The Litabug Phlog

The day after my family left, we had Sam’s 15 month checkup. The pediatrician had been keeping tabs on his unusually large head. At this appointment, his head growth still hadn’t tapered off, so she scheduled an ultrasound for us at Children’s Hospital to make sure he didn’t have hydrocephaly. That appointment was yesterday and, thankfully, the results were normal. He just has a big noggin.

Austin’s been working around the clock the last couple of months on huge projects for a few clients (he almost never sleeps), and then Sam came down with a nasty illness the day after his checkup. He’s had trouble sleeping at night because of the congestion, which means Mommy hasn’t been able to sleep well, either. He’s over the worst of it, though, and being able to sleep helps alot. Now, if we can just get Daddy to rest a little bit…

I’ve posted photos of my baby-turned-toddler recently, but haven’t really said much about how he’s changing. So, for the Grandparents, Great Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and for my own memory, here’s a little Sammy update:

Favorite things:
Noise - Anything that makes noise when it is thrown, dropped, or banged against something else is a hit. He also loves bus, truck, and car engines, emergency sirens, horns…The louder, the better!
Cheese - Especially shredded cheddar, which can be stuffed in large quantities into one’s mouth using both fists.
Animals - Kitties, dogs, ants on the sidewalk, big ugly pigeons in the park… anything living gets undivided attention.
Wheels - Sam will spend long periods of time examining the wheels on his stroller and his toy trucks. He looks like he’s trying to figure out the engineering involved.
Blocks - He loves building towers, though they don’t get very tall before being gleefully demolished. These also fall into the noise category, as they are his favorite percussion instrument.
Big Kids - He gets so excited watching the big kids play ball or run around. And he especially loves Paul Landry, who puts on a silly show for him and gets him laughing ’till he turns red.

Current Struggle:
Throwing food - He had stopped throwing food for awhile, but it started back up again recently. It bothers me not as much because it’s “impolite,” but because it’s horribly wasteful. The rap on the hand thing doesn’t work at all. In fact, he now throws food, laughs, slaps his own hand (to save us the trouble?), and then joyfully goes back to throwing food again. What seems to work better is turning his chair away from everyone so he has to eat in “time out.” He hates being left out of the action and I think is starting to connect that punishment with the food-throwing behavior. We’ll see. Suggestions welcome.

Words he’s been saying (some for a long time, some more recently):
Daddy
Uh-Oh
Cracker - “kookah” or “kakah”
Cheese - “teeessss”
Fish - “sisss” to refer to his goldfish crackers
Chocolate - “Koh-kit” When I shake a little Nestle Quick into his milk.
Mama
Elmo - “weh-woh” (He doesn’t watch TV, but has Elmo books, a puppet, and a costume)
Go! - Usually comes out in a string when he’s walking fast to get somewhere: “Gogogogogogo!”
Bottle - “baba” he never drank out of a baby bottle much (and that was a long time ago), so I think he got the word from the water bottles we let him play with sometimes. He uses it to refer to his sippy cup.
Pop Pop - my dad
Bug - “gug” (Used for the aforementioned ants on the sidewalk).
Kitty - “KEE-ee” This word is a combination of the word “kitty” with the tone of a “meow.”
Ball - “Ba!” or “Da!” depending on the day.

He also does a lot of animal noises, which I won’t try to spell out here. A few times, he’s repeated things I said, then didn’t say them again after that. When I told him he was going to see his friends Paul and Tess, he said “Pa! Tessss!” but doesn’t call them by name in person.

And… here’s a video of some of his early steps!

In just a little over a week since this video was taken, he has become a walking pro!