The Muhlestein Crew: Nicholas at 16 months

Weight: 28 lbs

Height: 31 inches

Teeth Count: 4 bottom 5 top

Nickname: Squeeber

Favorite Activities:

He loves brushing his lower teeth. He hates bushing his top teeth. I don't know if they are more sensitive or what.
Holding Papa's shaver.
Holding any phone shaped item up to his ear and talking on the phone.
Nicholas loves "studying" a lot more than Papa does. What activity that lets you hold a highlighter and a pen while flipping through a large book could be bad?
Playing hide-and-go-seek with the rings.
Looking at books. Within the last week-and-a-half, Nicholas has finally calmed down enough that he will sit on my lap and flip through some books. He loves his pop up Monster Transportation book and a book called Tails. He asks for me to read a book to him first thing in the morning.
He loves riding in the little car we got him or on his tricycle. He has to be pushed around on both of these, but he loves them.
He loves "driving" the car. He will sit in the front seat and push ever button and pull every lever until ever light on the car is on.
He still LOVES dogs. He also LOVES birds this past month.
He LOVES socks.

Things I'm Surprised He Doesn't Do:

Nicholas doesn't really like listening to music or dancing.
He doesn't climb. He likes it when Papa puts him up in the tree or on something high. (Papa loves to do this.)
He doesn't ever hit or bite people. When we hang out with other children and they take his toy, he will do one of three things: not care, watch and wait for them to put it down, or get sad and cry. He never gets angry. He has such a sweet soul.
He is still mostly a dropper and doesn't throw things very well.

New skills:

Two weeks ago, he started to fold his arms all by himself when we tell him it is time for prayer.
He is getting really good at feeding himself. He feeds himself oatmeal every morning.
He loves to help cook. He dumps the oatmeal into the cup, opens and shuts the microwave, and dumps a spoon full of sugar into his oatmeal. He loves to crack eggs and helps scramble them.
He can go down the kiddie slide all by himself.
Getting off of the couch and chairs.
His understanding has increased IMMENSELY this month. It is really great. He understands most of the simple commands I tell him.
He can pull almost anything off the counter. He isn't tall enough to see what he is pulling down, but he knows that is where we keep the real interesting stuff.
He loves taking the lids off things.
He actually will build with his giant legos instead of just singing to them. (He still mostly will just hold them up to his mouth and sing to them.)

Quirks:

He is becoming more attached to his pacifier. (Getting rid of it will be a struggle.)
For the past two days, he has loved running between my legs.
When we take him to feed the ducks, we have to bring a lot of bread because Nicholas ends up eating most of it.
His favorite part of bath time is filling a cup up with water and dumping it on his belly and laughing. He does this almost twenty times during his bath.
When he likes what he is eating, he will say, "Mmmmm."
He loves showing people his belly. When he meets someone new and he is a little nervous, he uses this move as an ice breaker.
We have been swaddling him again to get him down for naps.

Words He Says Consistently:

*He will repeat a couple phrases and words that I say, but will only say them once or twice.

What I Think I Have Learned About Parenting:

This last stage he was in was a pretty hard stage for me. He was into EVERYTHING and wanted to be held ALL THE TIME and only by mama. Also he WHINED CONSTANTLY when I wasn't devoting 110% of my attention to him or we were out of the house. There were also about two or three weeks that his one hour nap turned into a 20 minute nap every other day. I had to step back and figure out how to parent a little smarter. We now have enough toys that I have started rotating them. This keeps him interested in the toys he has and also helps with clean up because there are not as many toys for him to spread through out the house. I'm trying to hang back more, so he learns to play on his own. I am also trying to get him around more kids. We try to do one outing per day.
I read the Love and Logic book for kids 6 and under. It wasn't much help for this age. It just basically said to be consistent (which is hard) and to remove and distract when they are not doing what you want. I'm anxious to try out the other advice this book gives when Nicholas gets older.
The most important and helpful thing I have learned is to not say "No, No" when he is just doing something I don't want him to do. I now say, "Oh, Oh" instead. I save "No, No" for when he is doing something dangerous.

The Muhlestein Crew