Where Is Fall/Autumn?

On Saturday we had our first snowfall of the year (if the year starts in the spring). (This pic is of our pretty little tree.) I am not ready for winter. I know, I'm just repeating myself in these posts - but seriously, it was October 10th - my mom's birthday! - I called and asked her if she'd ever seen snow on her birthday before and she said she didn't think so! We got 5 inches, thankfully it had melted within 24 hrs. We refused to let it keep us indoors; we went out and bought our pumpkins, one for each of us! :) Here's a picture of Logan last year and this year:Logan has been so cute when I take him to the store and he sees Halloween decorations. He shivers and says "oooohhh." It always makes me laugh - I guess I must have done that the first time because now whenever he sees a skull he opens his eyes real big and points.

On the way home we sang "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and he did all of the hand gestures. I was really caught off guard because I've only sung it for him probably three other times in his entire life. So I'm going to ask Babysitter if she taught him because I know kids start to be sponges (i.e. it's the best time for learning) at 18 months old (he's got 5 days) but I really don't think he picked that up from me. UPDATE: She said she had never done that with him! Wow, he really has suddenly become a sponge!

I love the changes that I'm seeing in him lately. I've written before that he's never had much of an attention span (so the sign language never worked) nor has he ever wanted to "learn" from us (we haven't taught him anything - everything he knows how to do has been on his own but he's always been average to above average with his development). Now suddenly he's interested in everything. He wants to know what everything is and he is really paying attention to what I tell him and show him. (He's been doing the shape ball perfectly since month 16.) Of course this means he's getting frustrated for the first time (if you don't count last year when he had a few frustrated weeks before he started crawling). Until now everything has come easily for him but that's because most of his days consisted of physical things. (I had read that once they get into the terrible twos a lot of parents have a hard time with their child suddenly wanting to do everything themself - but Logan has been like that his whole life.) Now sometimes he wants to do more than he can intellectually but I think that's a good sign because that's how that part of his brain will move on to the next level. He even babbles in sentences now. Until this month 17 it used to be just one or two words but the other day he stood in front of me and was so serious like he was explaining something to me and it seemed like in his head he was telling me a very long story, haha!

Lately he's been brushing his own teeth and I don't mean just chewing on the tooth brush - I mean doing it probably better than me! You might remember I started brushing his teeth (without toothpaste) 5 days a week when he was 10 months old because he never minded it (our pediatrician said not to start toothpaste until he's two years old). But about a month ago he stopped letting me do it and began taking the brush from me to do it himself. At first I didn't like this (it cut his brushes down to about 3 days a week) but then I realized that he really does know how to brush his teeth! So now we're going to try for 7 days a week. This morning he did it forever, I finally had to take the toothbrush away from him because I thought he was going to ruin it (which I don't like doing because you can't expect your kids not to "grab" if you "grab" from them. Usually replacing something works but this time he didn't want anything else!) I'm guessing I'll get him a new one in a couple of weeks since adults are supposed to every 6 months and it's been 8 months (but I figured longer was fine for him since there where days we didn't do it but I brush my teeth twice a day). I'm so happy that his teeth have come in perfectly. I guess it doesn't really matter now (the next ones are what counts) but right now his teeth are the right shape, size, color and placed exactly where they should be. Maybe he'll avoid braces unlike Joe & me!

Everything he does now is right-handed (in the past he was ampidextris so I wondered if he might end up left-handed like me but that is clearly not going to be the case).


In my last post I talked about birth order characteristics and how Logan is starting to show classic first born traits. One of those - he is starting to get obsessive, lol. Was it just during month 14 when I was saying that he loved making a mess? Well not anymore. (I'm not going to need to hire a cleaning service after all!) There can not be a mess anywhere or else he will break a sweat trying to clean up. If there's so much as a crumb on the floor it is a huge deal to him. His things have to be organized and he gets upset if something is out of place. He asks for paper towels so that he can scrub the floor to the point that he is panting. When he sees the dog dishes on the floor he picks them up to give them to me because he seems to think that is what I'm supposed to do since when he was younger and used to go towards them I would pick them up, haha!

Although he's not completely - Joe just loves that I'm putting this in my blog (I'm being sarcastic): last night Joe farted. Well then Logan started laughing and then farted, too, on purpose!

At night he's finally stopped throwing his blankets out of his crib. At around 16 months old I started putting a blanket in his crib for the first time because it was getting cold at night. However, if you've been reading for a long time then you know that Logan has never wanted anything to do with blankets or stuffed animals or really anything you'd think would be comforting! He always just threw everything as far away from him as possible! But for the past two months I've continued to put that blanket in there every night even though it's on the floor before I even close the door to his room to leave. Last week when it turned freezing I began putting 2-3 blankets in there and guess what? Although they are scrunched up at the bottom (so he's not using them) they have still been there every morning this week! So I hope that pretty soon he'll actually use them and I won't have to worry about his temperature at night. I was never worried last year (like you'd think with a baby), but I wonder if that's because I was still getting up with him in the night and so I could tell what his room felt like. Or maybe because the weather was more predictable! This summer I'd put him in the crib hardly with anything on because it was 100 degrees and then in the middle of the night I'd realize it was cold and have to turn on the heat (yes, I used our heat even in the summer because I didn't want to wake Logan up by putting more clothes on him). Then nights when I dressed him warmly I'd wake up sweating and so I'd have to turn on the air conditioner. At least pretty soon he'll be able to tell me when he's hot or cold!

Yesterday I bundled him up and we went for a walk. He is at Babysitter's right now (where he goes 8 hrs a week). I love when I pick him up, all of the cute kids go get him for me, help him, and then wave and say "bye Logan!" Joe says that when Logan arrives the kids all cheer. I'm so relieved he hasn't had any bad experiences with kids there.

I was right, he did go back to his 2 hr naps as of Friday. I think this week he is getting back to taking his nap at noon rather than as early as 10 or as late as 3 which had been the case the past month! It's supposed to be nice weather this weekend so we are planning to go to Vala's Pumpkin Patch with Matt, Stacy, and Jaxson (the boy born 6 days after Logan). If it's not nice weather then we will go to The Children's Museum with them for the first time. If you read my post Our Life This Week then you know I hope to go to Vala's again!!!P.S. Tomorrow will be a week since I started The Five Factor Diet and I've already lost 5 lbs! Yeay! It's been easy so far, but there's still 15 to go!