14 months old

Luke is 14 months old now! He keeps getting bigger and stronger, but is still very much the snuggly baby most of the time. This past month he started walking and is now walking about half the time. He's quite proud of his accomplishment, but also kind of lazy about it and will choose to crawl because it's faster and easier. It has been quite cold since he started walking so I've been keeping stuff on his feet to keep him  warm, I think once it's warm enough to go barefoot again he will probably really take off. We'll see! Speaking of being proud of an accomplishment, this month he seems to have turned a corner in getting excited about learning new things, and actually playing instead of just picking up toys and putting them in his mouth :-). He will build his own block towers, drive around his cars, set up his animals, and even throw a ball back and forth pretty well.

Sleeping has not gone so well this month. He had been sleeping through the night, but then sickness and traveling messed that up. After we got home  from the trip we moved him out of room (which is wonderful btw!) and he does do better when he can be in a room by himself since he is a very light sleeper. Sadly right now we're going through a phase where every time I put him in bed he cries, but only for about two minutes. I'm hoping he'll realize the futility of that soon and go back to sucking his thumb and settling down well. It's very hard keeping him covered and warm  with this new habit which I'm sure then leads to more wake ups.....sigh.

And just to prove that he is still our little Dukie challenge, he's been developing quite the temper and gets mad and kicks whenever he is told no :-(

Luke still doesn't talk much, but he can say a lot of words when he wants to. He'll repeat all the words in his Baby McDonald farm video, and will randomly repeat words we say, then won't ever do it again. His new thing is that he has picked up Caroline's first catechism question and if you ask him, "Dukie, who made you?" he says, "Gah," very proudly :-). Also he is now able to answer, "uhon, and unh,unh," for yes and no which makes communicating with him so much less frustrating for everyone! He's taken to talking baby type gibberish all the time these past few days so if I had to guess, I would think he will be talking for real soon, but we'll see....

Nursing is going fine. The past couple days we've been going through a phase of less interest, but he's done this before so I'm not too worried about it. Plus he has 3 teeth coming in and often he has some trouble nursing with teething pain. On a typical day he nurses 3 times, and I have pretty much cut off any night feedings. I'm hoping we can keep nursing all winter, but Caroline weaned herself at 14 months so again - we'll see. The thought of weaning makes me sad though so I hope he can stay my baby for a bit longer.........solid food is also going great. He eats 3 good meals, and usually 2 snacks every day.

The only other new thing that I can think of about this month is that he has become a real Daddy's boy and will almost always choose to go to John over me. That's a new one for me.

Just for the record since some of this monthly report has been a little negative, I'm enjoying going through this age because it feels like it passed by in a first trimester pregnancy sickness phase with Caroline. This time around I'm not pregnant and feel more present!