pinching. He doesn't really understand being sorry for his actions, but he does stay put for a minute, even if he doesn't like it. I think if we keep at it, it will work for discipline for him. We get a lot of screaming too, usually out of frustration, rarely to get a rise out of us. It's kind of funny because tobo doesn't have a lot of practice at it, so his screams are more like yells and really aren't that loud or annoying. On the other hand, he is likely to share and hand over toys to other kids when playing and is very caring of any stuffed animals or even animal statuette doorstops. He pets them and feeds them, makes sure they have something to drink every day. It's nice to have the kid who plays well with others, at least for now.

With the change in the weather, I'm giving up on trying to heat tobo's room. We have horribly leaky windows in his room (and in our front room). These were the windows that did eventually seal up when a layer of _ice_ formed on the inside to block the leak last year. Also, mister wiggly refuses to stay under a blanket. When he was crib-bound we used a space heater in his room. Since we are quickly approaching the age when he will attempt to get out himself, I'm not really comfortable with that for this winter. We'd rather not do plastic over the windows (this is colorado. we get hot days and cold days) so I'm looking now at finding some kind of temporary weather stripping. The big solution would be to switch rooms. It also means we could do things after he goes to bed, like watch TV or have people over without all the sound filtering into his room. It's just a lot of sorting of stuff. Stuff I'd rather just box up and ignore for a few more years apparently.

We also said good bye to the blue rocker - it had been borrowed and was overdue to go back by about a year. Tobo's getting too big to rock and it would be much easier with travel if he could do without rocking at night before bed. We also got rid of the beige couch in trade for a teal one. The new one is a lot less like a bucket seat and more like an actual couch.

One of Tobo's favorite things to do is to sit at the table in a white chair and play with his cars. He tells us about them, if they are up, down or puppy. We don't know what qualifies a car to be a puppy. The lady across the way as she was moving out gifted us with three big boxes of duplos and hot wheels. Tobo has been playing with them ever since.

The walker room at church has been great. They actually got tobo to scribble while there, which is more than I can do during our days at home. We also tried a sitter (she watches kids in her home) but I think we're going to wait before we go back. It might have been all the busyiness, but Tobo pretty much broke down for two days after he came back, which says to me that he and I aren't ready. Other than that we've been doing a lot of play dates and lots of story time.

I'm trying to pull together a clothing swap at our church, in conjunction with the preschool there, for late October. Everyone thinks its a great idea but nobody has any time to organize it. I'm thinking about maybe including an informational meeting on cloth diapers, especially since cotton babies just came out with a more economical way to do them.

well no wonder

Well no wonder his pants are too short. He's now 27.75" tall. (45%) Still at 17lbs 5 oz, so around 10% in weight and head is 17.5" around at 9 months. We got a little helpful lecture about how he should be sleeping through the night at 9 months, which I think the evidence proves otherwise no matter how you put your kid to bed. Ah well, too late for changes before we leave, but come January, tobo might have some rude awakenings or rather sleepings.

back from there

We are back from the great land of michigan after a two week vacation/deputation visit. It was a really good time to remember what's good about the west coast (of the mitten) and get our fill of high humidity, sunlight, soft evenings, pretty sunsets, and cows. Thank you to everyone who came out to the open house. It was great to see so many people come out for hot dogs and look at the baby. A couple of special folks that we saw:

My uncle and aunt from the far north came down to coo over tobo:



Finally got tobo and Ch together.


We also were so pleased to see uwee's mom and dad as well as far flung friends from kzoo and St. Joe who made the trip. It was a great time.

Paul and I did go to the Beyond Beijing conference in Byron Center the next day, which as an amazing testimony for the work that is going on in China. I hope to say more about that in our prayer letter if I ever can finish it before August. We also caught dinner with a old friends in their new house and we got a chance to catch up with the IV staff worker at Kzoo just before we left. Oh, and we did get out sans tobo, but only for an hour or so due to exhaustion. All in all it was a good trip, but we are ready to be home.

