Fifteen Months

I stopped doing monthly updates on Ike once he turned 1. That was always the plan. What I didn't realize is that he would learn tricks and do funny things a lot more at this age, than when he was a few months old. But, when he was only a few months old I had more time to do things like write blog posts about my awesome baby.

Ike's broken arm is all better. He didn't care at all about wearing his splint. I picked him up from the sitter's last week and he wasn't wearing it, and the babysitter said, "It came off during his nap, and then I couldn't remember which arm it went on." I laughed and said, "It didn't come off. He took it off." It was funny. (The babysitter is not incompetent, I promise.)

He no longer walks anywhere. It is running, running, all the time. And! He has learned to go down the stairs, so he no longer stands at the top and shouts at me to come carry him down. He also has maybe fallen down the stairs a few times. (See, I am a negligent mother!)

He still loves to stare out the window and literally spends probably about two hours of any given day standing on a stack of books looking out the office window. (Not consecutive hours, of course.) When Eric is seconds away from home, he calls me, and I tell Ike to go stand by the window that runs vertically along the front door. Ike runs over to the window and waits to see Eric arrive. He shouts "Da!" It is adorable every time.

Ike's vocabulary is still pretty small. He says "uh-oh," "da," and "wow." He very, very, very occasionally will say "ma." He babbles and chatters all day, and I'm not yet worried about his slow-ish speech development.

He is also still behind in the teeth category. At fifteen months old, he has barely six teeth. I say barely because the most recent two just came in within this last week or so. As with his two front teeth, there were no signs of discomfort or pain. I think Ike is just a tough kid.

When I get him out of bed, I always hide his binkie under the blanket in his bed. That way it is out of sight, and out of reach, so he cannot steal it from his crib later in the day and go wandering around the house with it. (We have a strict "Binkies are for bedtime" policy.) As soon as I put him in his bed, he starts lifting up the blanket to get his binkie. One of these days I'm just going to hide the thing altogether. Truth be told, I would have gotten rid of it the day he turned 1, and just done it cold turkey, but the babysitter's youngest kid (two months older than Ike) still uses one, so I think he would have a rough time of it at her house.

Maybe I am kind of a sap, but many nights I go into his room after he is asleep and pick him up and rock him. He doesn't cuddle or let me rock him when he's awake, so it's the only chance I get.

He's learning his body parts, and that is fun.

Ike still loves to throw his toys down the stairs. Sometimes he dances, and it's funny. He loves when Eric and I play catch with him. (And by that I mean when Eric and I throw him between the two of us, and also I mean when we throw some object to him, and he throws it back.) Ike also loves to be thrown onto the bed and to do horsey rides on the knees of willing adults.

Several weeks ago as Eric and I lay in bed discussing our awesome boy, he said, "Ike is better than ten puppies." I couldn't have said it better myself.