Conor’s 14 Month Update

I only just realised today that I forgot to post Conor’s 13 Month Update, although to be honest, there hasn’t been a whole lot of change until recently. Things seemed to be pretty steady for quite a while so I thought I had everything handled but just when I got the gist of things, he changed it up on me! Babies have a habit of doing that don’t they.

Milestones: The biggest milestone that’s been conquered has been walking. Yup…he’s fully walking now. The transition for cruising to walking happened whilst we were in Ireland. He had taken a couple of steps here and there but not really anything sustained. Just before we went away he was showing signs of starting to walk and once we got to his grandparent’s, he really went for it! He also had his first ALMIGHTY tantrum…and many more since. He seems to be exercising his lungs recently and has been kicking off if you take anything off him, take too long to feed him, take him out of the bath or generally breathe near him! He has become very tetchy in the past couple of days but I’m putting that down to him having his first ever cold! Another milestone, albeit a negative one!

Sleep: Everyone keeps telling me that I should be reducing Conor’s naps to once a day but my instincts tell me that he still needs two. I trust my instincts when it comes to being a parent so for now he still has two naps a day. If he misses one, he tends to get really cranky. I don’t see the harm in letting him sleep if he’s tired. He seems to be taking a little longer to go to sleep at night but he generally just talks away to himself in his cot. He never cries to be picked up or anything.

Best Moment: This will sound cheesy but just seeing his face every morning. He always has a smile on his face and the first thing he does is giggle. It’s truly the best way to start your day and helps you to remember what’s really important in life. When everything else gets on top of you, if they’re happy then that’s all that matters.

Worst Moment: I must admit that lately I’ve found being a mother very stressful. Because he’s older and harder to keep entertained on flights, he kicks up quite a fuss. He was wriggling around and making loads of noise on the flight to Ireland. It was only an hour and a half but it felt like a lifetime. Myself and Chris took turns at trying to keep him occupied but it was hard and I really found my patience being tested. When he gets frustrated he hits out and I initially found this really hard to handle. My sweet little boy turning into an aggressive hooligan for short periods of time. But I quickly realised that he’s just testing the boundaries and it’s up to us as parents to let him know that it’s not acceptable behaviour. He’s had a cold for the past few days and it’s made him a very cranky baby at times over the last couple of days. Everything I did was wrong and he would have tantrum after tantrum. I found the best way to deal with it was to just ignore the tantrums because ultimately he’s looking for attention. The more I ignored it, the quicker he seemed to get over it. I found myself feeling emotionally and mentally exhausted afterwards though so it was important for me to go off and have some ‘me’ time in the evenings. For me that’s a long soak in the bath!

Health: He now has 4 teeth at the top and two at the bottom. He definitely has more coming through but his teething sessions only ever last for a couple of days. He had his 12 month check up and vaccinations and they went pretty well. He was a little under the weather for a couple of days but that seems to be standard. The only other health blip has been this cold – he’s been a snot monster for a few days now and hopefully he’ll get over it soon. Calpol has been our saviour for reducing his temperature and generally making him feel comfortable. His cold has made him really clingy, which is not like him at all so lately he just wants to be sitting on my knee or being cuddled. I guess we all feel like that when we’re ill though!

Eating: He has a lot of finger foods now like toast, oatmeal bars, fruit etc and he seems to enjoy taking control. He is constantly grabbing at different foods and is always eyeing up our dinner. We had a discussion that it would be best to always eat our dinner at the dining table from now on so he gets used to mealtimes being a family time where there’s no tv. I would really like dinner times to be like that when he gets older because I always have fond memories of that from my childhood. Because we eat healthy meals 90% of the time, I generally just blend up what we have to give to him. He has a bottle every evening after his bath and sometimes one at 11pm before we go to bed. He’s now also onto whole milk instead of formula but the transition was smooth and he seems to enjoy it.

Things I want to remember: I love watching him interacting with our pets and the cats have now become very interested in him. Luckily we have extremely well behaved and patient animals who are really gentle with him. He has even been attempting to say their names. Every morning when I walk past the dogs beds holding him, he waves at them and says “hi!”. So cute!