looking for advice | 15mth checkup

If you've seen some of my tweets, we are getting overrun with little black ants. Normally, I have no problem of putting out ant traps, but now I've got a one year old who would think that would be awesome! and something to play with. The ants are of course drawn to the food trail he's been leaving, but now they are starting to branch out and show up in odd places, like the bathroom. [ ed note: You still can't leave your door open in CO even though there are few mosquitos and flies. Apparently you get little black ants. Who knew? ]

So, I've been looking on line and have tried a vinegar and water spray to discourage them from congregating in the front room where Tobo plays. So far that has led to the group dispersing into new and exciting areas. I also have an "eco" friendly soy oil spray. It says its kid/pet friendly, but it also says wash hands and eyes if you get in contact with it.

I've got ant hotels down in the kitchen, which now seems to be cleared of critters, but I really can't put those down out front. SO, any suggestions?

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As a side note, Tobo got his 15 month check up today. He's just shy of 30 inches tall, 20lbs 3 oz, and is in the 23% of head sizes. He did really well, and only got upset for the shots. (understandable). Awesome moment: he was able to follow a complicated request from the doctor without any couching from me. :D hee!

A: faster than you think.

Q: how fast can your toddler move? I found out today. I was looking for books on airports in the kid's section of the library today after story time. It has swinging glass doors between it and the rest of the library. Tobo was wandering around with me. Well kind of. He was wandering around near me, grabbing magnets of the bookshelf ends and generally enjoying the chaos of meet the puppets, put your cushions away, etc. I have no luck finding the books, so I turn around to collect Tobo ..but there is no Tobo. I look in the rows on either side, but then catch sight of his stripped orange shirt outside the doors, across the lobby, about to attempt the stairs to the second floor. I of course bolt over there, but then follow him up as he climbs the whole staircase up to non-fiction. He asked to be carried down once he reached the top, which I was totally willing to do. So, yeah, Tobo can go up stairs! Yikes! Tobo has no regard for stay near mommy!

happy birthday tobo!

The last month has just been amazing. So many milestones that we have been looking forward to have come and past in a blink of an eye. Almost too many to mention.

Tobo is 29" tall (20%) , 18.5 lbs (5%) HC 18" (40%) as of his one year check up. The doctor is not worried about the 5%, but we've cut out giving him water and give him milk instead. I'm thinking about also including a 4th meal/snack in the afternoon. I think maybe tobo isn't taking enough time during the day to eat what he needs, so he's up a lot at night still to get the rest. Yesterday we did this and he actually was up only once and was ok with just a pat on the back and a return of a plug. (pacifier) He also spends a lot of time tottling around usually with his hands full, babbling at top volume.

Last week was motion, this week is language. So far in the last week, Tobo has figured out how to shake his head for no, yes, how to sign for hungry, thirsty and at one time actually verbally mimicked "yeah, I help." almost pitch perfect. Paul and I look at each other and said "did you hear what I heard?"

My mom is here this week -- as well as the first blizzard of 09. Poor mom. So much snow for a Floridian. We hope to get out to lunch to day before she flies out so we can do a little bit of celebrating for her birthday. We've been pretty much snowbound the last few days, but no one really cares because we just watch Tobo all day.

Last weekend we had Tobo's open house which was great. We had about 25 people come by, lots of balloons for the kids as a party favors, a carrot cake, which I realized a week later I forgot to put a candle in! It was really good, and Tobo only froze when we sang happy birthday. It was a lot of fun and he did really well. I had scheduled it in february in between naps, so by the time we got to March, the party was right in the middle of one his naps. So he was a real trouper.



Next week we will say hello to Paul's side of the family including our niece and tobo's aunt. It should be good! Hopefully there will be less snow. :/

Truly it has been an amazing year. So fast. At times so slow. And now I feel like we're flying with out a net -- we've officially older than any of our baby books.

the walk and the fall

Be proud of me. I just put Tobo down for his morning nap with him being pretty much still awake. AND he seems to have put himself to sleep. Amazing.

Tobo has been sleeping kind of weirdly this week. Twice now he's crashed at 5:30p -- before dinner. Twice also he's been up at 5:30am but on completely unrelated days. His third tooth is well and truly here. Though no sign of the other tooth. And we've started to toddle:

Walking You Say?


He's been doing this for about 3 days. Yesterday I left his shoes on in the afternoon once we were home from errands and he started toddling all over the front room and hall way. Like dumbo, he's found his magic feather I guess.

The other ability he's been working on is climbing. This has not mixed well with tax time as I pull out files and file boxes. When I first pull out these boxes, my mommy radar said "dangerous". But then I talked myself out of it in hopes that he'd get to practice "stairs" by climbing up and down off these boxes. I should have listened to my radar:

The Fall


I had a real debate about posting this one, but in the end I thought it be better to show than not. Tobo was fine afterwards. He fell about as far as he would if he had sat down hard, and he landed on semisoft stuff behind him but my heart just about jumped out of my mouth when he took his tumble. Thank goodness kids are tuff.

We're quickly approaching the Open House so I should probably plan soon. I'm hoping the weather is nice so we can use the porch. And I hope Tobo doesn't freak out with this many people. I was kidding with paul that we'll put tobo in a separate room and let 2 or 3 people in at a time. I think it will be fun. I haven't decided if I'm actually going to bake or not. I'm tempted to make a sheet cake instead of cupcakes because I'd like to do carrot cake and cream cheese icing. *yum*. I've ordered his birthday gifts because I couldn't find them anywhere near us. I've picked up napkins, but that's about as far as I've gotten. I'm expecting around 20 folks max.

