Houston 15 Months

My sister in law asked me the other day how much Leo weighed when he was 2 and I was able to quickly check my blog and read a full account of everything Leo was doing when he was 2 years old (and basically every other month of his life) and while doing so I noticed I had not updated about Houston since his 9 month post... if I'm this bad with my 2nd kid what does this say about my future children's records?!

So this is me committing to blogging more! For my children's sake! haha!

Houston just might be one of the cutest 15 month old you've ever seen. Of that I'm pretty certain. He just makes you want to squeeze him.  He has the best smile and the shiniest brown eyes that just dance when he's happy.

He loves to dance. He likes The Office theme song! If you know me you know this is my all time favorite show so I often try to sneak in an episode while I'm cooking dinner or doing dishes and when the music plays Houston is always dancing. I just love it so much.

He is a CLIMBER! If I leave the room Houston can be found on top of the kitchen table. He climbs on the toilet, on beds, chairs, into the bathtub... He also loves to get into the cabinets and pull out every single thing, but if I just hand him a stack of Tupperware he wants nothing to do with it. lol. of course.
He loves water. Mostly dumping water out of cups, lol, but he loves the beach and the pool and his water table that we got him for his 1st birthday!

He also loves balls and playing basketball and reading books. The other day I no lie took a 5 minute video of him reading an animal book so intently... but you'll have to take my word for it because my phone desperately needs reset and I have commitment issues about deleting every thing so it didn't actually record it...
He likes to draw and eat crayons. haha. Actually maybe he just likes making messes!

We're currently working on animal sounds. He learned to say woof woof for dog while we were in Ohio in July so about 13 months I guess. And he has been saying woof for every animal since. haha! At Busch Gardens the other day he got excited whenever he saw an animal and said woof woof woof over and over.
Now he can do the trick we taught Leo about sticking his tongue out for lizard and beating his chest for gorilla. He tries to moo like a cow and sometimes will say baa for sheep.
I feel like he's going to be picking up a lot more quickly. Every time we practice he does more and more.

For a couple months he has been able to point out different body parts - head, eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and belly.  He understands a lot of other commands too. Like if I say raise your hands or show me your feet he can.

I admit I was a lot more diligent with the sign language with Leo and at 15 months he knew a lot more signs than Houston, but Houston is very consistent and good with please, more, all done, and thank you. I need to teach him more!

Houston has so many nicknames from us - Housty, Houster, H-town... none of which were nicknames I originally thought of when I named him Houston.  I thought we were going to call him Hugh or Huey lol. I love when Leo calls him a nickname though. It is so sweet.
They are the sweetest brothers. I can't wait to see their relationship form even more. But they definitely fight. Leo gets upset when Houston takes his stuff and Houston wants to do whatever Leo is doing... so that's fun. haha.

Houston is still on the slim size. We go tomorrow for his 15 month check up so I'll know how much he weighs and how tall he is then. My guess is long and thin! He's wearing 18 month clothes mostly, but can still fit his 12 month shorts.
He eats okay, but definitely not like Leo did at this age. It might be due to his environment (aka my fault) because I tend to feed him exactly what I'm feeding Leo so he eats a lot of fruit, yogurt, peanut butter, hummus, etc.  He would eat every 1500 berries a day if I let him. Blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries are his favorites, but he likes strawberries too. He also loves to walk around the house chomping on an apple.


Houston is just the sweetest, happiest, goofiest baby. He makes himself laugh sometimes and it cracks me up.  He's super ticklish and peekaboo always works to get a smile out of him.
I am so thankful he's mine.

Houston's first movie - Lego Batman on $1 day! He made it through the whole movie until about the last 15 minutes and I had to stand up in the back with him. 

Milkshake thief! 

Houston experienced his first solar eclipse this month! He slept through most of it, but we got outside to catch some of the fun shadows on the eclipse :) 

Mommy and Daddy's 8th anniversary 

We had a big flood this month! 

We were stuck at our house for a couple days and played in the rain :)

Eating markers.

Houston 9 Months

Houston's already over 9 months and I didn't do an 8 month update.
I swear I'd blame my unorganized-ness on being a mom or Houston being my 2nd kid, but I've always always been very scatterbrained and behind schedule.

So, at 9 months Houston is probably like any baby - into everything!
He's crawling so fast, cruising around the furniture, and standing independently for a few seconds here and there.  Leo walked at 9 months so we'll see if Houston follows that pattern, but I think it might be a bit longer for him. Maybe 10 months or so.

We had his 9 month check up today and he could do every single thing on the checklist for 9 month old babies! He's talking saying - Mama and Dada appropriately and he'll say baba and makes lots of other little sounds.  I swear one day he said bubbles after I said the word. And he said lasagna once ;)

He just started signing more!! We were at Busch Gardens and I was waiting while Leo and our friend Hannah playing in Elmo's treehouse thing and I was feeding Houston and he was so hungry he was eating everything so I kept saying more? and then it just clicked and he was signing! It's a little like clapping hands, but he was purposefully doing it for food.  *and since I'm just now finishing up this post and he's already 9.5 months he has been signing milk too!! I just love to see him sign and communicate with us.

