January 12, 2009
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18 Months Old
Yes, you read that correctly: Jack is 18 months old today! Only six months to go until his second birthday (and until Baby Surprise is here) ... yikes! Lately I've been so nostalgic for those days when all Jack needed was for me to hold him close to me. Guess I'll just have to do this all over again!
We went for Jack's 18-month appointment today. His stats are:
Weight: 25.5 pounds (up two pounds from 15 months), 50th percentile as always
Height: 33 inches (up half an inch from 15 months), 75th percentile, again as always!Jack is nothing if not consistent in his growth, I guess! Since his week-old appointment, he's been in the 50th percentile for weight, and the 75th for height. The pediatrician was pleased that Jack had about 30 words, considering that he's a boy and being raised in a bilingual household. Jack took his shots with some brief wailing, but forgot all about the pain when I handed him a Gerber fruit strip.
Lately, Jack and I have been trying to do different activities (read: something other than Mommy trying not to doze off on the couch while Jack runs around the living room). One of the moms on my birth board said that her son enjoys transferring dry beans from one container to another with a spoon (and sometimes just dumping them out). I figured, eh, for 50 cents, why not give it a try? Well, Jack loved it! Yet another great idea "stolen" from someone else.
This occupied him for 20 minutes
Speaking of new activities, Jack and I began potty training in earnest today. Yes, I know it's early, and I know it's going to take a while. But, I'd really prefer to start now and have him semi-trained when the baby comes, because once the baby comes, I know it would be harder to get started. I'm not shooting for complete independence (like clothing removal, going, wiping, putting clothes back on, washing hands); I'd just like to get to the point where Jack recognizes the signs that he's about to go, heads to the potty, has me position him on there and successfully goes. In other words, out of diapers during waking hours. If we can achieve that by age two, or shortly thereafter, I'll be happy. Jack has had a potty for several months now and knows what it's for. Sometimes he will sit on it when he sees me or Johnny in the bathroom. Saturday night, he peed in it for the first time! Granted, it's not like he went and begged to be on the potty. He was diaper-free in the bathroom, and when he started peeing next to the toilet, I put him on the potty. I did buy him a little board book that shows a boy going to the potty (but sitting on the toilet), and it has a flushing button. Jack loves that book, and today he grabbed it and went to the toilet. So, now I've also bought him a toilet ring. We'll see which one he likes better. I'm basically going to the bathroom and giving Jack the opportunity to go every hour or two during the day. It's a lot of taking diapers off and putting them back on, but I think it will be worth it. If nothing else, it gives me a sense that I'm doing something in this arena. Wish us luck!
In other news, I hit 14 weeks on Saturday. This coming Saturday, we have our appointment for a gender determination ultrasound. I'm so excited! Here is my 14-week belly pic. I'm wearing my favorite new maternity shirt -- my mother-in-law got it for me over Christmas.
The rounding continues! Very exciting.
OK, time to give Jack some dessert. He ate a slice of roast beef for dinner, plus four big chicken and veggie dumplings.
Now it's time for some mango slices and a banana. Have a good night!p.s. For my own records (I keep the archived files of my blog, in case they're of interest in the future), I wanted to jot down Jack's verbal development at this point in time. So often I talk about his motor skills or his funny antics, and I realized that aside from writing down his first words in his baby book, I don't focus on the speech much! At 18 months, Jack can understand a lot of what we tell him. He can accurately point out people in photo albums (for example, when I ask, "Where's Daddy?" or "Where's Nana?"), he follows simple instructions, he understands the names of all common household objects. In recent weeks, he's had a big push forward in terms of what he can say. Jack is, by far, not the most verbally advanced of the 18-month-olds I know, but he's also being raised bilingually, and, well, he's a boy. I know it's not true universally, but boys tend to speak a little later, and that was very true with Johnny (and look how much he talks now!
). All that being said, it's exciting to hear the new words pop up in Jack's vocabulary. Jack can say 27 words and phrases:* Hi
* Bye
* Night-night
* Thank you
* Bird
* Woof
* Mandarin word for "dog"
* Mandarin word for "light"
* Mandarin word for "television"
* Mandarin word for "Daddy"
* Mandarin for "hug me" ("bao-bao!")
