Hellobee

Charlie turned a year and a half old on Friday! He exhausts us with his seemingly boundless energy — the boy climbs every single climbable surface there is and his default mode is running. But he’s also so much more fun with each passing day. He is definitely his own little independent person with his own little opinions, but he still loves to give us hugs and kisses and hold our hands. Month 17 was a cranky month for Charlie, but now he’s back to his usual happy self!

Sleep

As I mentioned in my previous posts, Charlie’s sleep became bad out of the blue about 2 weeks ago. I think it’s just the 18 month sleep regression (month 18 is a period of big development for babies), and he’ll grow out of it eventually. After a week and a half of fought bedtimes and middle of the night wake-ups, we couldn’t handle it anymore so it was time to cry it out last Monday. We let Charlie cry for 30 minutes when he woke up in the middle of the night that night, and he’s slept through the night since. But his naps the past week have been almost nonexistent (and this boy loves his naps), so he’s been crashing at bedtime because he’s so tired. This weekend we almost got him back on track. He took a 2 hour nap yesterday and a 3 hour nap today, but we had to push him in his stroller to get him down at bedtime. Previously we’d give him a bottle, plop him in his crib and he’d put himself to sleep. Charlie knew it was bedtime and would go to sleep no matter what. But now he purposefully tries to stay awake at bedtime, I think because he is so obsessed with playing lately. To get him back to his previous glorious sleep habits, we’re probably going to have to cry it out. And it’s going to be tough because he will be yelling mama and help, so we’ve been putting it off.

Everything tastes better to Charlie when it’s on a fork.

Schedule

Charlie’s schedule has been all over the place lately because of his sleep. He’s been waking up anywhere from 5:30 – 8:30am. The past two days he’s been waking up at the ungodly hour of 5:30am. Hopefully as his sleep gets back on track he’ll start waking up later. This is his general schedule:

Wake up – 6:30am, 5 1/2 oz bottle
Breakfast – 8:30am
Lunch – 11:30am
Nap: 9 oz bottle, 12:30pm – 3:30pm
Bedtime: 7:30pm, 7 1/2 oz bottle

He should really be drinking less milk at his age, but oh well….

We gave Charlie his first lemon right here at Brooklyn Fish Camp, so it only seemed fitting that we give him his first lime here too.

Eating

Charlie is still a picky eater. His friends are eating entire avocados as a snack, fruit by the cupful, meat and pasta galore… while Charlie is perfectly content to stick to his soups and purees. He will eat a lot of different things… it’s just that he won’t eat enough to get full unless it’s a soup or puree. His favorite snack lately is raisins — they’re a choking hazard so we only give them to him one at a time. His favorite fruit is blueberries, and his favorite vegetable is cucumber. And just like his mom he loves salty foods and doesn’t care for sweets!

Talking

Charlie hasn’t added that many new words to his vocabulary in the past month. It seems he had a huge month 15, and then it’s been maybe 1-2 new words a week since then. He can probably say about 40 words. His latest ones are apple, ice, mommy, and daddy. His two word phrases include help please, thank you, no more, and mama more. He’s obsessed with saying thank you, which is pretty adorable! 40 words sounds like a lot and he can understand so many more words and phrases than he can actually speak, but we’re still far from really being able to communicate with each other.

Charlie really is the sweetest little man and we feel so lucky to have him in our lives.