Still the light of our lives. He says and does the funniest and cutest things. When he gets excited, he does the most adorable little gallop up and down; we call it his "cowboy hop." At random moments he'll just say "I love you, (mommy or daddy)!" And when he watches his movies he'll pat next to him on the couch and say "sit here, mommy!" The way he asks you to play is the cutest thing ever. He gets the biggest smile and says "You wanna play (puzzles) with me?!" but on "with me" his voice goes up all high pitched and puts both hands flat on the tops of his stomach. I can't even handle the cuteness.
To add to his favorite movie list, he now also loves Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Tangled, and Cars. Toy Story is his absolute favorite. He calls it "WoodyBuzz" and would probably watch it all the time if I let him. For awhile, we still had his bouncer out, too, and he thought it was the greatest thing to sit in it while he watched his movies.
For months he was a nightmare with food. He wouldn't eat anything but oatmeal, cereal, yogurt, and baby food. Yes, still baby food. We tried everything to get him to eat! Rewards, consequences - nothing worked. He would just bawl and refuse and spit anything out. It made me crazy, I was so worried he wasn't getting enough nutrition. After several months of this, he broke a little bit and would at least eat some soups. Now we are at the point where we can get him to eat what we are having for dinner about 70% of the time (with the promise of a treat afterwards).
By just after 18 months, he knew the alphabet. And then he proceeded to become obsessed. He wanted to watch ABC videos all the time, or have us write it out, and would look for letters everywhere. His letter magnets and puzzles were pretty much the only toys he wanted to play with. He would make us sing the ABCs or chant them over and over with him in the car. He even developed a love of STOP signs because they had letters on them and we would have to "treasure hunt" for them as we drove around in the car. I was getting worried he was getting a little obsessive compulsive with it and we nixed the ABC videos, and after awhile it calmed down. He still LOVES them, but has developed other interests. After a month or two, he also developed a huge love of shapes. He could/can identify a triangle, rectangle, circle, oval, square, diamond, heart, star, octagon and in the last few months has also learned hexagon and trapezoid. He's so smart; he can find shapes in the most abstract places and looks for them everywhere.
He also loves to play Hide and Seek. One day, when it was his turn to hide, we found him like this:
Chandler loves music and singing. He knows almost all the words to "I Love to See the Temple", "I Am a Child of God" and "Families Can Be Together Forever." He loves to sing "Follow the Prophet" before bed while we all march in a circle around the room. He also loves "Popcorn Popping" and "Book of Mormon" stories. He also really loves "Rainbow Connection", any song from Winnie the Pooh, and "You've Got a Friend in Me." Finally,since he was little my mom and I have danced him around singing "Ten Minutes Ago" from Rogers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, and now he loves that one, too. It's the sweetest thing in the world to hear him singing to himself while he's playing or when he first wakes up from his nap.
Chandler is very playful and still loves other kids. We have a little play group we go to on Wednesdays and he gets so excited to see his friends. They are still at the point where, for the most part, they just play next to each other or follow each other around and copy each other, which is adorable to watch. He especially loves Makenzie and Tanner. They are so sweet and good with him, and they have a ball together, In this particular picture, Tanner had been sent to time-out so Chandler sat with him the whole time.
Despite his love of his friends and the way he was really excited for nursery, nursery ended up being a struggle at first. He would bawl and did NOT want us to leave. It was hard to help him adapt, too, because for several weeks after he first got in there, the leaders were short handed and needed us to help out. Eventually, we were able to let him cry it out a little bit and things got better. He still gets a little antsy when we first drop him off, but he calms down after a minute and loves it the rest of the time.
For a long time, Chandler had this weird thing where he loved baths, but would NOT sit down in them. He would stand the. whole. time. He recently got over that.
A little after 18 months, we cut Chandler back on his passie so that he could only have it in the car, during naps, and at bedtime. We thought it was going to be really difficult, but it actually went really smoothly. When he would ask for it we would just remind him "Chandler, when can you have it? Bed and car." After awhile he would come ask for it and catch himself before we could answer him and just say "bed, car..." to himself and then walk away. Every once in a while we catch him trying to sneak it if it was left in his reach, but when we tell him to put it back he usually obeys.
We had a huge scare with Chandler in September. I was at a doctor's appointment and so Mom was keeping him. When I got back, Mom mentioned his balance had seemed a little off. I said he had a cold, which affects your ears, and can throw off your balance. But in the next 10 minutes, it got progressively worse. He kept falling over when he would try to walk. Eventually, he couldn't even walk in a straight line or even go a few steps without falling over. Finally, he fell so hard he bit his lip and made his mouth bleed. He started crying hysterically, but then after a minute started laughing and acting all loopy. So I rushed him over to the pediatrician. At this point he was crying inconsolably. When she saw him try to walk and ascertained that he didn't have an ear infection, she immediately sent us over to the emergency room, and thus began the worst 36 hours of my life. We had to watch as 5 people held him down to put and IV in his arm while he bawled (and while I bawled). With his tiny little veins, it took them forever to get it in. He miraculously fell asleep after that and remained asleep while they have him a CAT scan. When that came back clear, they announced that they had to give him a spinal tap to make sure he didn't have an infection. For that part they kicked me out of the room because I was a mess. Josh stayed with him and he doesn't even like to talk about it. So so awful. When that came back clear, too, they sent us down to MUSC in Charleston to get an MRI. The one bright spot in the day was that they had these little cars they would push you in from the lobby all the way up to your room and he LOVED that.
We finally saw him perk up. We got settled into our room and...suddenly Chandler could walk just fine. Out of nowhere. We told the doctors and let them know we really didn't want to put him through and MRI if it wasn't completely necessary. They kept him overnight for observation and then checked him again the next morning. He was walking wobbly for the first 15 minutes after he got up, but then was absolutely fine (besides still being suuuuuper fussy, but to be fair, he'd had a miserable 24 hours and only got to sleep for about 6). When the neurologist came in to talk to us, he brought a group of maybe 10 residents with him. He was asking us questions when Chandler started to loudly recite the ABCs. The residents loved it! They couldn't believe that someone as young as him knew the full alphabet. Anyways, he was eventually cleared to go home. They decided he had Acute Cerebellar Ataxia. Basically, that the infection from his cold threw off his balance a little bit. While it was frustrating to go through all of that to find out it WAS just the cold, we were just so grateful it wasn't anything more serious. Apparently, it's not very common though, and if it ever happens again we have to bring him back.
On a lighter note, here are some other random Chandlerisms: he loves playing at the park, he loves dogs (not scared at all!), he's a great little shopping buddy,
We love our little boy!
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