Toddler Ty: 12 - 14 Months

Ty loves his daddy!

The last two months with our Ty guy have been full of fun. Most of the time he is naturally cheerful, but then all of a sudden he'll start screaming his head off for no apparent reason. Fortunately it doesn't take long to distract him from that. Some particularly memorable experiences were when 

Tyler crawled laps around the house and the couch while giggling hysterically for no apparent reason. What an awesome baby! Oscar and I still get a good chuckle reminding ourselves about it.

Nibbler put Tyler's binky in his mouth and walked away a few feet with it. Tyler thought it was the most hysterical thing he'd ever seen. Another time Nibbler was playing with the string on Tyler's Thomas the train, which made the train go "choo choo" and made Tyler giggle. In fact, anytime Tyler sees the cats playing with toys or chasing a laser pen, he absolutely loves it! It will be fun to see him deliberately play with them one day.

Tyler became very upset when he couldn't put the toilet seat down while mommy was using the toilet, but his distress was quickly calmed by discovering the fun spring that keeps the door from slamming against the wall.

Tyler fell asleep sitting up once. This wouldn't have been strange if he'd been in a highchair or something that was restraining him in a sitting up position, but he was in a pack and play with plenty of space to lie down in. 

A girl at our gym's Kids Club took this video of Tyler pushing the basketball stand across the floor. She says we have a little football player in the making. Another time at the gym Tyler became buddies with little Matteo, to the point that they were both sucking on each others' binkies.

After Ty's 1st birthday, he had a lot of fun playing with the balloons. He even started practicing magic by trying to turn this minion balloon into a real minion!

My baby's a minion

Ty remains an excellent sleeper, but he refuses to sleep anywhere but a crib. This has made church a HUGE challenge these days. Fortunately we have a lot of people offer to help us, like Dan and Janalee Candland. 

One time Oscar actually managed to get Ty to fall asleep in his arms. He slept in the corner in his car seat for about 20 minutes. 

After church we have ward choir at Linda Cason's house. Her son and his family live across the street and have generously offered to keep an eye on Ty while we rehearse. Ty can't get enough of their oldest son Thomas!

We bought a plastic bag holder to mount on the wall, and Ty loves stuffing in the bags with daddy.

And about two weeks after his 1st birthday, Ty started walking! The middle picture above was taken right after he took his very first step over to the trash can. It got better and better from there on out. I mentioned his first steps to my mom, who in turn requested more pictures of him walking. Fortunately Tyler kindly obliged when I grabbed my camera. This was one of the first times he took many steps before falling, which was quite a feat considering he was wearing jammies with footies.

Another one of Ty's favorite things to play with are kitchen tools, like measuring cups and strainers. We haven't baby proofed the kitchen drawers yet, but fortunately there's nothing dangerous in the ones he can reach.

I've continued watching my friend Beka's little girls, and Ty's becoming more interactive with them. Ty's would do well with more kids in the house. He loves chaos, noise and craziness.

One day in June, Oscar made up a bunch of homemade pizza and froze the leftover uncooked pizzas. He thought since they were frozen they could go right on the rack like store bought frozen pizzas, but it didn't work out so well. It was miserable to clean up, and it made the house smell like delicious pizza, but we couldn't eat any. Sad :(

As cute as he is most of the time, Ty HATES having his diaper changed. I look forward to the day he no longer considers diaper changes to be the worst form of torture. I hope that day comes before he's potty trained. The screaming's not so bad, but the squirming, rolling over, and getting poop all over his hands drives me crazy! The fighting makes the diaper change take so much longer than is necessary. We usually try to do it together and have one of us strap him down and entertain him while the other changes him. Even with the restraining strap tightened as much as possible, he still puts up an intense fight. 

 Snuggling with Fry. It's amazing how much abuse Fry will put up with. Even though we've had problems with Fry peeing out of the litter box, you can't give up a cat this sweet when you have kids.

