the sequel woke up this morning and decided he could say his brother’s name. and, just for good measure, he even through in his own name!

sometimes i think it would be nice to have some family nearby. my sissy, BIL, and niece are visiting this week and the boys are absolutely loving it. the sequel just keeps going around shouting “auntie*, auntie, auntie!” at dinner the other night, the turkey asked “aunt auntie*, do you have Jesus in your heart?” completely out of the blue. she, of course, said she does and asked what about him to which he replied “yes, i do! right here *pointing to chest*!” moments like that, i don’t think we’re messing things up too bad with our parenting. it has been wonderful having the aunt, uncle, and cousin here all week though. we’ve had dinners together every night and we’ve played and gone to playgrounds and just loved loving on family. i’m seriously of the opinion that they should just go ahead and move here.

*”auntie” used in place of actual name to protect the innocent

and, speaking of heart-melting moments, the turkey got me yesterday when i said “you are my favoritest love-monkey ever!” and he smiled at me and said “mommy, that makes me so happy!!!”

the sequel started putting together sentences last week. he quickly progressed from “more milk” to “thank you, daddy” to “happy birthday to you”. he is such a unique little joy. unlike his brother, he is very physical and very musical. he has a tremendous vocabulary for his age that astounds me. i love him to pieces!

the sequel p00ped in the potty for the first time today. obviously, we’re not actually trying to train yet but he thinks it’s fun to sit on the potty like big brother does. he’s such a clever boy!

in other news, we have left the “yeh, yeh, yeh” stage and entered the “no, no, no” stage. it’s so funny when he just starts spouting off with it.

he’s also starting to fight his naps. i guess we’ll be dropping back to one soon.

the sequel is making his own strides. he loves to sing and dance. he will try saying almost anything. he likes to count to three and say ABEs. he is incredibly affectionate with stuffies and with us. but he also has a horrible temper and runs from me all the time. i’m not sure how to break that one but “come here” definitely does not produce the desired results right now. he does not like to be left at the church nursery and cries as soon as i put him down. sometimes they have to take him to brother’s class to get him to calm down. i have been working on his birth book (yeh, about time right?) and it’s killing me how fast he has grown. i can’t believe my itty bitty is a toddler already.

i can’t believe how fast my little mouse is growing. he is full speed ahead on everything, no fear. he’s stubbornly independent but totally snuggly and affectionate. he loves, loves, loves giving kisses. they are wet and sloppy and completely fantastic!  he’s currently cutting his tenth tooth. he likes to squat down to play and can squat on his haunches for much longer than i can. he can correctly point to my facial features and is starting to identify colors and animals/objects in books. i’m thrilled that he’s finally starting to get into books! he is truly a parrot. it amazes me how many words and phrases he tries to repeat. he’s been heard to say:

• mommy
• daddy
• baby
• hi
• bye
• play
• hola
• moon
• “lay down”
• “whoo” (owl sound)
• brother
• ball
• blue
• “i love you”
• please
• 1, 2, 3
• a, e, i, o, u
• “choo choo”
• diaper
• shoe

a couple days ago,  discovered that the sequel’s 7th tooth had snuck in with the 5th and 6th (upper incisors). i was tickling him and his wide open-mouthed laughter allowed me a glimpse of his upper right molar that was already half-way descended. how on earth did i miss that? i remember the turkey being completely and utterly miserable when his first molar broke through. the sequel’s been cranky but not enough for that kind of pain! today, i decided to look around some more and found that the opposing molar (upper left) is pretty close to cutting through too. i’ve joked with him plenty about just popping them all out at once to get it over with but he’s taking it to heart!

his vocabulary is also taking off like crazy. this week, he’s started saying “baby”, “bear”, “corduroy”, and “play”.

after cancelling last week due to fever and vomiting, the turkey had surgery yesterday to remove his tubes. although we did consider cancelling again because of last minute croupiness. it went well but they did find a lot more infection than they were expecting so that actually made me feel better about going ahead and getting it done. i’m just hopeful that when it all heals up, we’ll be done with the stupid ears forever. i seriously regret letting them do the tubes in the first place last year.

before we left yesterday morning, he made my day by saying “mommy, you’re so beautiful. you’re hair is so beautiful.” seriously, my heart exploded into a gush of weeping joy.

yesterday afternoon, he started calling me “mom”. i very much noticed it but i let it slide because i figured it was a passing fluke. this morning, while i was out running around town trying to find a last minute costume (thanks for the epic fail, amazon prime!), hubby texted me and said that he was calling him “dad”. what the junk?! i thought we had another 3 years or so before “mommy” and “daddy” went out the window. it’s heartbreaking. and, for whatever reason, hubby has been downright angry about it. i am trying my best to ignore it, continuing to use the preferred monikers, and hoping that this is all just a fleeting phase.

