14 Months Old

Lesson Learned #7: A 14 month old's vacation day limit may be only 3 days (not 4) if you are running around like crazy people.

Don't get me wrong, Adam is always good and usually fun. Of course we get our fair share of temper tantrums and meltdowns, but comparatively, I think we get about 95% smiles to the 5% whines/cries/yells. And we had a great time on our vacation. But as Day 4 went on, Adam's ability to listen declined and the delays between whines grew shorter and shorter... and a two hour nap didn't go as far as it 3 days before. But it may have made a bigger difference if he had been in one bed or one location the whole time.

Yesterday was my 31st birthday and Adam's 14 month old mark. I don't know how I feel about being 31. 29 was iffy for me, 30 wasn't too bad . . . 31 just feels . . . odd. I don't know how to describe it, really, except that I have this sudden urge to lose 15 pounds and drink way less - which may bring me down to no drinks at all, the way I've been going lately. That's a scary thought. I like beer.

However, how I feel about Adam being 14 months old is very different. He is a blast. He's learning new things constantly. He is creative, has an incredible sense of humor (he laughs at his own jokes frequently), and loves to play and do new things.

When you walk into a room and "catch" him doing something that he thinks you might not have approved of, he quickly tries to correct it or run away from whatever he was caught doing. I'm not quite sure where he gets that - he gets told no probably more often than he should, but he never really gets yelled at for touching anything. This afternoon Shannon walked into the room Adam was in to find him dipping his hand in a cup of drinking water. Adam saw Shannon, gasped, took his hand out, grinned really big, then grabbed the cup and quickly took it over to Shannon, kinda like, "here you go, Dad, I was saving it for you." Goofball.

He has recently been much more responsive and craves positive attention. All day yesterday, as if he knew it was my birthday, he would pick up my things and hand them to me. He loves to be told "Thank you" and getting high fives (and we're trying to teach him the fist bump too). When we were out of town he even told Lisa "Thank you" when she gave him a piece of tortilla. Sadly, it was on video but the video got lost. I swear it happened though - and I have a witness!

This weekend in addition to saying "thank you," he attempted "banana" and twice he said "outside." He's also learning the wild animal sounds and can growl like a lion and chomp like crocodile... and demonstrated his use of it today when he was sitting in Tiffany's lap at daycare today and three other kids wanted to come take their turn. She said he turned and looked at her with a scowl, then turned back to them, growled like a lion, and pushed them all out of her lap.

He still has two teeth and I'm not seeing any new ones coming in. Sometimes it seems like he's teething but then no teeth show themselves... but he's not bad at tackling most of the foods that other kids his age are eating as well.

He's running. When he's not running, he's walking fast. He only goes slow when he's sight seeing, which is usually when I'm in a hurry. And if there are rocks around, good luck - he's a rock eater and likes to taste them all.

He enjoys peek a boo but as graduated to hiding behind doors. He'll go into his room and shut the door, then giggle. I'll say, "where's Adam?" and he'll giggle again. If I say "where's Adam?" a second time, he'll start to whine and get nervous that maybe I really don't know where he went (and he can't open the door by himself). So I open the door . . . and he's in there, giggling away.

On top of being creative and a comedian, Adam is opinionated. He was not happy with being forced to sit and watch Shamu in the heat -- it was boring, no colors, no music... just a big tank and if you weren't looking in the right direction when the whale jumped, you missed it. So he wasn't impressed. Shannon and I were, but not him. So he kicked and screamed and fought with Shannon, and when he finally gave up the tantrum and we thought he was done, he reached over and grabbed my hand and put it in his mouth . . . and then he bit me, hard. It made me incredibly sad, but I hope I reacted in a way that made him realize it was not at all acceptable. We'll see.

Adam's most recent accomplishment has been to avoid getting sick for three whole weeks! He's on a daily dose of Allegra and I finally think we've found something that can keep him away from those sinus infections.

My first accomplishment as a 31 year-old was being able to completely recite Are You My Mother? from memory to Adam while I was changing his diaper this morning. He thought it was hilarious, and I was impressed with myself (pat on the back). I also realized that we must read that book a whole lot.