13-16 months of Bebo

Despite my best efforts (and lack of blogging), Bennett is continuing to get bigger and more toddler, less baby. Sigh. I started this post when he was 13 months and just this week he hit the 16 month milestone. This post is gonna take awhile...

Words:
mama, dada, weh weh (wembley), neh neh (lincoln), nana (banana), guh (go...especially likes to do ready, set, go!), yeh (yes), da (dog), ah duh (all done), ca (cat), wega (wagon), ehwuh (hello), hi, ka (quack) (at 13 months)
add to that: dihdih (lincoln), dee dee dee go! (1, 2, 3, go!), booo (book), boo!, joo joo (choo choo), boo (moo) (16 months)

signs: all done, more, bye, please, dog, fish, airplane (points finger up to the sky and waves it around), snake (at 13 months)
add to those: sorry (unfortunately, he has to use this a lot. lincoln is the poor recipient of much hair pulling and hits to the head), ball, thank you (16 months)

Points to: nose, eyes, hair, toes, sometimes belly (at 13 months)
add to those: ears, teeth, mouth (16 months)

shakes his head yes and no to answer questions (although, still mixes them up sometimes) :)

Sad as I am to admit it, he is a hitter. And a biter. :( Lincoln never was, so I am having to adjust to this...Most of the time, Lincoln is the unfortunate recipient of these attacks, but I have been bitten, too (though he was laughing, so he either thought he was being funny or I have bigger things to worry about...)

(Blurry, but so cute. He wanted to carry his glo-worm around.)

He had a run in with a terrible ear infection following our flight up to Omaha. Had 2 rounds of antibiotics (including one via shot), was pretty much miserable the entire trip, and had to endure allergy meds on top of the antibiotics (this kid HATES medicine).

His eczema and allergies started flaring up recently, so we put him back on the allergy med prescribed while we were in Omaha (Zyrtec). He was on it off and on for a few weeks. During this time, he was in a constant angry state...hitting, throwing tantrums, crying....and making this awful angry face with pursed lips while he breathed really fast through his nose. We attributed it to just feeling bad because of the allergies. When we got to Colorado (I'll save the move for another post), the anger just didn't get any better. Finally, I did some research and found that Zyrtec can have behavioral side effects. We weren't convinced that what we were seeing, but we pulled him off the Zyrtec that day. 4 days later, we have a different kid on our hands! He is happy, sweet, laughing again, back to his usual self. Conclusion: Zyrtec makes Bennett angry and mean. No more Zyrtec.

We call Bennett "Bebo" about 90% of the time around here. About a week ago, Lincoln informed us that we need to call Bennett "Bebowie" instead. So, now we throw that around every once in awhile, too. "Mr. B" still makes an appearance every so often.

Bebo LOVES water. He is not afraid at all, and fights to get away from us in the pool. He will stick his whole face in the water, blow bubbles, and try to swim. This is both exciting and terrifying, as I think he would just dive in if he could run away from us fast enough...

Our new house has 3 stair cases. Bennett thinks he can walk down them--he is wrong about that. He is pretty fast at sliding down on his belly, but that is apparently not the "cool" way to do stairs. He much prefers to stand up and walk down, giving me a heart attack as he tumbles down the last few stairs. You would think after the 6th or 7th time, the falling would deter him, but no....

He loves to get messy. He throws dirt (at his brother, the ground, the fence, the house, on his head...), pours water and sand on his head, eats sand and dirt, loves to play with the hose and make mud, throws rocks, eats leaves, and anything else that allows him to be outdoors and get messy. He is going to love Colorado!

Bennett sweats--a lot. We will get in the car and after like 2 minutes, I will turn around and see sweat dripping off him. The sweat makes his head itch, so he constantly has scratch marks from itching his head. He is just a hot kid.

Bebo thinks Wembley is his best friend. He follows him around and pulls his fur and his tail, which obviously is how you should treat your best friend (ha!). Wembley seems to be mildly afraid of Bennett. We are working on petting him gently, and especially not poking him in the eye.

We have determined that Bennett and Lincoln are super sensitive to detergents and soaps. While Lucas was out of town, I tried a new bath soap with the boys (Johnson and Johnson's Natural Head-to-Toe Baby Wash). Within minutes of getting out of the bath, Lincoln was covered in hives. I got Bennett dressed first so I could put lotion on Lincoln, and didn't notice that Bennett had broken out, too, until the middle of the night when he kept clawing at his chest :( Back to the Burt's Bees. We have also tried almost every Free and Clear detergent in the stores, as well as various natural detergents meant for cloth diapers, and every.single.one makes Lincoln break out in eczema-- EXCEPT for Rockin' Green. I am done experimenting now. We are sticking with Rockin' Green. Since we moved, we had to get rid of all our soaps, cleaning products, detergents, etc. (they don't move those on a moving truck, and we had NO extra room in our car!), so I am determined to keep our house as fragrance and dye free as possible!

(Thanks a lot, "all natural" soap)

Foods: eats most things. LOVES watermelon, grapes, noodles, broccoli, pizza, popsicles, and chicken. Still nurses and won't touch cow's milk (or really any other liquid other than water). Also loves to feed his dinner to Wembley, so we sometimes have to make Wembley wait outside until we finish eating. Says "mmmmm" while eating a lot :)

(Who stole the cereal from the cereal box? Mr. B, that's who.)

Teeth: Has 4 on top, 2.5 on the bottom. He is starting to get the back molars on the bottom, which I think is weird since he only has the middle two besides those. But, teeth are teeth, and new teeth make Bennett miserable.

Starts the night in our bed by himself (used to have an area on the floor that we set up for him, but our new bedroom isn't big enough), then we join him when we are ready to sleep. The plan is to move him into Lincoln's room, once we figure out how to fit a second bed in there...

He can run (fast!) and jump. He is also SUPER mischievous. He will look at us, smile, then run full speed into the street. He will also do that in grocery stores (forget about keeping him in a cart! that should be a game on some game show...try to keep Bennett in a grocery cart for longer than 5 minutes. And, go!). He also isn't big on riding in the car anymore. He does better facing forward (trialed him in Lincoln's seat), but I really want to keep him rear facing until at least 2. However, since we currently drive and pick-up Lucas from work since we are down to one car, I have to weigh that against 2 hours of screaming every day (30 minute commute x 4 per day). Maybe it will get better...

 

(Bennett was totally the instigator in both of these pictures. Lincoln followed him up there both times because he thought it was funny. And no, there is not medicine in that syringe (it was water from an art project), but yes, they are drawing with markers on the art table. It IS an art table, right?)

He also drew on his stomach and face. Of course.

There is so much more, but this is already a novel.

Happy 16 months, Bebo!