EATING:
There hasn’t been much new happen with eating. We have had some battles about what he
eats or doesn’t eat. If he doesn’t
want to eat something after tasting it, we let him get down. I always think he’s going to be hungry
later, but so far, this hasn’t been the case.
Look at that BIG belly.
Look at that BIG belly.
PLAYING:
He loves to play with others. He loves having friends over or going over to friends house
and playing (Mom loves it too.) I
think having that consistent interaction with other kids has helped him learn
to share and be a little more laid back.
I think Amos looks at Silas as his personal toy. He’s starting to enjoy making him laugh
and bringing toys over to him. If
Silas is somewhere, Amos wants to be there too.
All month long Amos has been riding his bike
everywhere. I think every other
word out of his mouth is “bike.” He’s either talking about his bike or Daddy’s
bike. Before too long, Jason is
going to have a faithful riding companion.
Amos has his independent playtime every morning. Now that he only takes one nap, it’s
nice for me to have a little extra time to get things done. It’s also fun to watch him on the video
monitor and see what he chooses to play with. He does a good job at keeping himself entertained.
DISCPLINE:
We’ve got an almost two year old on our hands and he is
ornery. This month, we’ve tried to
do a better job at setting expectations for him. For example, he likes to bang his spoon on the table. Before putting him up in his chair,
I’ll tell him “We don’t bang our spoon on anything while eating and if you do,
you’ll have to get down and go to your room.” This has really cut down on the banging, but if it happens,
he gets down and is in his room for a little while. I then go and get him and restate my expectation and ask for
a verbal confirmation “Yes, Mommy,” and he joins us back at the table.
We follow that same play-by-play for most things. When we first started this, I was doing
it all the time. But he really
seems to be getting the hang of things now. We like this approach because it is very pro-active. We don’t have to wait for him to
disobey to discipline (aka train) him in the way he should go. And we can give lots of praise when he
follows through with the expectation, and a lot of grace when he doesn’t!
PERSONALITY:
He’s got this adorable “no” face. He uses it when saying “no” about
things that scare him. If
something makes a loud noise, he uses it.
If Daddy gets a little too scary while playing, he uses it. If Mommy talks to him over the video
monitor, he uses it. It’s his way
of saying, “that scares me, please don’t do it.”
He’s been learning the art of faking this month. He realized that we think it’s funny
when he pretends to give us something and then takes it back. This works for kisses, food, hugs or
any toy. He offers it and then
snatches it away in the last second and cracks himself up!
His other favorite thing is to watch people from the
window. He no longer cares if we
are leaving, he just wants to watch us go. We’ll tell him that someone is coming over and he’ll run to
the window saying, “watch, watch.”
So, if you ever come over to our house, make sure and look at the
window. Amos will be “watching”
you.
SLEEPING:
We decided to take advantage of the time change and push
Amos’ wake time to 8 am and bedtime to 8 pm. He’s still sleeping the same amount, just a little
later. This has really helped him
better align with Silas’ sleeping schedule. And now, I get Silas up at 7:30 am instead of 7 am. And let me tell you, that 30 minutes
makes a HUGE difference to this Momma!
We now get to eat our dinner at a more regular time (6 or 6:30) thanks
to a later breakfast and lunch.
Soon Amos will be making one more bed move – to bunk beds
(the bottom bunk of course). We
want to give Silas the more sturdy crib for when he starts to really get moving
and my mom offered Uncle Joe’s old bunk beds. The bottom is actually a full bed, so that will be nice for
larger groups of guest! I’m just
excited that I’ll get to go back to lying down and reading in bed with
him. We quickly realized that baby
cribs aren’t made for adult weight!
LEARNING:
After working with him on the shape sorter, his skills
transferred over to puzzles. I’d
put puzzles on hold after the PAT teacher said to work on pre-puzzle
skills. However, she came over
this month and asked him to do a few puzzles and he surprised me. We’re all about puzzles now. I love puzzles, so they are fun for us
to do together.
He’s getting much better at putting on his own
clothes. He can now put on socks
and pull up his pants. Taking off
his pants is no problem and he’s getting better at his shirt. He’s got a pretty big head to get it
over though.
COMMUNICATION:
After one nap, I came into Amos’ room to find something
destroyed. I asked him what
happened and he said, “I bite.” It
was hard to be upset after having our first conversation.
Some of his new words this month are animals. He makes the sound and names the
animals. He’s also getting words
associated with Silas down like car seat, crib, spit-up, crying, sleeping,
shhh! He understood them before,
but now he says them.
LITTLE BROTHER:
Normally Amos is very gentle with Silas, but other times,
he’ll be directly disobedient. We’ve been working on Silas sitting, which
involves me being right there with him the whole time. And I think the disobedience comes at
times when he thinks Silas is getting a little too much attention from Mom. But now that Silas can hold on to toys,
Amos will bring him toy after toy to play with.
SPECIAL EVENTS:
