Meet the Mocks: 22 month

Our wild child is the big 2-2 (months, that is).

He must have learned this in school because he runs around showing two fingers all the time. I think it's because a few kids in his class have already turned two, so they must have taught them how to make a two. This has been a fun month for B as he has gotten to experience a lot of new activities. We started Mommy and Me swim lessons a few weeks ago and he is slowly adjusting. Each time has gotten a little better. Out of the 30 minute lesson, he has gone from crying for 20 minutes to about 5 or 10 total. He's definitely learned that at the end of the lesson he get a lollipop, which I thought would give him motivation to finish the class. It has, but it also causes him to point the the bucket of lollipops and whine every 2 minutes, which gets quite annoying. I think once he gets over the fear, he will do just fine as he already knows a lot of what they are teaching. He just needs to lighten up and not be so scared!

The same week we started swim, we decided to try out the Little Gym on Wednesday mornings while Ryan is in school. We're trying to meet more people in our area and I think it will be good for he and I to have more one on one time with each other. Again, he cried quite a bit in the first class, but has since started to warm up. He doesn't care as much for the circle time or when it gets too loud, but he loves the gym time and learning to walk on the balance beam and do forward rolls.

loves bubble time

This past weekend, I took B to his friend, Jack's, birthday party at the Dairy Ashford Roller Rink. He was pretty timid at first and was having a love/hate relationship with the balloons, but he warmed up toward the end and then, of course, didn't want to leave. He would hit the balloons as hard as he could, then run away as fast as he could. This went on for a solid 10 minutes.

chowin down on some cookies

And this is what ensued when I told him it was time to leave....

This is his new favorite thing to do.

I guess I have told him so many times to Shhh or be quiet when Charlie is trying to sleep, that he walks around going "shhhh, bebe." He just puts his finger up really high on his nose, it looks funny. Speaking of fingers and noses...... the kid thinks picking his boogies is funny. Uh, gross. He'll go "Momma, momma" (until he gets my attention) and then stick his finger way up his nose, hoping to get a reaction out of me.

He's really into building blocks these days, as well as then knocking them down.

....and still loving the bouncer - our big baby

He just helps himself to the pantry these days and recently found our cooking wine. Please don't call CPS :)

The boy does love his brothers. No matter how bad he can be or crazy he can get, he always wants to love on both of them.

He's getting to be such a big boy and loves to just mimic Ryan and do everything he does. His recent obsession is insisting on wearing his backpack (that weighs about as much as he does). It definitely slows us down on our walk into school, but it's pretty cute.

He's really loving school these days and runs straight into his classroom, giving his teachers a huge hug. Definitely no more tears.

As far as talking goes, we've made some improvement. Not a ton, but he seems to use the words he knows quite a bit more, so I am hoping we are moving in the right direction. He loves to say "meeeee," "done," "gone," and "boo boo" (poo poo). He's starting acting interested in the potty, which I am by no means ready for. When he has to go, he'll point to himself, say it, and start walking to the bathroom. I then sit him on the toilet (clothes on because nothing ever happens anyway and I got sick of undressing and redressing him all the time), he hops off, flushes the toilet, and washes his hands. He really thinks he did something special. It's funny, because even out in public he has started looking for bathrooms and thinks he needs to go in them to use them.

One new, not so fun, development this month has been what is diagnosed as Strabismus or Wandering Eye. I always thought his eyes looked a little different, but I chalked it up to them being different shapes and sizes. Well, one day, our nanny asked me if I had ever noticed his eye drifting outward, and honestly, I hadn't. I guess seeing him all day, everyday, those things go unnoticed, but I am so glad she said something. About two weeks ago, we took him to a Pediatric Ophthalmologist where they confirmed what I had been researching. Luckily, his vision in both eyes is perfect, so glasses are not an option/necessary. We need to basically strengthen the muscle behind the left eye by patching the right eye up to 2 hours a day for probably 6 months. If we are diligent, it should fix itself and if not, it will just take longer. This condition can be resolved up until the age of 8 which makes me feel better that we caught it early.

We are ten days into the patch and it is actually going WAAAYYY better than expected. He cried the first day for a bit, so we took him on a walk in which he fell asleep within 10-15 minutes (which obviously does not do anything to help it, so that option is now out). I think straining his bad eye makes him really tired because he loves to snuggle and just sit more when he is wearing it. He also runs into a bunch of things too, if he gets too wild and starts running around.

By day two, he was much more amenable to wearing it. We have let him start having his pacifier when he wears it since we had recently cut back to only letting him have the pacifier when he sleeps. So now, he almost looks forward to wearing it because he loves that dang pacifier so much. He'll point to his cheek and then his tongue when he wants to get his pacifier. He has learned how to take it off, but we've gotten to wear it up to about 1 hour 20 min so far.

Here he is wearing the patch with CoCo's glasses. Now this is really going to make him dizzy! He did not want to take the glasses off.