19 month stats

Jakob

Weight: 23 lbs 8 oz (14th percentile)

Alex

Weight: 21 lbs 8 oz (less than 3rd percentile)

Mary

christmas

We had a very nice Christmas!

The boys made cookies for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.  I think this was a highlight.  Kara made the sugar cookie dough the day before and so when Kara got home from work on Christmas Eve we quickly assembled the troops to get the cookies all cut out and decorated before bedtime.

Here are the boys paying close attention to the instructions.  Actually I think both boys are just trying to figure out when they get to eat the dough.

And watching them decorate the cookies was the best part.  I think Jakob managed to get 10 sprinkles on the cookie and 500 sprinkles on the floor and table.

Alex only fared a bit better because his sprinkles were smaller!

The finished product.  The boys each got to decorate a big gingerbread cookie for Santa.  Here they are leaving cookies for Santa trying to eat Santa's cookies.

I wrapped the gifts after the boys went to bed on Christmas Eve while I indulged in a bit of Home Alone.  It was perfect!  And Kara worked hard in the kitchen getting food ready for our Christmas dinner the next day.  Here is a picture of the tree once all the gifts were wrapped for the boys.

 
The boys woke-up in the morning completely oblivious to the gifts under the Christmas tree.  Here are the boys ignoring the gifts.

But then suddenly ... GIFTS!!!!

And Jakob wasted no time tearing into each of the presents.  We had to do some wrangling to make sure the boys were open the right presents.

It took Alex a bit longer to get the hang of opening presents.  I love this picture.  Alex was just watching Jakob to see what the deal was with the presents.

"I'm not so sure about this."

"Now I got it! This is fun Mommy!"

Our problem was the toddler attention span.  Of course we had to play with each gift right after we opened it.  I think this is why it took us until afternoon to open all the presents.

And sometimes it took a tag team effort to get the job done.

And at the end of the day the only toy I really needed to get Jakob was the Yo Gabba Gabba figurines.  He is a bit obsessed.  You can even see them sitting on the gift in the previous picture.

The boys took a nap after all the gift unwrapping excitement.  We then had some family over for Christmas dinner.

This is a wonderful picture of the boys with Grandma and Grandpa.  There are no words that can adequately describe how blessed I feel to have my parent's so involved with the boys.  A story - We had to wake Jakob up from his nap on Christmas day because our family was due to arrive in only a few minutes.  Jakob went into full on meltdown mode and there was not a single thing Kara or I could do to calm him down.  I just kept thinking to myself, "Grandma is coming over.  Grandma is coming over." because I knew the moment that my mother walked into the room Jakob would calm down.  And it worked.  Jakob immediately reached for Grandma when she walked into the door and he was quiet and smiling in only a few seconds.  The boys adore them to pieces.  And so do we.  We are blessed.

This is also another fabulous picture of Great Aunt Judy with Jakob.  Again.  We are so blessed.

And of course the boys were spoiled with even more gifts.  And this time Alex did not hesitate in tearing open the paper.

It was a wonderful day.

Merry Christmas.

Mary

19 months

This month brought the introduction of some new temper tantrums for Mr. Jakob.  Jakob wears his heart on his sleeve.  And it's a really big heart!  I am continuously amazed at how generous Jakob is towards others.  This is especially true with his brother.  All we have to do is ask Jakob to share a toy with his brother and 9 times out of 10 Jakob will oblige without a second thought.  Jakob will also put up with Mr. Bully Alex on most occasions.  But because Jakob feels his emotions so strongly it makes for an occasional temper tantrum.  And I think because Jakob is such an emotional little guy these temper tantrums can become extreme.  They can be set off for any reason.  But the good news is they usually pass quickly.  I think more and more Jakob wants to be able to communicate his feelings with us and this is the only way he knows how to do so.  And the tears!  That boy can turn on the waterworks in an instant.

We moved the boys from highchairs to booster seats right around Thanksgiving.  And Jakob can often sit at the table for a long time just eating away.  That boy does not miss a meal.  We now have to be really careful with the dogs too because if food isn't being tossed to them then a boy is handing food to them.  Alex is hit or miss with the booster seat but typically does just fine when I'm not around.  We are still trying to figure out this obsession that Alex has with being held by me ALL THE TIME!!  So there are times on the weekend that Alex will end up sitting on the bench next to me during dinnertime.  And of course eating is still hit or miss for our little string bean.  We have been giving the boys those pouches more and more just to be certain that Alex is getting some sort of nutritional value during the day.  We have also learned that Alex is just a really slow eater.  So as long as Alex is not fussy we just let him sit at the table a lot longer to finish his food.  We will also sometimes put the dogs out of the room and just let Alex roam around the house and finish dinner.  We really do whatever we need to to get food into his belly.

Jakob is babbling up a storm.  It's amazing to watch him have conversations with himself, with us, and with his toys.  I love when Jakob will come up to us and babble a complete sentence and then look at us waiting for a response.  He is like, "What?  What part of that did you not understand?"  I think there might be random real words in some of the babbling but it is often hard to tell.  And of course we continue to work with Alex on talking too.  We have gone to our first speech therapy appointment and I think it will be beneficial.  Alex did not have any new words this month but there have been moments where the babbling has increased a bit.  This typically happens when Alex gets excited about something or if Alex is playing alone and doesn't really think we are paying attention.

