Ben is 18 months old!

This post is a little bit late in coming, but the boys are really running me ragged these days.  As things like night-time parenting get easieer, other things like being a referee to wrestling matches becomes more difficult.  This post illustrates Liam turning 18 months.  My boys look similar at 18 months, but vary greatly in size and development.

Ben at 18 months:

Ben is 31 inches, maybe 31.5 inches and about 22 pounds, much shorter and lighter than his big brother at this age.  Liam was beinning to count and have letter reconition, and while Ben can count to 3, he has no interest in numbers like Liam and while he can sing portions of his ABC's, he is not able to do letter recognition.  What he can do that Liam couldn't is: answer yes/no questions, follow 2 steep directions, say the name of people he frequently sees (Mama, Dada, Mema (Liam), Memo (Elmo), Pets (Wonder Pets), Murmey (Murray), Mammy (Sammy), Beckee (Beckee--Liam's ABA therapist), banana (Anna), Ben can also request items he wants, sing songs, and knows the titles of his favorite books (Go Dogs Go and Hop on Pop).

Liam at 18 months:

Dave always says I'd make the perfect wife for Henry VIII, just popping out little replicas of their dad, and my boys show that is clearly the case physically.

half-pint charmer

Ben hits you with a 1-2 punch.  First, he gives you the puppy dog eyes:

Then he follows it with his dazzling "I got my way" smile (if you enlarge this picture, you can see how swollen his gums are for his emerging teeth--those bottom incisors and molars are so close to popping out):

I have a bad feeling this will spell trouble for college-age girls in 18 years or so.

Ben has a BIG personality, and seems even bigger, given his size.  He is nearly 18 months (just another week until his half birthday) and here he is wearing a 12-18 month bunting.  I suspect it will fit him until he warms back up 7-8 months from now:

At nearly 18 months, Ben is a whopping 31.5 inches tall and 22 pounds.  He might be taking after me--I didn't break 50 pounds until I was 9, and only weighed 75 pounds or so when I finally reached 5 feet tall.

Ben is a little charmer these days.  For one, he sleeps through the night (defined as about 7:30pm until 5:30am) about once or twice a week.  This is a HUGE improvement over what he sleep used to be, and when he does wake at night, he simply nurses and goes right back to sleep.

His 2nd charming thing are the way he greets everyone.  When he says "hi", he does the beauty queen wave (where you turn your hand side to side) and he says hi to everyone--the cats, people across the parking lot, etc.  His excitement for greeting Liam is especially sweet.  Today when Liam's bus pulled up, Ben yelled out "Me-ma!!!!!!!!" (how he says Liam) and then said hi and waved at the bus, yelling in excitement until Liam walked off the bus. Oh,and he loves blowing kisses to people he especially likes.

His signature move is sound imitation--he imitates everything from the cats purring to cars to me sneezing.

Ben loves the cats, and somehow he has even charmed Murray, who lets Ben pet him (Murray still runs and hides from Liam).  Ben also loves babies and baby dolls.  He has a new obsesssion with ducks and bears....and surprisingly Elmo, even though we rarely watch Elmo.

Ben also answers questions now, and is pretty advanced in both expressive and receptive language. Our conversation this morning went: 

Mommy: Do you want to get Liam?

Ben: No!  Milk!

*Mommy nurses Ben*

Ben: all done milk

Mommy: are you all done?

Ben: Yeah!  Me-ma!

*Ben runs to Liam's room

The other day Ben was saying something, but I had no clue what it was.  When this happens, he repeats it over and over again. This particular day he was saying "Memo!"  I usually figure it out, but if I don't Ben gets frustrated,  Finally, he brought me a book with Elmo on it and pulled my hand while saying "Memo stuck!"  He dragged me to the trash can where he had thrown away his Elmo doll.  I retrived poor Elmo, and Ben toddled away hugging him and saying lovingly "Memo, Memo!"

I guess Ben is trying to make up for how fussy he was his first 1.5 years of life.

First earthquake in Alaska

was a 4.9 about 20 miles away and somehow neither me or the boys didn't feel anything.  We seem to be the only ones who didn't notice it.  Apparently, Alaska has alot of earthquakes:  http://www.aeic.alaska.edu/html_docs/faq.html

How did I miss that Alaska has more earthquakes than CA and they tend to be of a higher magnitude too?

Fall Harvest....present and past....and sibling similarities

The first snow falls here  in early October so Fall starts in August.  More leaves fall every day here and lows are now in the 30's.  We went to a fall festival and picked pumpkins.  When Liam was 14 months, he couldn't yet walk and called all the pumpkins "balls."  At 26 months, he still called them balls until corrected and then pronounced it "pupkeys."  This year he could name colors and decribe size and shape and pronounce pumpkin.  Ben called them "balls" and just like Liam loves him pumpkin and wants to carry it everywhere.

