For the sake of out-of-town family and friends, I am going to try a lot harder now to post updates and pictures of my kiddos. I know how much I enjoy seeing and hearing about my friends’ and family’s lives, I figured I should at least attempt to do the same. 🙂
Jack is 19months today! I hardly know where to begin! He remains the cutest little person I’ve ever known and continues to surprise and impress both me and Zach with what he understands, can say and do. He is ridiculously verbal, which I think contributes heavily to our surprise at his development. I’m sure many kids have similar understanding and comprehension at this age – but if they aren’t very verbal, they simply can’t communicate it, perhaps?? Regardless, his crazy talking gives us much insight into his little learning brain and we LOVE it. At his 18mo check up, the pediatrician asked me how many words he was saying, roughly. “Oh gosh,” I replied. “Like… 100?” Her eyebrows shot up and she said, “Oh wow. Yeah we look for 5-15 at this age!” On the drive home I began to wonder if maybe I had exaggerated the number in the moment. So I started counting up in my head the words he knew. By the time we arrived home, I had passed 80 (including names and animal sounds, ie – “What does the owl say?” “hoo hoo!”). Over the following 24 hours I kept encountering or remembering more words that I hadn’t included in my original list and easily cleared 100 words by the next day. Yeeeeah not that it’s a surprise to ANYONE that the child of Zach & Andrea Boomsma would be very verbal! He has been putting 2 words together for awhile – mostly “help please”, “more please”, possessive’s like “Dada’s socks… JackJack’s socks…” etc. but he has also recently begun to put together 3 words at a time like “more… hummuh… peez!” (more hummus please) or “Nigh-nigh bebee coco bin” (night night baby coco bean).
Jack seems to pull hard for being like his Daddy. He takes a bit of time to wake up in the morning and fall asleep at night. It’s not unusual for him to be super whiny and obviously tired as we approach bedtime (7:30pm) only to have him roll around and play happily in his crib for a good hour or more before falling asleep for the night! Similarly, I’ve found that going in to get him up in the morning immediately after he wakes up is not a good idea. Unless I want a cranky and whiny and clingy boy on my hands, it’s best to let him hang out in his crib for 30 minutes or so once he’s woken up. He is still a bit snuggly and clingy in the mornings, just more happy about it. And I certainly don’t mind the sweet few minutes of snuggles I can manage to get before he is off and playing. Also like his dad, he enjoys playing with interactive toys and likes to figure out how they work. Even at 6 months old he was curiously spinning the wheels on the toy cars he had to see what they did. He seems to have an analytical mind that plays itself out mostly with hands-on activities. He does very well building things with duplos, medium sized legos, stacking cups and laying/connecting train tracks. But his latest fascination is buckles, specifically the plastic ones on his carseat and his high chair seat. He can now fasten the top buckle of his carseat all by himself and is working on the bottom buckle. He will sit for a good 10-15 minutes in his high chair working on connecting the buckle while I finish preparing his food.
Speaking of food – his current favorites are: “hum-mah” (roasted red pepper hummus!!!), “yo-gee” (yogurt), “fy-fy” (french fries, but what kid doesn’t love french fries, I mean really?), “aye-saws” (applesauce), “oat-mee dada” (oatmeal, dada – Zach has been making steel cut oatmeal several mornings a week and eating it together with JackJack), and “hot dot” (hot dogs). His appetite has a rather random ebb and flow. But now that he is holding steady in the 75th percentile for weight, I’m no longer constantly worried about getting enough food into him.
Speaking of percentiles – he continues to rock the 95th+ percentile for height! I don’t know how tall he is in inches, but I find myself repeatedly forgetting that he really is tall for his age – until I get around other 18month-2yr old kids and then it’s very obvious haha. But with a Daddy who is 6’4″, what did we expect??
With such explosions of development and comprehension have also come many more training opportunities and a step “up” in our parenting. We have definitely moved from “keeping him alive” to intentional and specific training and “real” parenting. We have seen a lot more attitudes and tantrums emerge when he doesn’t get his way, resulting in some “boot camp” disciplining. But he responds well, especially when we are careful and intention to discipline him in a loving and patient way. I will confess, I have discovered a temptation toward anger like never before. And when I give in to my anger and frustration over his tantrums and whining, Jack gets even more upset. Seeing how HE responds when I’M not responding rightly, definitely helps to keep my attitude in check! It also helps when Daddy comes home. 🙂
We’ve started training him to sit and focus for short periods of time. So far he has mastered 15minutes of “sit and read time” in the big chair in the living room. He doesn’t necessarily always stay seated and he doesn’t necessarily always read the stack of books I put with him. But he stays in that chair until the timer on my cell phone goes off (playing “Ho Hey” by the Lumineers) and then his eyes widen and he smiles and says, “ah dun? git down?”
Next up will be some “blanket time” – playing with a specific set of toys on a blanket on the floor until the timer goes off.
Matching with Mommy:
Meeting Baby Chloe for the first time:
Learning to eat with a spoon:
Snuggling with Mama:
Some of his current favorite activities these days are:
Wearing his Batman vest and growling “Batman” with Daddy:
Finding new and interesting things to do with his toys, like putting the train tracks into a cd canister:
Going to get donuts with Daddy:
Putting on Mommy’s (or Daddy’s) shoes:
Turning anything into a hat, but especially the sieves:
Mowing Mimi & PopPop’s grass:
and most of all – playing with balls!
With every month that passes I swear it is even more fun with him than the last!
Zach & Andrea 