I've been trying to get into a better habit of making my bed, so at 10:15am one morning when I realized I'd forgotten to do so, I went upstairs and saw this sight (left). Needless to say the bed remained unmade. Then Leela joined the party and guaranteed the bed would not get made that day.

Reading music and participating in Sacrament meeting already. Such a cute smile!

Mmm! Tasty soap

Cooking with daddy!

Giggling with mommy!

Dad, we're out of tissue...again

I have to admit that these days I LOVE shopping for toys and books at goodwill. Some girls get a kick out of mall shopping, but I get a kick out of bargain shopping. Ty's really into books that make noise or play music, and I found a book at Goodwill that lets you record yourself reading to him. It looked brand new, no one had recorded over the original tracks, and the price printed on the back was $30. Goodwill price - 80 cents. I've also found several other little play a sound books for less than a dollar. Ty especially likes this little Beauty and the Beast one since he can carry it around. 

Clothing Ty has been a bit difficult since he's too big for his 12 month stuff but too small for the 18 month stuff. I was so diligent at keeping Ty's 12+ month clothes from shrinking, but then one time I accidentally washed them in hot water and dried them on high heat. I could pre-shrink the 18 month stuff (and in many cases already have), but then I run into the same problem once he's 18 months. I hope we have another little boy partly so all of his clothes will already be pre-shrunk.

Since it's summertime and we've had our share of hot days, I've become especially careful to make sure I don't leave Ty in a hot car. I made it to the gym and back once and forgot I had him with me each way, fortunately remembering upon arrival. I sometimes don't take him to the gym when he's still recovering from sickness or the class I want to go to that day is during his morning nap. Tyler was happily sitting there silently, so my brain went into autopilot as a going to the gym alone day and thinking Ty was back home with Oscar. Since then I've started putting my purse in the back seat rather than the front seat (whether Ty's with me or not) and asked the girls who work at the kids klub to always ask me where Tyler is if I ever come in without him. The scary thing is that part of the reason I'd forgotten he was there was that he had his cover on. I have a lightweight grocery cart/high chair cover that I drape over the hood of the car seat on super sunny days. It has little attached toys he can play with that he can't throw out of the way, which keeps him happily occupied, and shades him from the face full of sun he would get sitting rear facing in our Prius (I haven't been able to find working shades for the hatchback that don't also obstruct our rear view. The ones made for the side mirrors just fall down). I actually looked at the car seat in my mirror several times that day, but since the cover is sometimes draped over the seat even when he's not in it, it still wasn't enough to remind me he was there. I'm just grateful I remembered as I was getting out of the car and grateful that something more tragic didn't happen. What an awful lesson for a parent to have to learn! It terrifies me to think that something I use to protect Tyler from the sun could have contributed to much worse harm. When the cover's not on him, I see him through the mirror and it reminds me he's there, but when the cover is on I need to take extra precautions to make sure I don't forget about him. I've also made sure not to let the cover drape over the seat anymore when he's not in it.

On July 4th Ty had another holiday milestone - learning to crawl safely down the stairs. Others include learning to crawl on Christmas and learning to smile on Independence Day 2013.

I love watching Tyler eat apricots. He just dives right into it. Now he can eat whole ones on his own, and when he finds the pit, he holds it up like it's a toy he's just found.

He's definitely at the "let's drop food on the floor purely for the fun of it" phase, but it's still fun to watch him eat. He stuffs food in his face like Garfield eats Lasagna. This middle pic was his 1st time eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and the right pic was one of his 1st times eating cherries. He almost choked on one once, but fortunately was able to hack it back out. Since then I've made sure to cut them into smaller pieces.

Tyler likes the flavor, the sugar, and the water in his watermelon. He could do without the fiber, though.

And a bunch of cute GIF's that show just how hard it is to get a decent picture of a wiggly baby. Thank goodness for digital cameras and shutter features.