15 months

This past month Spencer has been doing big things!

*He started taking steps a few days after he turned 14 months.  He would be standing with his back against the couch and just walk away from it.  One of his biggest obstacles quickly became his laughing; as soon as he realized he was walking he would get excited and laugh and double over and fall.  It was so cute!  Several times I found him walking in alone in a room.  It was as if he liked practicing on his own :)  Now he can walk all over.  It is so exciting and makes him seem like such a little man!

*His toilet obsession continues, and he has now learned to flush the toilet.  We have been much better about making sure the bathroom doors are always closed; hopefully this will help him forget how fun the toilet is to play with.

*He has officially dropped his morning nap!  For some reason I thought this would be a much more difficult transition, but the only difficult thing about it was I tried to make him take a morning nap for 2 weeks after he stopped needing one.  It really just seemed like he never fell asleep one day for his morning nap and just never went back.  It has actually proven to be nice and allowed for more flexibility with errands, but makes his one nap super special (because we only have one shot at napping per day).

*Spencer really likes to pat other people's heads, especially other kids.  It's pretty cute :)

*He has gotten engrossed with books.  Mainly an animal book that has flaps for each animal you could think of, and a "Things That Go" book that has pictures of bikes, boats, trains etc.  He loves making the animal noises.

lion/tiger - roar
bee - zzzzz
penguin - waddle motion
polar bear - brrr
dolphin - eeeeee
fish - fish face

* Words he is consistent with are: hi, buh bye, mama, dada, ba bas (for bath, outside, and bubbles)
He also went through a phase of saying: eiei for eieio with Old MacDonald.

*When he is in the stroller he points like crazy at everything; dogs, trees, shadows etc.

Tim n Anni and Jacob were up at Tree Farm the beginning of May.  Brian was able to switch his schedule around and we drove out for the weekend.  We did some nice working time, sailing, and softball.  We sure love those people :)

Spencer patting Jacobs head; he seemed to do it any chance he got.  

Mother's Day: I think this is the first year I felt like a real mom.  Maybe because last year I had only had Spencer for two months and I hadn't felt like I had earned my Mother's Day yet.  Anyhow, I really enjoyed this year's Mother's Day and really appreciated the praise for women's roles as nurturers.  It is the most important thing I will ever do with my life; I really believe that.  

Mother's Day 2015

We had a little goodbye BBQ with our best friends here.  It was so fun and the burger and smores were detectible! We will miss them!

We have begun the moving process.  It is daunting.  Brian is working in the ICU right now and doing nights on the weekends so the packing has been slow.  I have been worried about being able to do everything without Brian, mainly because I also have Spencer with me all the time.  This past week I went to pick up bike boxes from a bike store to pack our bikes in.  I had clearly forgotten how big they were and it was rather tricky fitting them in our car.  A woman walked by and offered to help me.  We got them in the car and she said the boxes were pretty far over into the driver's seat.  Knowing my options were limited, I told her I lived close so it would be fine.  She offered to drive the boxes to my house.  I was tempted to say "that is very sweet, but I will be fine", but then thought it would be much safer and she had offered.  I moved the boxes into her much larger car's trunk and she followed me home.  I prayed the whole way home thanking God for sending her to help me.  It is a seemingly small thing; stopping to help someone, and driving boxes to their home 2 miles away.  It only took about 15 minutes of her day.  But it touched me, softened me, and reminded me just how much God loves each of us and knows our needs and struggles.

14 months

The happenings of the last month began with a little outpatient surgery where Brian got his tonsils out.  It was amazingly quick; I felt like I was just sitting down when they came out to say he was done!  Brian recovered well with seemingly no hiccups... except the hiccups.  They started on our way to Tree Farm, and increased in frequency until at their worst they were every 4 seconds.  Who would have thought hiccups could be so annoying?! So yes, we went to Tree Farm the morning after surgery and spent a week there recovering and visiting.

We spent Easter and General Conference with the Hoyts.  Spencer loved delving into his easter basket and couldn't stop talking about it!  I took a little video because he was so cute.  

opening Grandma's easter box!

The Tree Farm goodness continued when we got to take part of it home with us... Hailey!  It just happened to be Spring break for her :)  She is so fun and helpful!  She babysat so Brian could come to my basketball game (something we were beginning to think would never happen since Spencer is always asleep by the time my game starts), she bathed Spencer, fed Spencer, played with Spencer... even cleaned the house with me!!! :)  We also had fun hiking around Riverfront Park, seeing Manito Park, and taking Spencer to see animals at PetCo.  Brian's schedule was from noon to 10pm+, so it was also so fun to have someone to hang out with after Spencer went down for the night.  Anyways, it was such a wonderful visit, and I am so glad Hailey came!

We went on a run to the house where Brian's family lived his first year of life.  

Spencer trying some cat food :) 

beautiful Hailey at Manito Park

Riverfront Park

 I'm glad I snapped a few photos of our stake basketball season.  It was so fun to get together and play!  I became our self-appointed team manager :)  Mainly that just means I texted everyone about practices and games and tried to get everyone to sub in, thought that was probably my main disappointment in myself.  For the most part I was able to get everyone in, but there were a couple games were I lost sight of the real purpose and got a little too prideful in wanting to win.  Which now that the season is over and I am not caught up in the moment, the interpersonal interactions stand out far more than the scores of any of the games.  This is something I will definitely miss while we are in NH.  Maybe I will see if I can get something going.
 

basketball practice

basketball game

Now on to my little boy! Spencer is changing lots, with many changes quickly approaching.  

*He comes up to us and grabs our hands and lifts them up over his head to let us know he would like to walk.  He prefers two hands, but if we are sneaky and distract him we can sometimes get him to walk with holding onto just one of our hands.  

*He sneakily got several teeth without us noticing.  Well, he was acting like he was teething, but the teeth we kept checking on did not seem to be coming in.  Then one day I was holding him and saw far back in his mouth.  It was big!  I went to get it out and guess what???  It was a molar!  A stinking one-year molar! haha then after a little more investigation it turned out he had cute 3 teeth I didn't know about.  

*He is completely weaned.  I have been cutting back on a feeding every two weeks, but was nervous about letting the last one go.  It ended up just sort of happening.  We dropped him off with a friend so we could go to the temple one night and got back and he was sleeping.  The next night was the Women's Broadcast and when I got back Brian had already put him down.  So then we just kept doing no nighttime nursing and here we are!  

*Sleeps through the night all the time except when teething.  We can tell if he is waking up due to teething because he cries/whimpers in his sleep.  Usually when we go in we seem to wake him up and he really starts to cry.  We give him some tylenol and he goes back to sleep with some help.  He usually only wakes up for 2 nights or so before cutting a tooth.  

*Naps twice a day.  Once around 10am, once around 2pm, each only for an hour to an hour and a half.  When Hailey was here he napped 2 hours in the afternoon though, maybe we were just doing to much exciting stuff. 

*Eats a variety of food, but hates milk.  Not sure what to do.  I just try to keep offering it and make sure he gets yogurt and cheese to his hearts content.  

*Screams!! Thankfully it was only for about 2-3 weeks, but it was so strange.  He would randomly scream, and very loud.