He loves when we sing and dance. Our favorite song to dance around to as a family is the everything is awesome song. haha. it's a bit ridiculous, but seriously can turn around a bad mood in any of us. If I feel like I've been short tempered we turn on music. If Houston is grumpy, if Leo is bored, whatever - we just start dancing. Even Lee. It's really becoming one of my very favorite things haha because it's totally something we'd only do at home and not in front of anyone else :)

He loves to clap along when we sing If you're happy and you know it and he'll bounce around if he's standing and we start singing. He's seriously so fun.

Houston is a pretty good eater these days. It took him some time to figure out the eating bit. I'd say his favorite foods are still pureed type stuff - yogurt and applesauce mostly. And he loves the baby pancakes that are just egg and banana. He loves banana! But offer him a plain egg and he spits it out. He pretty much eats whatever we're eating at lunch and dinner. Although he isn't a big meat eater. I made chicken and dumplings about a week ago and he ate a huge bowl of it.

While he's a good eater and sleeps amazing at night (12 hours every single night!) he is the worst napper.  I've tried many different techniques, but still some days he goes from 7am-7pm with no nap. On a good day he'll nap twice. At about 10:30 for hopefully like 45minutes-1 hour. Then again in the afternoon around 2 or 2:30 around an hour and half. However... most days he refuses the morning nap or falls asleep for about 5 minutes and then is up again and we retry the name after lunch. OR some days he takes a great morning nap and then refuses the afternoon nap. OR like I said just doesn't nap at all. I've tried to just making him go until after lunch and just take one nap a day and even that backfires on me. Babies.

At 9 months Houston is 20 lbs 10 oz and 30.5 inches tall!  He's a tall boy! 98th percentile for height and only about 67th for weight.  It's funny because I think he's so tiny compared to Leo, but 67th percent is still bigger than average. I think he's just gonna be a long, tall boy.

Houston turned 8 months old in Canada! His first experience with snow!

Houston 8 months and Great-Grandma Coghill 98 years! 

Houston 7 Months

This past month was a big one for my Houston!
Sleeping thru the night, crawling, eating, saying mama, teeth, clapping, pulling up to standing... he is in hurry to be like his big brother.

I have probably 50 videos on my phone (why I'm always out of storage...) of Houston up on his knees rocking back and for and sitting up and then getting back on his knees and then dropping to his belly - just waiting to catch him crawling and to tell you the truth, I don't know if I ever did actually catch him crawling the first day. I was just like one day he was all over the place crawling in the Christmas tree and from room to room.

We have to keep all our doors shut now.  He loves to get into the bathroom.  He tries to pull up on the toilet (gross!) and the bathtub and Leo's stool.  I guess it's the room where he is the least so he's dying to know whats in there... even though he is seeing a lot more of it these days now that he's eating and requires frequent baths to remove all the food from his body!  He is a mess!
He is doing so much better with eating the past week or so.  It took him a while to figure out swallowing, but now he can do it he loves food.  He likes to feed himself puffs or little chunks and claps or bangs his tray when he wants more!  I'm telling myself the clapping is his way of signing more, but I doubt it.

I am trying to be better about doing sign with him.  I know that was so beneficial for Leo.  Leo could do so many signs and then became such a great talker with a crazy vocabulary which they attribute to early communication.  Leo signed milk at around 9 months for the first time so I still have time to teach Houston.  We've started very basic with milk, food, and more.

So far Houston seems to prefer yogurt, applesauce, apples, banana, sweet potato, puffs, blueberries, strawberries, and oatmeal.  I force him to eat chicken, avocado, broccoli, eggs, etc. My goal this week is to give him peanut butter because they say early exposure is good for allergies but somehow he's already 7+ months and hasn't happened it yet.

The day after Christmas, so just a few days before he turned 7 months my sweet little baby started jabbering ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma and it was just the absolute best! Leo said Dada first, but I knew Houston was going to be a mama's boy ;)  He will also say Baba - which I've told Leo is what Houston calls him lol, and make lots of other sounds, but he doesn't say Dada yet.

The day after he said Mama he also started clapping! I know Leo was at least 7something months old when he clapped (I remember the day and could look up the date if I tried hard enough, it was our friend Joey's show at the Broadway Palm and we took Leo with us and joked that he learned to clap for their show, haha).

Houston got his top two teeth right after turning 7 months and tonight I was looking in his mouth and noticed the next teeth next to his front teeth, what are they called again? well whatever they are, they're swollen and will hopefully be in any day!
Teething however, brings me to nursing... Houston is now sleeping through the night! Yay!  I think I was just complaining about it in his 6 month update and then a couple days later I woke up at about 7:30 and realized Houston hadn't woken up to eat that night!
That same day I switched our bedroom furniture so he could have his own room and it's been pretty smooth since, with the exception of when we had company and he slept in our room in a packnplay. He woke up in the night then, but now we're back to normal he's sleeping well again. Even with the teething.
We're going to Canada in a couple weeks I'm nervous about how he's going to sleep... but that's life, he'll adapt hopefully.

Anyway, nursing - Houston has been going really well and easy... until a couple days ago when I developed what I think was mastitis. I got super sick and it was miserable, but thankfully only lasted like a day or so.  And then on top of that Houston now has top and bottom teeth and he's already bit me a few times. ugh.  misery.

But at least he is insanely adorable right?