Liam and pumpkin circa 2010:

Liam and pumpkin circa 2009:

Liam and pumpkin circa 2008:

Ben and pumpkin circa 2010 (17 months compared to Liam's 14 months above):

Me and my boys:

We also visited a train ride that will be closed until May. Liam met Thomas again:

We got to ride through the woods and over bridges:

Liam loved the whole ride!

Mommy and her boys again:

Daddy-son sweetness:

Big boy bed

I slept in a crib untilmy 4th birthday and it looked like Liam might as well.  After a month of sleeping in a pack-n-play at 3 years old, 38 inches,and 35 pounds, we decided it was probably best tomove himto a bed.  Our stuff hasn't arrived, so his convertible crib has never been converted. ;-)

He looked so little in the bed, and it was bittersweet for me. Mostly, I worry about his sleep being disrupted, but he slept about 9 hours with one wake-up.  He was still tired this morning and feel asleep in the car by 10:30am.  Let's hope he sleeps more tonight and stays in bed, calling for us when he wakes.

Helping make the bed

drinking juice and ready for bed

Success--asleep!

Special education, riding a bus, and IEP Alaskan style

Liam has been in special education in the Anchorage School District for 2 weeks now.  He loves his school, which consists of 1 "buddy bear" (i.e. typical developing peer), 3 other kids with IEPs, a special education teacher and an aide.  On Wednesdays, the moms and kids go to McDonald's after school for lunch and playtime at their indoor play area. 

The first thing the school did was revise Liam's IEP to add in speech therapy.  Here are some tidbits from the IEP that are worth sharing.  It lists student strengths: "sweet, complies with directions, strong academic skills, cooperative, loves music, very active (HA! don't I know), good gross motor skills, loves school."  The IEP notes that Liam's delays in language, social development, and adaptive skills "adversely affect his ability to function independently in a classroom."  In summary, "Developmental delays will affect Liam's ability to demonstrate learning, communicate his wants and needs in the classroom, and to socialize with his peers." 

So why chose special education over mainstreaming in a regular preschool?  In Liam's case, he didn't qualify to attend any private/regular preschools as Anchorage preschools do not take children that are not independently potty trained.  His IEP notes "The preschool program is modified by a smaller class size, structure, prompts, routines, and use of facilitating strategies for behavior and communication."  They have a whole page justifying why a less restrictive environment does not meet Liam's needs.  I don't think any parent ever aspires to have her child attend special education, and it took some setting aside of pride to embrace what meets Liam's needs the best.  Liam needs someone who can really focus on learning adaptive skills like using utensils, dressing himself, and potty training.  He needs prompts to engage is age appropriate socialization beyond running and wrestling.  Without these things, he won't move ahead.  My hope is that this is just a short time, and he can be mainstreamed by kindergarten.  I never saw life taking me here, for sure.

Lighter stuff.....Liam qualifies for the school bus, and since his school "day" is 2 hours, I decided to take advantage of it.  Today was his first time on the bus, and here is some fluff:

Cheese!

He looks so tiny here, especially for doing such a big boy thing

Brothers running up and down the driveway:

The bus coming up the hill

Buckled in all safe and sound:

A drive from Anchorage to Girdwood down the Seward Highway and a Portage glacier cruise

After Anchorage has a rainy, cold summer, it is fall here....complete with yellow leaves, cool mornings, and sunny clear days.  We took advantage of this glorious weather this weekend, and drove down to Girdwood, about 40 miles from Anchorage.  The drive is on the scenic Seward Highway, and the view rival what I saw on a drive from LA to San Diego to visit Dave's best man, Steve.

Leaving Eagle River, we saw this (what appears like jagged clouds is actually Denali National Park, hundreds of miles away....you only get this view on clear days):

This was the view for most of the drive on the Seward Highway:

We checked out times for the cruise and I snapped this photo:

We went into Girdwood and grabbed lunch at a spot recommended by neighbors...if you go, bring cash as we learned the hard way, they don't take credit cards (and no we didn't have to wash dishes, just make a 5 mile drive to the nearest ATM):

We got on the 1:30pm cruise and crossed our fingers the boys would cooperate.  Ben never did nap, but Liam found a friend and they looked for whales (we were on a lake, by the way).  The lake was 600 feet deep on average and was formed by the glacier's retreat.

First view:

Ben was not amused by the excitement of a glacier, specially as we sat for 20 minutes waiting for it to calve.  Supposedly, it doesn't calve all too often.

Then we started hearing what sounded like gunshots and was falling ice.  We were 3 football fields away, but it was creating some big waves.  Dave and I were talking about this arch and how we wouldn't see it fall,but maybe it would be gone within a week:

And then BOOM.....The crew on the boat was so excited.  They said it was the best calving they'd seen all season, which was extra-special as Sunday was the last day until next season.

The boys actually napped on the drive home, and we stopped in Anchorage to grab pizza and microbrew from The Moose's Tooth....Dave and I had blackened Halibut pizza--yum yum!