{month thirteen} Fitzgerald Benjamin, you seem like such a grown-up dude now. It’s both exciting and heartbreaking. This age – young toddlerhood – is SO fun though!
This past month it seems like Fitz’s language has exploded! He can say most single syllable words and often repeats whatever he hears. Along with pointing with his pointer finger, he can communicate what he wants pretty well. He can say: no (no no), whispers Papa, ball (ba), bottle or sippy cup (baba), up (up or eep), banana (nana), poop, diaper, and bye bye. When you say “head” he puts his hands up to his face on his cheeks, and when you say “no” he shakes his head and says “no no.” His vocabulary is growing every day. It’s amazing to see him making connections with words.
We officially transitioned him to cow’s milk, which honestly wasn’t that much of a challenge since he was already on formula. The biggest change was that we switched out his daytime milk for sippy cups and cold milk. It took a little bit for him to get used to milk coming straight out of the fridge – he would take a drink and then spit the entire thing out at first – but now he pretty much drinks it without an issue. I found that the super simple plastic sippy cups are the best for Fitz because anything with a straw or silicone nipple are WAY too distracting for him to drink out of. We are still warming up his bedtime bottle (and will start to move that towards dinnertime in the coming months to eventually eliminate a bedtime bottle) as well as his bottle first thing in the morning; sometimes, though, Fitz is so eager and anxious to get his morning bottle that he can’t wait for it to warm up for a few minutes, so he drinks it cold out of the bottle.
When it comes to eating, Fitz is still a great little eater! He tries everything that we offer him, and pretty enthusiastically. He eats left-handed, almost always. And often holds his sippy cup in his right hand while he eats. Sometimes he’ll offer me some food, but he doesn’t want to give it to me, he wants me to feed it to him!
These days, we have to be on full-alert while Fitz is awake because he climbs onto anything and everything. He can get up on the coffee table, the couch, and the spinning chair (which is slightly terrifying because he likes to stand and jump while in the chair – oof). And his favorite thing is to push out the girls’ chairs from the table and climb up them (like a ladder) and then grab anything he can reach on the dining room table. He can also stand on his tip-toes and grab things off the edge of the kitchen counters, so we have to be super careful to make sure there isn’t anything he can reach that he isn’t supposed to.
Fitz knows that if there is someone coming to the front door (or leaving) that he can see them outside by standing by the living room window. There is a little corner where he can stand next to the toy cabinet, and he can wave and say “hello” or “good-bye.” Most mornings when Aaron takes Eloise to school (and Daphne usually goes too) he will wave “bye bye” and then knows the sound of the car in the driveway and will go greet them first thing when they are coming up the stairs and into the front door. It’s the sweetest. Sometimes he gets really sad when the girls leave for school though – he loves them SO much!
Lately, Fitz is really into balls. He loves to roll them and he has a new ball spinner that he can put a ball into and it rolls + spins down (almost like a slide). It is amazing how much time he can spend playing with balls these days. Or a full basket of toys that he can just strewn all over the living room. He’s also been loving putting small toys into a Halloween bucket (which the girls use for trick-or-treating) and shake the bucket to make the loudest noise possible!
{weight} 25 pounds
{hair} brown, but reddish in the light
{teeth} 9 teeth and 2 (lower) molars, currently cutting 3 teeth and 2 upper molars
{eyes} dark grey-green with light brown around his pupils (hazel)
{clothes} 12 month, 12-18 month, 18 month (jammies), and some 2T shirts
{diapers} size 4 in Abby & Finn + Honest Overnight diapers in size 4 for nighttime (sizing up in both for the next orders)
{feeding} 5 oz bottle in the morning, 4 oz sippy cups with AM and PM snack, and 5 oz bottle at bedtime. solids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and 2 snacks.
{likes} balls, food, his water cup, chewing on everything, crawling + chasing toys, faces, head & face rubs, stretching, his sisters, his reflection, Gee his giraffe stuffie + his two other lovies, bath time (but likes to stand).
{dislikes} being in his car seat, diaper changes, being stuck, getting his face wiped off after meals.
And here are Eloise and Daphne’s updates.
Happy 13 months, Fitz!
M