Austin – Months 15 – 18
Wow! A lot happens in three months, doesn’t it? Austin is now 18 months old and has come on leaps and bounds. I’m sure a lot of it is because he has been to nursery between 3 and 4 days per week. He’s been around other children and there is an awful lot of stimulus at nursery. I love seeing the pictures of all the things he’s been up to and love the crafts that come home.
He’s really enjoying nursery, to the point on occasions when he realises he’s not going he actually cries. He obviously loves being there. Luckily the tears don’t last long when he realises there are lots of fun things to do at home. Thankfully!
Austin is still a very shy child. If a person who he isn’t familiar with try to talk to him, he’ll run to me and hide his face. If he’s in the pushchair, he’ll turn his head to the side so he can’t see them. He’s always been clingy, so it’s not unexpected. Luckily he loves the nursery staff. We’ll have to be aware of this when he can see our extended family again, as he might be nervous around them.
So just after Austin turned 18 months old, it was his second Christmas. We put the tree up – which he liked. All the presents were wrapped to be delivered by Father Christmas. We were ready to go. Then coronavirus struck. He got poorly just before Christmas. I started to notice he was coughing a lot during the night. We knew there had been cases in his nursery and he got a notification to isolate on the final week before Christmas.
So after a night of a few coughs, I thought it best to get him tested. A couple of days later, he had a positive test result. He seems to go downhill quite quickly after that. Not with the traditional symptoms. Apart from the cough, he never got much else (that I’m aware of – he is a toddler after all and can’t tell me how he feels). But he was really sick. A few times a day he would just throw up. So we sent most of Christmas Day and Boxing Day juggling a poorly toddler, cleaning up sick and trying to make the best of Christmas. It wasn’t that great. Luckily my husband and I both had the whole Christmas period off, so he opened presents slowly over the next few days and we made up for it. Obviously, we were in self-isolation, so we couldn’t go anywhere anyway – thank goodness for the garden for some fresh air!
Sleeping
Austin generally is a good sleeper. He’s definitely getting ready to drop the second nap as his two naps are much shorter and on days where he wakes up later, he can go right through until after lunch. He generally sleeps for around 30 – 45 minutes in the morning and around 45 mins to an hour in the afternoon. His bedtime is 7pm and he’ll sleep right round until about 6:30 – 7am ish.
Feeding
Austin seemed to bounce back quite quickly from COVID-19 which was great. The only thing that is taking a while is his appetite. Almost 2 weeks on, he’s only just starting to eat the size meals he was before and he won’t drink any milk.
At first, I was getting quite worried that he wouldn’t drink milk. He’s normally a twice a day glugger. But I’ve just increased his intake of other dairy, just to make sure he’s getting what he needs. He has a multi-vitamin every day and eats plenty of things like green veggies, eggs and fish, so I’m not too worried. We’ll keep offering him milk in the morning and at bedtime and see if he takes it, but it could be that’s what reminds him of being sick.
In normal circumstances, he’s quite a good eater. He’ll pretty much each a wide variety of foods. Portion-wise, he will normally eat around 3 tablespoons of food per meal, alongside 1 – 2 snacks per day. He’s always been a big breakfast eater. He’ll get through a bowl of porridge or cereal, a piece of toast and some fruit for breakfast.
He’s really good with his spoon and fork now. He only really makes a mess with yoghurt, and that’s mainly because he eats it with his hands!
Mental and Physical Development
Three months is a long time in toddler-land. He’d just started walking in my last update and he was able to walk across the room and bump down on his bottom. Now he runs around the house. At first, we kept him in the rooms that were carpeted (we have stone floors in some of the rooms) but since he’s very confident walking now, we let him have free roam of the house. We have finally had to put stairgates up. We didn’t bother for ages, as he showed no interest in going up the stairs.
He got a little pram as one of his Christmas presents and he loves running around the house pushing his babies.
He also got a small basketball and net. He very quickly got the hang of running up to the net and pushing the ball up and over. He’s not at the stage of throwing it in yet though, but he can kick a football.
He’s very capable when it comes to stacking toys. He’s always been good with his stacking rings, but now anything that will go on top of each other is a winner. He loves stacking cups, his magnetic totem toy and pretty much anything that can be piled up. His Duplo is a winner. He’ll spend hours playing with Duplo. We’ve been given a lot of Duplo over the last year and we have a lot of fun tipping the big box out, making and destroying things.
Teeth-wise, we now have 13 teeth. He’s cut all of his pre-molars and is just starting to cut his fangs. He thankfully hasn’t been too grumpy with them.
Speech
Austin was always an early talker. With his first word coming just before he was six-months-old. He now is a very chatty toddler. I don’t know how many words a toddler is supposed to know at 18-months, but Austin can say at least a couple of hundred. Often he needs a bit of prompting to get the word or the pronunciation right, but there’s not much he won’t give a go.
He’s not very good at stringing sentences together yet. There have been a couple of two-word sentences, like ‘I see’ when he wants to look at something but mainly it’s just single words. We have some animal and first-word flashcard and he loves sitting down with me and doing them. His favourite animal is a narwhal which is very random, but he can recognise one in a book and say it as clear as a bell.
He’s also really into his transport, telling us that he’s seen or heard a bike, car, plane, bus, van etc. He was so excited the other day when a helicopter came over and he ran in to tell me all about the ‘helicop’ (as he calls it). He also calls ambulance and police cars ‘nar nees’, which is super cute.
Austin seems to be growing into a lovely, happy and inquisitive toddler. We are really enjoying watching and helping him grow and develop. Stay posted for the next update when he’s 21 months old.
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