Two weeks in baby time is crazy long, so Tobo has developed a number of new skills while we were away. Tobo can now:
- roll over. In his sleep. Which is most exciting
- one -hand grab toys
- teethe (which means drool)
- sleep in his crib with the light out
- grab at your plate at the table
- grab your finger and chew on it (see teething)
- do baby situps (with help from momma)
- found his feet. (didn't do anything else with them but tried to bend over to get them)
- has probably put on another .5 lb to make him 13 lbs

We tried a little smashed banana today, a lot of it got pushed back out, so I think we'll wait a bit and try again in a week or two. No rush. Really the teething is what's got his attention these days. He's sleeping more consistantly (9pm bed \ up at 1:30a to eat \ up at 4:30a to eat \ up between 6:30 and 7am for the day) and we're at least not up ever single hour of the night. Some of that is we've started to put him to sleep on a blanket on our bed, then when he's floppy we move him and the blanket to the crib. It worked really well until he started rolling in his sleep. So, now he's on a very thin blanket that we tuck in to the mattress once we move him. I think we made the mistake of putting to sleep in arms just to have him wake up when we put him down. But he's so much more alert and aware than he was. I think he will find our place boring now since there is no one here but us.

Paul and I are are glad to be home. It was a welcomed break, but we came home to yet another qwest dsl box on our steps. We now have 6 modems that need to be shipped back. We also came home to clean carpets and many dead spiders. Hopefully we won't have to have the pest control back until fall. I think the spiders are really a summer thing around here.

Today, I think we are doing laundry and may hang some pictures up. I'm certainly taking the day off, not sure if Paul is going to go in or not. Oh, and banana boy will most definitely be getting a bath today.

Lots of photos over at:

From Cute Things M...

our lives are getting more interesting

Today is a good day. for the first time since I moved to CO, I will be able to recycle where I live. They are starting a beginners racquetball class at the fitness center. I'm a lb away from my pre-pregnancy weight. Tobo slept until 10am this morning, meaning I slept in til 9:45am. Life is good!

Speaking of tobo, here are some photos:

not the comfy chair! He's really not a fan of going in the car seat unless we are moving.


hanging out in the sling. This is my hot-chick sling from before. Tobo actually will sleep in this while we're at the office and I'm working.


helping mom with the camera. Well, he's still not reaching out for things, other than kisses from momma on his hand.


so happy to be playing on the changing table! This is what it's all about.


I'm awake! Hanging out with grand-nana's blanket again. He likes it a lot and it's a great size for traveling. Warm too.

From Cute Things M...

Tobo is somewhere around 11 weeks old now. Highlights these days include:

• My fist is delicious!
• I *hate* waking up and not knowing where I am. I rage RAGE at the world, especially if I'm hungry.
  
• I'm cool with the sling, though we'd better be going somewhere in it.
• I like to sleep through the night as long as I feel dry. Otherwise, we're up every couple of hours.
• I am sooo sleepy after a day of hanging out with other people.
• I'm about to go on my first airline trip in a few weeks.
• I'm almost old enough to go in the nursery at church, if momma can let me go. [Apparently the separation anxiety is *much worse* at 6mths than at 3mths]
• I am still howling but now I've added sounds like "il-lee" "go-gaw" and "eh." I especially like it when mom or dad (or both) sing back to me with these sounds.
• My rash is almost gone, though it's trying really hard to branch out to other parts of my bottom.
• My cradle cap is receding thanks to tree tea oil (not allergic to it!) and a bit of selsan blue.

I also wanted to put a diaper update. I know I left you all hanging on the edge of your seats about my diapers. :) Was it the dryer sheets in the dryer on non-diaper loads? Was it hard water? Was it left over diaper rash cream? The answer is...yes. All three were contributing to the problem. I'm happy to say that after doing a stripping in dawn, and then a stripping in calgon (water softener NOT bath salts) the fuzzybunz AND the bumgenius have gotten better. They are still not 100%, but they are at least useable. The down side is that my other fuzzybunz is starting to seize up, which means that it looks like I'm either going to have to strip diapers every 2 weeks for mineral deposits OR find the right amount to add to my laundry loads so that they never seize up to begin with. I'm happy that my mom-in-law wants to do cloth diapers when we're in Mich. We'd talked about doing it for florida too, but my folks have a HE washer, so I'd need advice on what I'd need to do differently. It also means lugging all of our diapers with us (because tobo will use them all in a day) but it might be worth it to avoid more diaper out break.

