Eating: Cooper is eating much better than before. He is still the typical toddler who one day will love a certain food and the next day refuses it, but for the most part, he is a good eater. I'm having to be pretty creative with cooking dinner and figuring out healthy things to cook that I know he would like. Some things are home runs and some he won't even try. It can be frustrating but I know it will get better especially when we can communicate more. He loves every type of fish right now and eats tuna for lunch on most days. He also loves bananas, grapes (though he is getting tired of them now), cheese, chicken, zucchini, applesauce, yogurt, oatmeal, pancakes, and he LOVES smoothies.
Drinking: Okay y'all, this is getting crazy…I have mentioned before that Cooper refuses to drink out out of a sippy cup or straw cup and it's not getting any better. The doctor told me at 15 months to stop giving him bottles. I tried it off and on but never stuck to it because I was worried he wasn't getting enough liquids. After speaking to the doctor again I got reassurance that he will not get dehydrated and that he will get thirsty enough that he will drink out of it. Well, we have been almost 2 weeks now of no bottles. The good news is, we did it and he is off of bottles! Yay! The bad news is he still refuses to drink out of a sippy cup. As in, he gets very upset if I even get it close to him. I will even just leave it on the floor where he is playing and he won't touch it. He will drink out of a cup when we hold it for him but it is a huge mess and takes a lot of time. If I put a straw in the cup he was just drinking out of, he gets upset and won't drink it anymore. He will drink milk, smoothies, and sometimes water out of the cup but won't touch them in the sippy cup. I have tried every piece of advice given to me for him to try and every type of cup possible. We asked the doctor if he has seen this before and he said "all the time." I'm glad to know that, because I have never heard of any kid doing this before. He also said "with my more stubborn kids…" Lol I guess you can say the little boy is surely stubborn. Anyway, my normal saying to help me get through difficult phases is, "it's just phase, this will pass". But for this one, I'm not so sure this will pass. I really don't think he will ever drink from a straw cup. I'm sure I'm wrong and I will look back at this post and laugh by how stressed I was about a darn straw cup!
Sleeping: Cooper officially dropped his morning nap around 15 or 16 months and it has been going well. I thought I would miss the extra time I had in the morning but it's actually been really nice to be able to do more things in the morning and not worry about him needing to nap. He still goes to bed around 7:30am and he wakes up around 8-8:30am. It's so great that he sleep about 13 hours at night! He take his afternoon nap after lunch anywhere between 12-1pm. I thought when he dropped the morning nap, he would take a long afternoon nap, but over the past month his afternoon nap has only been about 1-2 hours. But I can't complain since he sleeps so well at night and I can either sleep in, or get up and get stuff done in the morning without being exhausted.
Likes: Cooper loves to be outside. We go to the park often, go on walks, play in the backyard and I just let him walk around the cul-de-sac with all the other neighborhood kids. There are a ton of kids playing in our cul-de-sac daily and they all love Cooper (since he is "the baby") and they follow him around and play with him. It's so fun to live in a cul-de-sac, I must say! He has a mind of his own and just wants to walk around and explore everything. He also loves his dog (of course) and says dog all the time. He loves to give hugs, especially to Mommy, Daddy and the dog. He also loves balls and to play catch, and he can shoot the basketball in his little basketball goal. He also loves bath time and playing with all his bath toys.
Temperament: Cooper has a shy temperament and takes awhile to get warmed up to new people and places. He still has some separation anxiety. He is getting better about not crying as much when we drop him off places, but he is still not completely comfortable and himself. He is very comfortable with my parents and doesn't even notice that we are gone when they babysit for us. I am planning to put him in a Mother's Day Out program in the Fall to help him get used to being around other kids and being in a different environment since he can be shy. He can also be very stubborn but he is also incredibly sweet. He comes up to me throughout to day just to give me hugs. He likes to cuddle and gives me big hugs before he goes to bed every night. It's the sweetest thing. It's amazing how God has created every person so unique and different and I love his sweet, shy personality (even though it can be hard at times).
Next month he will already be a year and a half! Where has the time gone?!?!
No comments:
Post a Comment