on the other side of the coin, the sequel’s 5th and 6th teeth have finally broken through so we’re hoping his attitude straightens up for a little while. he’s very proud of his “hi”s and “bye”s lately. he tries to mimic a lot of words so we’ve heard “hola”,  “baby”, “granddaddy”, “dog”, and other random parroting. he throws epic tantrums… like full-on throw himself on the floor screaming and kicking and the works. where did that come from? but then he also loves to “sing” and dance. and he’s a heck of a harmonica player. he keeps us on our toes constantly and, while it is exhausting, i’m loving it about him.

we moved the boys into the same room over the weekend so that we could use the other room as a play room. naps are still pretty rough but the nights are actually going much better than i anticipated. and they love spending time in the play room. we have big plans for it to make it a super cool place!

the turkey got up with a burning desire to wear big boy pants today. not only did he wear them without any accidents while playing around the house, but we also spent most of the morning volunteering at the church and he used the potty and had no problems. i was so proud of him!

the sequel is all over the place. he’s running and climbing and loves picking up big and/or heavy things and carrying them around. he’s a hoot. his third tooth (top right) broke through this week with the fourth right behind it so he’s been full of the grumps. which i’m afraid isn’t the whole reason for his insane temper. oh. em. gee. that boy throws a full-on tantrum at the drop of a hat. he will growl-scream, sit down hard, and start kicking and punching he floor. it’s hilarious in a good-gravy-we-are-in-for-it kind of way.

the sequel was born with blocked tear ducts. the right eye healed on its own around four months old but the left eye remained a gooey mess. it would clear up with ointment but then start again as soon as treatment stopped. i massaged the duct five times a day for months and months to no avail. the poor little thing spent half his days with his eye glued shut or weeping yucky goo. last month, a friend suggest i use my milk. um? ewwww! but i looked it up online and found a very large community of mothers touting this natural remedy. i remained skeptical but since we’d already tried everything and the dr was saying that surgical intervention might be necessary if it wasn’t going away on its own by his birthday… well, i was willing to try anything. for two weeks, much to his chagrin, i gave him a few “eye drops” every time i nursed him. i was astounded to see it clear up within just a few days. after the two weeks, i kept expecting it to clog up again but it never did. amazing! so i started using it on everything. why use eczema cream when i can just rub some milk on your skin? the turkey fell and scraped his knee? here, let me help you with that!

seriously, this stuff is a magical wonder healer!!!

the sequel celebrated turning ten months old by taking his first steps today! this momma is so not ready to have two kiddos running around here!!!

since we’ve tried literally everything under the sun to correct the sequel’s digestive issues, i figured it was time to look at my milk supply. what i’ve found this week has depressed me beyond belief. i started with three days of supplemental pumping. since i feed the sequel every four hours, i just added a pumping between feedings so that i was expressing every two hours. for three days, i went from my usual five feeds to NINE “milkings”. i really felt like that alone would leave me floating in milk. when i didn’t see any results from that (actually, it seemed like i was getting negative results… i went from a yield of 1 oz per pump the first day to less than an oz, as little as .25 oz, by the third day), i begged my baker friend to make lactation cookies for me. she graciously did so and also gave me her supply of flax and brewer’s yeast so that i could make more on my own. for the last couple of days, i’ve been eating about 5 cookies a day and drinking oat/pb/flax/brewer’s yeast smoothies. today, i went back to regular feeding schedule but i replaced all nursing with pumping so that i could really determine what i’m producing. for the main four feedings, from wake to bed, i produced less than 12 oz. from everything i see online, that’s less than 1/2 of what he should be getting in a day! i feel like a complete and utter failure and i don’t know what to do. everything i read says i should be able to rebuild my supply but despite all of the extra stimulation and nutritional supplements, i’m not even producing half of my baby’s needs. which begs the question… was i actually producing even less before all these efforts or are they just not working at all???

while practicing waving tonight, the sequel said “bye-bye” plain as day. and then, of course, he continued to say it for the next hour. i was just remarking yesterday that he had kind of stopped jabbering these last few weeks. he growls and screeches plenty but it’s been a while since he’s done any real “da-da” or anything like that. so to hear him pop up with a real word, in context, today was a happy thing. and, really, i do consider it to be his first word. he’s made sounds before (ma-ma, ga-ga, da-da) but nothing that was really in context of a word.