You Don't Win Friends With Salad

Every parent quickly comes to the realization that feeding a toddler is hit and miss. While that can be taken quite literally, I mean it in the figurative sense. Ever since Eddie stopped nursing and got teeth, we've been trying to expand his diet to include, well, everything. Every parent also quickly comes to the realization that cooperation is not a toddler's strong suit. Perhaps it is due to my lack of creativity in thinking up meal ideas for Eddie, but it seems that he eats the same three things over and over again: macaroni and cheese, quesadillas, and peanut butter sandwiches. These items are, of course, supplemented with yogurt, grapes, pureed vegetables, pickles, the occasional nibble of corn on the cob, and lots of crackers.

Despite our best efforts, Eddie seems to have been born a vegetarian. The only "meat" that I have successfully gotten him to eat willingly is the Gerber 2nd Food Apples and Chicken puree. As you may imagine, the stuff is disgusting. It is brown and runny and does not resemble chicken in the slightest. Eddie loved it. We have tried giving him hot dogs, chicken nuggets, grilled chicken, steak, deli meat, pork roast, bacon, etc, etc. Sometimes he will eat one piece before carefully moving all the other pieces from his tray to the floor. Sometimes he will put one piece in his mouth, taste it, then extract it and place it on the floor. Most of the time, he won't even try it. We try to trick him by hiding meat pieces in other things that he likes. He is too smart for us and rarely falls for it. If he does accidentally get a piece in his mouth, it is quickly ejected.

As life-long carnivores, Dave and I are not really sure how to handle this. Do we need to be worried about stunting Eddie's growth because he's not getting any protein? Do we need to make him eat tofu and beans? Do we need to puree all sorts of meats and add them to his yogurt and macaroni? Perhaps we just need to explain the food chain to him and then he'll get it.

15 Months Old

It's official: Eddie is growing up too fast. I took him in for his 15 month check-up today and felt like a veteran mom -- no questions, no concerns. I know the drill. Eddie, however, seems to have forgotten the drill. He was angry when I laid him down to remove his pants. He was angrier when I laid him back down so they could measure his height. He was absolutely livid when I laid him down to get his shots. But, between all these bursts of rage, he was incredibly happy to be there. He explored every inch of the filthy floor and opened all the drawers and found the best toy ever -- the doctor's stool. There he stood, spinning it for a good two minutes straight before the doctor came in to check him out. Then I had to remove him so that she could sit down.

Apparently he is healthy, which is a good thing. He's only grown one inch since his last visit, which surprised me. I thought he was getting tall. He must just be getting more spry and that is why he can suddenly climb on top of the coffee table where he was too short to before. He also hasn't gained much weight and is only in the 12th percentile! I had to ask her to repeat that (mostly because Eddie was busy yelling at the cupboards, but partly because I couldn't believe it).

In other news, Eddie had physical therapy again on Tuesday. Julie was very excited that Eddie has decided to take some steps on his own. We don't even have any new exercises to work on; we just have to practice walking. I am glad about that. It makes me feel like maybe we're almost done with physical therapy. We will be done once Eddie is walking well and we see what happens with his feet/ankles.

All in all, Eddie is doing great!

Eddie enjoying the garbage cans at Cove Fort last week

Pool Pals

Eddie and his cousins went for a dip in Grandma Andrews' inflatable pool on Saturday afternoon. Of course I was at poolside with camera in hand.

Being cute comes so easy, doesn't it Ed?

Riley, always a cheeser.

Dax, the human water feature.

Walk This Way

As you loyal readers already know, we have been working hard to get Ed caught up on his gross motor skills and have been doing pretty well so far. Eddie has recently learned that walking can be fun... as long as it's not too scary. So he has concentrated mainly on pushing things around, like the neighbor's toy...


He has spent the past few days pushing our umbrella stroller back and forth from the kitchen to the living room. Then he'll run into an obstacle, we'll turn him around, and he'll go back until he runs into something else. As you saw in the video, he's not too good at steering.

Today Eddie and I were playing with his big ball (pictured below) and I got him to stand up facing me with the ball between us. Then, by accident, the ball escaped and Eddie was left standing there, not holding onto anything. When he realized this, he lunged toward me, inadvertently taking his first step. Since Dave didn't see, I decided to try an re-enactment. The second time, I took the ball out on purpose and Eddie stood there looking at me for a minute, then took two very graceful steps forward.

Spagh-Eddie

Here is a picture of Eddie after enjoying a spaghetti dinner the other night. I refer to him as Eddie-Spaghetti-Beard. By the time he was done and about to get in the bath, he had noodles hanging from his hair and embedded in all his crevices.


Eddie's Therapy

Today I heard something scary... Eddie could be walking within the next month! I suppose I'll believe it when I see it, but Julie sure can make him do amazing things. We spent today's therapy session working on getting him to walk forward (with help, of course). He can walk quite well while he has something in front of him, like a push-toy, a box, or even a big ball. But when you try to get him to walk by just holding his hands, he bends his knees and won't even try. Clearly this is a confidence issue, as so many other problems have been.

