Author: Shannon

I swear, if I go into Liam’s room one more time to find all of his (previously) neatly folded clothes all over his floor and one or both part(s) of his trash can in his hand(s) I’m going to scream.  So just ignore it when you hear it and know that at our house someone’s room is currently in time-out.

Liam went to the doctor yesterday for his 18 month well-check.  Developmentally everything’s on track and he’s following the same growth patterns he’s always had.  He’s perfect (of course).  Here are his stats:

Height: 34.25″ (90-95th percentile)

Weight: 24 lbs. (50th percentile)

Head: 19.25″ (75th percentile)

For the last week or so, after being put to bed between 7:30 and 8:00, Liam has been making noise in his room until around 9:00 (or later).  By making noise I don’t mean crying or talking (or snoring, for sure), I mean putting his legs between the slats on his crib and stomping against the wall in such a way that it sounds like the world might, in fact, be coming to an end.  Any minute.  Seriously.  I’ve also been nervous about him knocking the picture above his bed off the wall and onto his face.  Tonight Matt finally had to go in there after putting him down (until tonight we’ve been trying the “ignoring” approach, with absolutely no success).  The end result is that Liam’s crib is now at least a foot off the wall.  I think this works well because his room is so spacious and I’ve been trying to figure out how to make it more cozy…

Liam just dove headfirst into his rocking chair.  He cried for about 2 minutes, refused to let me put ice on it and is immensely enjoying (from what I can tell–he certainly looks like Linus) my injury-induced leniency with the well-established no-paci-or-woobie-until-bedtime rule.  He’s got a pretty good knot with what looks to be a slight fabric burn from the resulting slide down the side of the chair, but other than that he appears fine.  He’s faring much better than I am at the moment.  When researching what to do about a head bump I came across the following list from the AAP that apparently indicates a problem worthy of a hospital visit:

• A constant headache that gets worse

• Slurred speech or confusion

• Dizziness that does not go away or happens repeatedly

• Extreme irritability or other abnormal behavior

• Vomiting more than 2 times

• Stumbling or difficulty walking

• Oozing blood or watery fluid from the nose or ears

• Difficulty waking up

• Unequal size of the pupils (the dark center part of the eyes)

• Unusual paleness that lasts for more than an hour

• Convulsions (seizures)

• Difficulty recognizing familiar people

Now I ask you, how the heck am I supposed to be able to tell if he has a headache, if his slurred speech is the result of a head injury (and not the usual culprit–the fact that he’s a toddler), if he’s dizzy, if his extreme irritability is the result of a head injury (and not the fact that it’s 15 minutes until his bedtime), or if his stumbling or difficulty walking is the result of a head injury (instead, again, of the fact that he’s a toddler).

At least I read that although doctors routinely used to tell parents to keep children awake (even if it was their normal bedtime or naptime) they don’t do this anymore.  The new advice is to look in on him every two hours.  This should be fun.

I just love it when Matt has a softball game after work…

I just found out that Sesame Street has short online clips (the ones we watched were about 1:12) that feature shorts on different topics (I chose numbers).  I put one on the laptop and was able to cut both Liam’s fingernails and his toenails.  Magic.

(For the record: we’re still not watching TV with Liam but the intensity with which he paid attention to the short clips on numbers is both the reason why I don’t want him to watch and the reason why he probably will start watching much sooner than I’d like.  Sigh.)