Our lives are getting more interesting. Paul has volunteered to help with the senior high youth at church, which means he was out sliding down the slip and slide on baby oil Sunday evening. I'm starting that as a movie night for myself and tobo so that I get a bit of relaxing too during the week. We're schedule to join a small group / home group thing on Tuesday this week. I'm hoping it goes well and I'm pretty sure it's what I want to do. Of course, I'm not totally sure what goes on at these protestant small groups. It will be a new experience. I'm debating putting tobo in the nursery for service. At the moment, we're doing sunday school at 9, hang out in between and then service at 10:45a. Or rather Paul is doing this. I'm usually feeding tobo in between and then coming in after the music but for the message. So I guess what I would do is the same, but I'd just leave him in the nursery for the last 30 minutes instead of taking him with me. I'm not quite ready to do this, so we'll see. I need to read up on my development books for his age, cause I have no idea what to expect at the moment.

Work is going alright. This week starts candidate course for June, which is what we went through in October last year. This time around I'll be making business cards and prayer cards for folks, while trying to wrap up a few other projects. I'm hoping to commit to a schedule at work so people know when I'm in the office. Now that Paul and I have been switched to what amounts to "salaried" at OMF (instead of employee and contractor) we can set up flex time for both of us. I'm still working from home, but I just need to be visible there so people don't think they have been abandoned.

I must dig out my kitchen so Tobo can get a bath later. so I'm off to clean up a bit.

shots and growing up

So tobo had his 2 month check up today. He is now 22.24 inches long (40%) and weighs 10lbs 1oz. (25%) His head is now 14.25" (23%). He's almost doubled his weight in 2 months.

I knew he had to get shots, but no one told me there would be so many tears to go with the 5 shots he got as part of the immunization stuff. The tears really didn't turn up until we started getting him ready for bed. Tobo started off life with people poking him in the heel every day for the first week. He was such a trooper, that tonight's tears have really taken me aback. This must be what having a colicy baby is like _all_the_time_. We've given him a dose of infant Tylenol and he is calmer and sleeping. I should have known something was up when the nurse gave us the Tylenol on our way out the door. :'/

check up

Tonight is fussy baby night. I'm not sure exactly why, but he is not winding down for either of us. So I thought I'd write while Paul is taking a turn.

We have been lucky enough to have my mom staying with us this week. She was lucky because Sam had his 2 week check up today and she got to go. He has chunked up a bit and is a little longer than he was to begin with:

Ht: 20.5" (49%)
Wt:6lb 11 oz (8%)

He's chunked up right well, so the doc is good with us going to demand feeding now instead of schedule. (hurray!) Though it means I am likely to be up a lot more and paul will be able to just do emergency diapering at night, I'm taking my chances that Sam's going to give us closer to 4 or 5 hours of sleep at night instead of 2 to 3 hours blocks. The other nice thing about waiting between feedings is he's actually hungry when I get ready to feed him. So we can feed and then get on to diaper changing, instead of mucking about essentially playing with his food. It makes breast feeding a) make more sense and b) become less of a hassle. It's not a perfect system, but it is a vast improvement over scheduled breast night feeding. :( We also found out that apparently he has teeth coming. You read that right. Apparently Sam has natal teeth, which means his baby teeth are already coming in. Which explains a lot, including why I'm getting sore. We'll see how long we can breast feed before he starts biting.

My thank you list is a mile long, so hopefully in the next couple of days I'll get to writing some of those finally. We have one more day of meals from folks, and then we'll be on our own. We have been so thankful for the meals. We would seriously have starved without them. i've also found that caring for a baby is actually like the ultimate civ/catan game. It is the same kind of nurture and build need that I have in both of these games. :)