* Mandarin word for "push"
* Duck
* Ball
* Mama
* Mine
* Oh, no!
* Uh-oh
* Whee
* Oh
* Whoa
* Vroom
* No
* Shoes
* And also the Mandarin version of "shoes"
* Elmo (sometimes comes out as "Beh-Bo")
* DownSo, not the most earth-shattering list, but I'm very proud anyway! What's interesting to me is that none of these words strike me as practical. I would have thought he would ask for water or his cup, or his paci, but it turns out he would prefer to point at those items when he wants them. He'll say "um" (Jack's word for "yes) if I ask whether he wants one of those things, and do a happy dance when I go get them for him (followed by "dand-oo!" for "thank you!"), but he never says the words for those most-used objects. Go figure!
Comments (15)
Happy 18 months! Christian hits that milestone next week (the 21st). So exciting! Ok, I'm totally stealing the beans idea. I think it would keep the kiddos occupied for a good amount of time (long enough for me to pee anyhow!). And happy 14 weeks! You look super cute!
@Morningstarrising - Oh yeah, with two kiddos, the beans thing will be even more fun! And you might have seen in the pictures, but I also mixed some dry pasta shapes in there. The idea was to have Jack sort the pasta shapes into a different bowl than the beans, but he's not quite there yet, LOL. Emilee would probably enjoy that -- she could show Christian how to sort!
You look great! I'm glad Jack stayed busy for 20 minutes; it looks like he is having so much fun!
Aw, those pictures are adorable. I'm going to try the bean thing. Although, Kailyn will most likely throw them in the air and hide them around the house. She gets bored very quickly. Also, I meant to ask, what prenatal vitamin are you taking? Did you grab yours at Wal Mart (or another grocery store) or did you get a prescription? I'm asking, because I grabbed one at Wal Mart (I took them with Kailyn) and I feel like death after taking it! It's weird! I got a bunch of presription ones, and am not sure which one to try. Any suggestions?
@storyofmylife87 - I'm taking Women's One-a-Day Prenatal Vitamins. There's two bottles in a box -- one bottle is the prenatal vitamin tablet, and one is the DHA tablet. I got them at Target, so I'm sure you can find them anywhere. They're a lot like the Citracal (prescription) prenatal vitamins I took with Jack, except a lot cheaper. My doctor said it really doesn't make a difference if you take prescription or over-the-counter prenatal vitamins. I'm sorry the ones at Wal-Mart made you feel bad. Did they make you gag? Or just feel bad? I read that you're not supposed to lie down half an hour after taking them. Or, I know a lot of women cannot stomach the huge pills. If that's you, you might want to try a tip that my friend Donna (who's also due in July) passed on to me from her doctor: On days when you can't stomach the pills, take two Flintstone Complete vitamins (you know, the chewable kids vitamins). Two contains the right amounts of all the vitamins in prenatal vitamins, anyway, and chewing is easier than swallowing those horse pills!
I didn't start potty training Thade until he was 2 and a few months old (I'm thinking it was May of that year, so 2 years and 4 months old), but Steph practically trained herself before she was 2. She has reverted to peeing in her pull-up at night and during nap time, but she doesn't do it when she is awake, so who cares?!
She's such a big girl, I'm not gonna knock her down. I do tell her everyday when I find a wet pull-up on her in the morning or after nap that she isn't supposed to tee-tee in those, but I don't chew her out for it or punish her. I guess her bladder just isn't big enough to go overnight or through her 3 hour nap holding it. She does ask to go potty about once an hour or more when she is awake. No big deal. Pull-ups last 2 to 3 weeks on average and that is much better than buying a package of diapers that lasted only a week. She looks too cute in her tiny little panties too. 
I can't wait to find out the sex of the baby! So exciting!
Jack is so grown up! I can't wait to hang with him on Thursday (seeing you is a bonus).
@dmonroe - Oh, don't pretend! You know it's all about Jack.
Do you like how I'm passing on your Flintstones advice left and right? 
@McCoy_Mama - Wow, way to go, Stephanie! They say girls are faster to potty train, plus Stephanie had the benefit of seeing Thade go potty. I think it's great that she's dry all the time during the day. I don't think Pull-Ups during sleepytime are a big deal, either. In fact, I just read that most children don't have the muscle control to hold their urine during long naps and nighttime sleep until age four. Now, I'm sure Stephanie will have this control before then, but that just goes to show you how advanced she is!