For the next two weeks, we get to work on having him walk from one of us to the other. We also get to work on strengthening his trunk by balancing him on his big ball and tilting him different directions. It's a lot like pilates for babies. Sorry there is no photo of this... Dave wouldn't let me take a picture of he and Eddie doing pilates together.

Batswing

What can we say, we love posting photos of Eddie swinging. A few more can't hurt right?

The Caped Crusader.

Why so serious?

Who says I never post photos of myself on our blogs?

Butter Ball

Flashback to 3 years ago. We had gone over at my sister Christie's house for dinner one Sunday evening. Afterwards, we were hanging out down in the basement when someone noticed that Josh, who was about Eddie's age at the time, had gone missing. Christie went upstairs and found him on the kitchen counter eating a stick of butter that he had skewered on a knife like a popsicle. That was the day we taught him to say the word "obese."

Flash forward to earlier this afternoon at the grocery store. We frequently give Eddie various items from our cart for him to play with as a way to keep him entertained while we are shopping. I had given him the bread, but he was squashing it, so Kristen swapped him for a seemingly harmless box of butter sticks. We soon got distracted with the rest of our shopping. A few minutes had passed when Kristen noticed Eddie and exclaimed "he's eating the butter!"

Yup, he had gnawed his way through the outer box, the paper wrapping, and well into the creamy center of one of the butter sticks. I guess we need to start working on the word "obese."

Eddie's Therapy

Today Eddie had another session of physical therapy. Since his last session, Eddie has been getting even more mobile. He is getting really good at balancing next to things and climbing onto (and into) things. We spent today's session learning some new tricks to teach Eddie to shift his weight while standing so that he can learn to move his feet forward instead of just side-to-side. Eddie is also just starting to have enough confidence to hold our hands and walk a few steps. He is making great progress and Julie thinks he could start taking steps on his own pretty soon.

Eddie is also learning lots of new words. The newest ones this week are paper, Josh (in honor of his cousin), yogurt, ah ah (which is the sound his stuffed monkey makes), boo, and bee (thanks to one of his favorite books, Harvey Happy Bee).

Here he is showing off his muscles yesterday:

Word Up

It seems that in the last couple of weeks, Eddie's vocabulary has grown immensely. He jabbers and babbles a lot, and we're starting to pick out more words. They are not necessarily the most useful words, but I suppose they're better than nothing.

Choo

Thanks to the toy train that we gave Ed for his birthday, he just started saying, "choo!" when he activates its lights and sounds.

Elbow

For some reason, Eddie thinks that elbows are hilarious. When we're desperate for entertainment, all we need to do is stick out an elbow and he'll say "bobo."

Hippo

I'll admit, this word sounds a lot like elbow. Identifying it is all about context. Eddie learned this word from one of his favorite books Hippos Go Berserk. Look for details on this book in an upcoming post.

Uh-oh

He only says "uh-oh" when I say it first, which I only do when he drops things or falls down. So I end up saying it a lot.

Vroom

Eddie just recently became interested in the 10 different toy cars he got for Christmas. Whenever he rolls them around, I say "vroom, vroom" and now he has started saying it too. His version is more of a hum, though.

Cracker

For a while there, it seemed that Eddie's primary form of sustenance was graham crackers. He has been eating a lot of them the past couple of months, so I suppose it was inevitable that he would learn to say "cracker." It sounds more like "ca ca" when he says it, but I know what he means.

Eddie

This is my new favorite word in Eddie's vocabulary. Dave identified it just this afternoon. Whenever Eddie is getting into something he shouldn't, I always say "Eddie" in a very specific tone of voice. Now Eddie says "dee dee" back in the exact same tone. It's very cute.

Eddie's Therapy

Today Eddie had physical therapy. In the past two weeks, Eddie learned two really big things: cruising the furniture and going down the stairs. So, obviously, Julie was impressed. We had some more good news when Julie saw Eddie's stylish high-top shoes and declared that we'll try shoes without inserts for a month and see if he improves. Since I'm not too thrilled about having to spend $50 to buy inserts, plus however much baby shoes cost to get new shoes to fit the inserts, I am okay with waiting on them.

Julie thinks we'll have a full-fledged toddler on our hands soon. I watched as she got Eddie to walk around the toy box and switch to the table and then to the couch. Then I watched as she handed him his cup and he let go of the table with both hands to drink. He can stand with very little support now, he just doesn't have much confidence. He also spent some time walking behind his toy bin and Julie pulled it around the living room.

So, the next two weeks will be spent in encouraging Eddie to let go of things when he's standing. Plus, we'll be tricking him into walking without realizing that's what he's doing. And whenever you see him, he'll probably be wearing shoes.