14 months

This has been a busy, busy month for us.  To recap a few things:  a visit to MA, a visit with Evelyn, a trip to NYC to see the Yezerskis, a visit from my Aunt Ellen as well as a visit from my parents, another visit to NYC {I love living here!}. . .  and more.  In the midst of all of this busyness there has been school, school, and more school for Dexter, with a lot of exams and stress and long hours.  We're coming to the end of this very intense time, for which we will all be grateful. 

Kyalo had a couple of major developments while home.  The biggest is that he's now a walking man!  On the week of his 13th month, he started taking a few timid steps, and by the following week he was walking all around my parents' house. He now walks more than crawls and his energy level has only increased! {Mine has not}. 

He loves brushing all two of his teeth.  He's constantly pointing to his toothbrush to ask for it. Once I give it to him, he will happily march around the house "brushing" his teeth.

One day last week, when worn out from chasing him around all day, I was relaxing on the couch, and told him to go get his Peek-a-boo book. Nothing. Then I started saying lines from the book and he started laughing, and marched off to our bookshelf and came back with the right book!  I was so surprised and impressed. 

Obviously, he's a genius.

But the biggest, and most wonderful development, just from the past two weeks, is that he is suddenly sleeping better and more!  It is like he just decided that two naps a day sounded like a good idea. I think Bo might have a little heart-to-heart with him when we were together in NYC, as he is a champion sleeper.  You might remember that I had a bit of a rant about sleep back in January.  To be honest, things got better, then they got much, much worse. When home in May, my mom said she thought I should give up trying to get a morning nap in because it just didn't seem like it was going to happen.  I was in agreement with her, but when back in NJ, one day it just seemed like he was tired so I put him in his crib and he went to sleep -- without nursing, without crying.  And he did it again in the afternoon.  He's a changed man! I can get things done.  Now, when he sleeps less than 45 minutes, I'm sad.  My how things have changed - just two or three weeks ago, I would have been thrilled to get that.  He is still not sleeping through the night (!!!) but I guess he'll just decide to do that when he's ready. I just hope it is soon.

As usual, we took some pictures this morning. 

 love

 there are the teeth!

You will see in the above photos that Kyalo's hair is OUT OF CONTROL.  I said to Dexter, "I think we need to get it trimmed a bit." Which he did not like, and said we just need to condition and comb it. He decided to do it right then. He combed, and he washed, and conditioned, and combed some more. He even put in some of my Moroccan hair oil.  Here was the finished product:

 better, yes?

For the record, I still think it should be trimmed. . .

Also during the photo shoot this morning, he had these little stacking jars with him, and he was so focused on them, so I snapped away.  

I haven't found a pediatrician {that's a goal for June!} so I don't know any new stats for him. I do miss being able to walk down the road to Kiajbe Hospital and begging the nurses to find a measuring tape! 

I wanted to include some video here, but got an error message. I will see what I can figure out and try to get video up another day. 

Oh my, this is long. But since this serves as my journal/keepsake for Kyalo, I wanted to get all the big things in here.  Probably, I'll hit publish and think of other things I wanted to include; that would be typical.  He is sleeping now, so I'm going to get some ice cream and then go to bed!