RYC- They make my stomach upset for some reason. I got some prescription samples and saw the two pills, but I didn't know if I was supposed to take them at once? Is that what you do? Sorry, for all of the questions. I get so freaked out when I'm pregnant and taking any sort of medication. =/ I'm weird, because I KNOW it's healthy..but because I'm switching, I'm all freaked out.
@storyofmylife87 - No worries!
I'm very leery of medication all the time, not just when pregnant, but the prenatal vitamins and DHA tablets don't count as medication in my book. They're just vitamins and essential fatty acids that are good for you and for your baby's brain development (in the case of the DHA tablets). The two tablets in the prescription pack -- is one labeled a DHA tablet? In my case, one pill was pink (that was the vitamin), and the other tablet was orange -- looked like a gel tablet. That's the DHA tablet, and yes, you do take them at the same time. I could never swallow both at once, so I just took one after the other. You don't have to take them both in the same mouthful. If you don't want to take the DHA tablet for some reason (if swallowing one pill is all you can stomach), just make sure to have plenty of foods with DHA in them -- some brands of milk are fortified with DHA (it'll say), Oroweat makes a wheat bread fortified with DHA, and fish is a great natural source of DHA.
Oh, and one other thing ... if your stomach is upset when taking pills, try eating a piece of bread or a cracker a little bit before swallowing the pill -- you need something to "cushion" your stomach before it tries to digest a hard pill.
Happy 18 months to Jack! 6 months away to being a big brother!
As for starting potty training at 18 months, that is not too young at all. I think in America, kids are potty trained later because of the convenience of disposable diapers. Ask your mom what age you were potty trained. Back in the days (at least my days since I'm older than you, but not that much really
, I think the avg age of a potty trained child was 18 months. I was a cloth diaper baby.
Tristan was trained by 18 months. He used pull-ups for many months but was in underwear before his baby brother was born. Only problem was... after he saw the baby in diapers... he wanted to wear diapers all over again (but that's another problem all together -- I hope Jack doesn't go through that)
We have already started training Tyson and expect to be done by 24 months of age. Good luck and let me know if you need some tips.
@babybitez - Actually, tips would be amazing. I was a disposables baby, but I was potty trained by 12 months, actually, and so was June. Obviously I wasn't taking off my own clothes, going and wiping by myself at 12 months, but I was in underwear, and my grandma (who was home with us full time) was very fastidious about taking us to the bathroom once an hour. Also, starting the day we were born, she waited every time she changed our diaper, and whistled until we peed. She said that then when she started putting my on the potty, all she needed to do was whistle, and I'd pee. Of course, you know, with having a boy, in the beginning I was just focused on not getting peed ON when changing Jack's diaper. I couldn't even get the diaper on fast enough, much less wait and whistle for pee! Now I'm thinking, though, it may have been worth it!
I think it's less about cloth vs disposables for me, but just about time. That's why I'm so impressed that you, a full-time working mom, trained Tristan by 18 months! Geez. So, please please share tips. Right now, Jack seems more interested in sitting on the big toilet (with the toilet ring installed). So every hour or two, I'm taking him in there, plopping him on, and usually he will sit for a minute or two, but so far, nothing has happened. He'll end up going in his diaper RIGHT AFTER the potty-sitting. We flush the poop from his diaper down the toilet, and he's very interested in that. Sometimes he'll cry when I take him to the potty, and those times, I don't force it. I'm figuring that one of these times he's on the potty for 1 or 2 minutes, SOMETHING will happen, right? What did you do with Tristan?
@bevconeal - I will email you in a little bit, I don't want to clutter your xanga with all my long comments... even though I know you secretly like it
@babybitez - Secretly? Tina, I think you know I openly love your long comments.
Thanks in advance for your email. Could you also tell me if you used Pull-Ups (or something similar) for Tristan when you PT'd? It would certainly make it easier to get something back on Jack after our potty-sitting sessions, but don't know if it's worth the $$ at this point. I was considering getting the Huggies ones that turn cold when he pees, so he knows when he's wet.
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