Jakob

Words: "Mom", "Hi", "Bye", "What's That?", "Woof", "Bottle", "Dog", "Vroom"

Alex

Words: "Mom", "Bye", "Woof", "Vroom"

But can we talk about receptive language.  It amazes me everyday with how much the boys understand.  It actually shocks me quite often when I will tell the boys to do something and they immediately go do it.  I often will speak out loud and ask them to do something not thinking they know how to do it.  It's also neat to watch them have certain jobs each day.  For example, Alex will turn off the upstairs light every morning and Jakob will turn off the Christmas Tree lights every night.  And they know to put their sippy cups on the kitchen counter after they have finished drinking them.  But then there is the stuff they know how to do that drives me crazy.

They can turn on the dishwasher.
They can unplug the television (no way to baby proof that one because of big plugs).
They can flush the toilet.
They can climb on top of the kitchen table.
They can throw items down the laundry shoot.
They can pull out drawers and stand in them.
They can climb anything and everything!

Alex is also learning from our dogs.  They are such great role models! (insert eye roll)  It is hilarious to watch Alex run around with a stuffed toy in his mouth.  He is also obsessed with wanting to drink water out of a bowl just like the dogs.  Please tell me that Alex will realize one day that he is not a dog and also please reassure me that Alex will not start to eat his poop!

The boys still sleep from 7:15pm - 7:00am.  We had some rough sleep nights the past month but I think a lot of that can be attributed to teeth.  Alex has a mouthful of teeth and I think Jakob is destined to have 2 bottom teeth for his entire life.  Though we finally see another tooth coming in on the bottom.  The boys take one nap during the day at 12:15pm.  They will sleep anywhere from 45 minutes to 3 hours.  We never let them sleep longer than 3 hours.

So what do I want to remember about month 19?

Alex
* He loves to play "hide-n-go-seek" in the house.  The more you can scare Alex the better the game.
* He is obsessed with reading books.  Alex will sit with you for hours and point out pictures in books.
* We now scream our head off during bath time.
* Alex is really starting to like stuffed animals.  He will often carry one around the house.
* Alex loves cars.
* We have a new play fort in the playroom that has a slide.  Alex loves to go down head first!
* Alex has no fear (with the exception of strangers).

Jakob
* Jakob is still obsessed with Yo Gabba Gabba.
* He gives Gretel a kiss and hug every morning when we come downstairs.
* Jakob loves to dance.  This includes twirling around in circles until he gets dizzy!
* Jakob is a big flirt!  And I'm afraid he will end up with a ton of girlfriends.  All a woman needs to do is smile at Jakob and he will melt into a puddle of nothing.  I'm serious.
* Jakob loves puzzles and legos.
* Jakob is obessed with milk and his sippy cup.  And he knows we keep the milk in the fridge!
* Jakob still gives open mouth kisses.

Mary

one i want to remember

Mary

speech evaluation

I took Alex for a speech evaluation.  We knew after the 15 month well visit that the pediatrician was concerned about a possible delay in speech development in both Jakob and Alex.  But the greatest concern was with Alex.  And the pediatrician did not change his tune when we took the boys for their 18 month well visit.  And so I agreed to get a speech evaluation done.  I was still not overly concerned about a speech delay in Alex at this most recent well visit appointment.  But I knew my only regret could ever possibly be not taking advantage of the resources available to us should we learn down the road that there was an issue and Alex would have benefited from the early intervention.  The speech-language pathologist that we met with did a really good job with Alex.  The evaluation basically consisted of Alex playing with different toys and interacting with the speech pathologist.  So of course he had a blast.  The speech pathologist also asked me a lot of different questions.  And in the end I was not surprised by the results.  Alex is moderately delayed in expressive language or "talking".  The speech pathologist was actually really impressed with how well Alex could communicate despite his lack of babbling and words.  My boy can grunt with the best of them!  The speech pathologist gave us a bunch of different options.  We have decided to start Alex in a weekly 30 minute 1:1 speech therapy session.  The speech pathologist is not overly concerned with the exception of the lack of babbling from Alex.  So we want to work on developing some of his mouth muscles and hopefully get him babbling a bit more.  They aren't even really concerned with actual words at this point.  Because these therapy sessions are not covered by health insurance they are going to run us $71 a week.  Joy!  But Kara and I have talked at length and we actually think this is really important for Alex at the moment.  But you better believe we will be watching with a keen eye as this is not a cheap route.  We have also been referred to our local early intervention program.  We are hoping we can supplement some of the "paid" speech therapy sessions with visits from the early intervention program.  We shall see.  We are not even certain Alex would qualify for the services.  The speech therapy is as much for Kara and myself as it is for Alex.  We already walked away with good pointers after the speech evaluation.  The speech therapist though that signing would be really beneficial to Alex.  And because of his great receptive language skills the speech therapist thought Alex would pick up signs really fast.  And by golly did I shed a tear tonight when Alex learned to sign "more" in just a few minutes!  We were eating chips and guacamole and we started to show the boys "more" in order to get a chip.  And it caught on like wildfire.  And I almost hit the ground when Alex came up 30 minutes later and made the "more" sign because he was hungry.  I felt like he was talking to me for the very first time.  So Kara and I are really hoping to add some more signs over the next couple of weeks.  It might help.  We have our first speech therapy appointment next week.

And not to be outdone ... Mr. Jakob is now saying, "What's that?"  and it is the cutest thing in the entire world.

Mary