15.5 Months

Nate is almost 16 months old. The babies' due date was July 19 so he is 1 year adjusted age today!

Doctor Visit
Nate Bug had his 15 month visit last week. Here are some of the things we talked about.

Eating: We were hoping to get the ok from the doctor this time to switch him from formula to whole milk. Unfortunately, we didn't. She still wasn't happy with his size or the amount of real food he is eating so she wanted to start him on PediaSure instead of milk. I wasn't sure that I wanted to go that route just yet so we made a compromise. We have always given Nate a bottle of formula before his food since we knew the formula was more important for his growth. So I wanted to try giving him food first at each meal to give him a chance to learn to eat better before we start on the PediaSure. I just didn't feel good about it yet. It seems really really sweet and it has 30 calories per ounce. Regular baby formula has 20 calories per ounce and his preemie formula has 22. It just didn't make sense to me to feed him something that tastes really yummy and that is super filling and then expect him to increase his food intake. I'm hoping we'll see some improvements so we can stick to learning to eat as normally as possible.

Height and Weight: The bug is growing! He weighed 19 pounds 14 ounces (14%), was 28.5 inches tall (19%), and his head was 17.5 inches (16%). The percentages are for a baby 12 months old so he is on the small side of normal for his adjusted age. For his actual age of almost 16 months...he's still not even close to the chart. Ideally, they catch up to their actual age by 2 so he's got a lot of growing to do in the next 8 months :)

Speech and Communication: The doctor showed some concerns about Nate's lack of verbal communication. At 12 months, he should be saying "mama", "dada", and at least one other word. He is saying "baba" but there doesn't seem to be any real meaning behind it still. She referred us to a speech therapist for some help. There isn't much they can start working on with a baby so young but she wants to get a good evaluation done so we can see if there are any major things we can start working with now. We should start that at the end of this month.

Sleeping
Sleeping was a bit rough the past couple of weeks. Nate decided that bed time was his least favorite thing in the world and he wanted to make sure we knew it. He's always been so good going down to sleep but for the past 3 weeks he has started screaming when we put him down at night. He doesn't do it during the day for naps so we didn't really know what his deal was. The worst part was, he would scream to the point of throwing up...every single night. So every night, we would have to go in 30 seconds later and change his pjs, his blanket, and his sheets. After 2 weeks of that, we finally realized that if we eliminated his bedtime bottle, he wouldn't throw up. He still cries when we put him down but I'm hoping that it's just a phase that will pass. Now he gets a little milk right after dinner and nothing else later. I worried he'd wake up earlier in the morning hungry but apparently he's a big enough boy that it hasn't made a difference.

Favorite Foods
The foods of the month were strawberries, watermelon, cherries, and broccoli. He LOVES them all! Here's a little video of him eating his strawberries. They are a bit too slippery for him to pick up so we feed him with a fork. He gets VERY impatient :)

Favorite Things
We have quite a list this month of Nate's favorite toys and activities. He sure is growing up.

His very favorite game this month is chase. It is so cute! If we growl at him or say "I'm going to get you" he'll take off screaming and running in the opposite direction. Since he still needs some help walking, we need two people to play so it's his favorite game when dad gets home. It also means that there is never anyone extra to take a video :(

 He LOVES playing in the water! We got this little slip and slide out the other day and filled up the end of it like a little pool. It was the perfect size for Nate. Even filed with cold hose water, he splashed in it for about 15 minutes before I finally made him get out. 

His favorite toys this month are his little toy car and this string of beads. Random, I know, but he loves them both. 

Nate also has a favorite word this month. It's funny because it seems like he'll find a certain word hilarious for a few days. Every time we say it he cracks up. It will last a few days and then another word will be funny. The past week or so the word has been banana. Crazy kid!

New Tricks
Nate has made some great improvements in his physical skills this month! He is an official walker, almost an official crawler, and he has finally mastered getting into a sitting position from laying down!

Here's his first official walking video. I look like an overprotective mother in it but the only way he would keep going was if he could see my hands out in front of him. I promise we don't hover over him like that all the time :)

Here is the best video we have at crawling attempts. He is so so close!!! As you can see, he is getting extremely frustrated with his lack of mobility. Mentally, he is ready to get around but physically, he just isn't quite ready.