Secret Pooper

Luke has started hiding to poop. Isn’t that some sort of milestone? Like, they are starting to be aware of social norms, or…being aware of the feeling of having to go? Well, whatever. It’s hilarious regardless. He scurries under the dining room table or behind the recliner and when I look over at him he has "the look" on his face. And then he seriously points at something to avert my attention and then looks away from me. I kid you not. This kid his hilarious!!

I can’t believe he’ll be 15 months tomorrow. I’m pretty sure he has a 15 month check up sometime this month…..I still need to find out when that is. Ooops! He has taken HUGE, HUGE strides with language & communication in the last couple months – particularly this last month. Remember that list I posted of things he says? There were 23 words on his "verbal" list (not including the animal sounds he says – which he seems to impress people the most with!). He has since added a bunch more – hot, hat (he actually DOES say these differently and understands their context!), car, na-na (which is what he calls my mom now), and instead of just yelling "mom" when he’s mad or upset he calls me "ma-ma" now – about 7,000 times a day, chocolate (!! can you believe that one. hmm…I guess he notices me sneaking it all the time lol). He’s also added Monkey & Bird to his list of sounds. 

His verbal list is about 30 words now! Plus, 7 animal sounds, and about 5-6 signs. AND, he even uses a few two word combinations (though I’m not sure he realizes they are two words just yet – they are things that sound like they could be one word for him, like s’at for "what’s that?" – which he says about 100 times a day – or "tain-too" for thank you). 

Just out of curiosity I looked up where he lands in language development – and he’s on par with a child closer to two years old!! Most lists I’ve seen say that 15-20 words by 18 months is just average. He’s well surpassed that! And none of this even takes all of the words he doesn’t say, but understands, into consideration. He knows SO MANY! He can point to so very many things that you ask him to!

I think I’m just…..really shocked by this, because I didn’t expect it from him. From the day he was born – no, from the day I first felt movement when I was pregnant – I assumed he was going to be a very physical, on-the-go, full of brute force and brawn and maaaybe not the scholar but more of a jock. Truthfully – he is MOST of those things – but I’m realizing that he is incredibly intelligent! He’s not just about strength like I thought he was (though, he is incredibly strong – he gets comments about that all the time, particularly from doctors). He picks up on things that absolutely amaze me! I’d worked on the sign "please" with him for a while (using his hand-me-something-and-grunt moments when he wants help as the perfect opportunities to present it). Once in a while I get distracted from teaching them (usually I just forget to keep going when other things are going on in life)….and one day, after about a week of not showing him the sign (and before he’d ever used it himself), I randomly asked him to say please for something – and he did it! Almost perfectly, no less! At times it’s really an eye opener and a reminder of HOW much he is soaking in without realizing it. Like, how he learned how to blow his nose just from watching us do it during cold season. 

Which brings me to…..

He doesn’t walk. I have purposely skipped around saying anything about it lately, because I am SO SICK of people asking me if he’s walking yet. Even MATT is getting frustrated with him for not walking (particularly when he went to Charlotte and found out his boss’ son who is only 5 days older than Luke had been walking for 6 weeks). Is it frustrating having to carry around a 30 pound kid EVERYWHERE because he refuses to walk there himself? Yes. Is it surprising considering how fast he was at getting to his current mobile abilities and all the comments about how he was advanced physically? Yes. But do I really care? Nope.

The thing is, he KNOWS how to walk. He’s done it. He has taken a few steps on about 10 occasions. They are only about 2-3 at a time and he cries through them because he’s scared. Or, he will walk around the house 20 times or up and down the sidewalk for as far as you’ll let him as long as you’re holding his hands. He’ll walk behind his walk-assisting toys. But he will not walk independently. Why? I think because….right around a year he tried a few times, and fell every time. He’s no idiot – he remembers, he understands cause and effect, and to him – why bother walking when I know I’ll probably get hurt and I can already get anywhere I want to with what I’m able to do?

I’m not pushing him. I let him walk with my hands any time he wants to (and he initiates it all the time). Once in a while I’ll set him up between me & someone else and have him walk a few steps and cheer like he just won a gold medal and it thrills him. But that’s the extent of it. He’ll do it on his own time – when he’s comfortable. There’s really no way to teach him not to be scared, because he WILL fall, and he knows this. I can’t give him confidence in this – only he can, and he’s obviously not ready.

At times it does feel like I’ll never see him walk, lol. Just because….I was so prepared for him to do this early, that I’ve been waiting about…hmm….7 months now. I can’t even picture him walking on his own. But, it’s not a "concern" until 18 months….so he’s got 3 more before there’s anything to worry about. And I doubt it will take him that long. He just has to get over his own issues.

It’s funny, I was reading in all of these developmental timelines that, a lot of times kid’s language development gets temporarily interrupted when they learn how to walk. They focus on perfecting that and kind of forget about language for a short time. I’m thinking maybe, that’s why he’s so advanced with communication right now. He hasn’t taken the "walking break" yet. I definitely never thought it would all happen in that order!

I really….did not intend for this entry to be ALL Luke related lol.

House stuff? We finally got in touch with our loan processor. She reviewed our documents, and all that’s left is pretty easy to do. There was one form that the realtors & sellers need to sign (and only we’d signed it when we faxed it in) so Colleen (our agent) is picking that up from Matt and getting it done tonight. She also needs to see our insurance policy (which Matt took with him to scan & send), the title (which is NOW being released because she finally sent a conditional commitment letter to our paralegal), and then….a final inspection on repairs. That’s the only thing we are unsure of. Is she talking about the repairs we requested after inspection? I doubt the bank would care about those – unless they are sticklers about every detail of the contract. We are thinking that they are requiring something after they did their FHA appraisal and no one was ever notified. So we’re trying to find o

ut what that is today so we can get it done ASAP. All of it is reasonable, really – and now that the ball is rolling with the attorneys, there’s a real chance we’ll close on time.

And if that’s true…..it’s one month from today!!!

It seems….close? Ish? But at the same time it seems like we’ve been waiting forever and we’re just NOW 30ish days out? All of our real estate transactions happened in 30 days in the past, so this seems looong to us. 

If everything goes according to plan…here’s what we plan to do. The night of the 14th (a Friday) we go to the house and tape off the rooms to be painted. Then the 15th will be our painting party, which will be an alllll day thing. Sunday we will do touch ups, any second coats we didn’t get to, tear the tape down – finishing up all the projects basically. Then Mon-Fri we will be bringing small loads to the house, and we’ll set up all of our flooring projects during the week. We are refinishing the hardwood floors in the bedrooms, replacing the carpet in the living room & hallway, and re-doing the floor in my bathroom. Then the following weekend (sometime between the 21st-23rd) is when the big part of the move will happen – all the furniture & clearing out our storage unit. That way, all of the walls & floors are DONE before the big stuff gets there. By the time we are fully moved in & unpacked it will be June, and I know we’ll want to concentrate on the outdoors (opening the pool, landscaping, fixing up the sandbox, etc) so it will be verrrryyy nice to have the indoors sort of "done" with just small decor projects I can do myself. 

Anyway, I know….I’m being boring. I’m just relishing my time alone for the moment. Luke is just, in rare-form the past few days (most likely molar #4) and he was absolutely irate this morning. It was just nice to put him down for his nap and step away from it momentarily. I definitely have to get in the shower before he wakes up raising hell, so I should go do that. I have about 5 loads of laundry awaiting me today, anyway. Happy Wednesday!