Does anyone have any open house planning sites that would be helpful?

rock around the christmas tree

From Baby Grows Up

Saturday, we decorated tobo's first christmas tree. Or rather, mom and dad did and tobo tried to break into the filing cabinet the tree is set up on. We're about to take the show on the road and visit grandparents and other family for the holidays. Sadly, we won't be able to see Uncle Jerry, who passed away suddenly. Paul's just back from the funeral and we're still kind of all in shock. It happened so fast and he was such a good man. He will be missed.

While dad was away, Tobo has been busy. We had a couple of bumps and bruises because someone *ahem* was not paying attention to where their hands and feet were. The doctor is going to think we're terrible folks when I take tobo for his 9mth. I had to move it because Monday it was -8 degrees at noon...if I don't have to take the kiddo out, I'm not going to. I did dig out a christmas present early. I knitted this crazy striped sweater for him -- already too short in the arms!

From Baby Grows Up

Along with the sweater, I whipped out a pair of mittens. He actually kept them on in the store, which means they will be too small by next week. Hope to plan better for the hat I want to make as well. Apparently I've got the knitting bug back. Kind of interesting to do when you've got a child who wants to see and touch everything you're working on. While I was doing that, tobo was doing this:

From Baby Grows Up

So much for my amazing baby proofing of the bookshelf. No, he's not standing unsupported...but really, you can see that it's just a formality that he needs a hand on the bookshelf for balance. We expect him to start walking any time during the holidays.

A few entertaining firsts:

1. tobo has stated initiating play. So like, peek-a-boo around the couch corner, or on the changing table.
2. We've often pointed out hot things to him...today he started pointing them out to me. *ahhh-ssssss* he said after he took a bite of stewed carrot. *ahhh-sssss* he said back to me when I said "hot coffee!" He also says it about cheerios, but the point is, its something different. It goes on the list of ma ma ma ma da da da da, growling, and giggling. It's really cool.
3. love/hate affair with the music box: So on the plus side he's started dancing when he hears music playing. He was actually kind of singing along to rocking around the christmas tree at KSooper's yesterday when we were shopping. The flip side of this is he started crying everytime his little music box stopped playing last night. He could not for the life of him figure out how to make the music go again. Also, it was time for bed.
4. He got really interested in my glass during lunch yesterday. It was plastic, so I let him investigate it. He gets a big gulp and as I tried to take it away he grabbed it tighter and tried again. So he got a bit of a bath, but after it was empty I let him go to town. This was the same kind of intensity we saw just before he started eating solids. (I should say chewing solids, he's still hit or miss whether he will swallow anything) Just has to have the grown up stuff. He loves eating whatever your eating. (hmmm where did he get that?)
5. Somewhere over the last 3 days he's grown too tall for the 6-9 month stuff. All his long pants for winter are now capri's. He still fits alright in the smaller sizes, but I notice. I'll be digging out a couple of pants for the road I think from the big kid bag.

From Baby Grows Up

caught in the act: I want what you're having

I just kind of hit a wall this afternoon. As paul said, I must not be well because I did what he said and went to bed instead of work. After some sleep and dinner I'm feeling better. It's been a long couple of days without a break, Friday to today, since Paul has stuff on Monday nights. I forget to stop sometimes.

In the mean time Tobo has been learning all sorts of things. I found him like this after a nap yesterday and today:

From Baby Grows Up

Fish got to swim, birds got to fly, I got to chew, Mom.

From Baby Grows Up

We think he's teething again. /obvious> I see the value of bumpers, not just to keep his head from getting bonked, but to keep the dum from being thrown out of the crib, the baby can't explore the environs of the crib by sticking his hand out to grab everything, and of course not chewing on the bars.

The next surprise is when I turned around and found him here:

From Baby Grows Up

He's officially a scooter now, not really crawling but definitely showing up in places you don't expect. I never should have taught him to sit down instead of falling over from standing. He's unstoppable now. If you notice, there's a pillow up blocking his direct approach to the chair, so he obviously routed around it to get underneath there.

From Baby Grows Up

Where shall I go from here...

I don't have a photo of it, but Tobo also started waving back to folks this week. This was kind of surprise because it wasn't one of those life skills we had really been working on. He just think its the most awesome thing that he does something and everyone else reacts.

I'm tempted to offer to lead?instruct?explore? cloth diapers for ladies at our church. We have 15 new little ones this year and that's likely to keep happening next year. Maybe I could invite wmw as a guest speaker. ;D I don't want to be pushy about it, but at the same time, it could be a lot of fun. Especially since everyone can save money these days, it's not like I'd get a commission. Any suggestions about how to approach folks who don't know the wonder of cloth diapers?

Well, off to compound my sleep catch up today by going to bed early. Nite all.

sitters R us

So Tobo has been doing well since his 6 month visit. He's 25 and 3/4 inches tall and 15 and 5 oz at the moment. He's definitely becoming a 6-9 mth kid. Hope to dig out the bigger clothing tomorrow. We've also started doing such lovely things as banging on the tray when we see something we like and eating pureed green beans. We are approved for cherrioes and teething biscuits, so we need to pick some of those up at the store.

The other update is that he's become some what of a sitter. He sat on the floor tonight for closet to 10 minutes, reaching out and grabbing toys and chewing on them. He only lost his balance when he reached to far. Pretty cool!

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...