Micah has truly become a picky eater. When he was first starting out with food, he seemed to love everything! I was so excited that he would eat veggies and a wide variety of food. Recently, however, we have not been so lucky. He will consistently eat cheese, bananas, pears, applesauce, crackers, and veggie burgers. He seems to hate pasta and any kind of melon. He will love something one meal, and then throw it on the floor the next time we give it to him. I cannot tell if he is disliking the food, or if this is a way of expressing a mood (like he isn’t feeling turkey burgers tonight). I sure hope it isn’t my fault – maybe I got lazy about giving him a wide variety of food? Recently, however, we might have discovered a “secret weapon” – marinara sauce. Apparently, everything tastes better (and is definitely messier) with marinara sauce. I’m thinking he might just prefer more seasoning on his food, so we are going to give that a try.

Micah is not walking yet. We’ve been so certain he has been on the verge of walking for so long, but now I’m not so certain. He cruises everywhere, and he can “walk” as long as he holds a hand or touches a piece of furniture. We have definitely been seeing him take a single step now and then for the last 6 weeks or so, but I don’t think this counts as walking. He has been standing up on his own (pushing up from the floor without holding on to furniture or people) since his first birthday. He seems to be strong enough to even hold and shake toys while he is standing, and he can bend over, pick something up off the floor and stand back up again without falling over. Part of me thinks he already can walk, he just hasn’t realized it yet. He has also recently fallen in love with his walker toy – I think he spends more time dragging it than anything else, but he keeps reminding me of the old ladies with the granny carts.

We’ve been working on getting Micah to use a sippy cup for about 6 months now. Back in July and August, he was doing really well. But then he got sick and stopped taking all sippy cups and bottles, and it has been a battle since then. We’ve tried all different kinds of sippy cups – soft tops, bottle tops, straw tops, hard tops…and all he’ll do is take a few sips and throw them on the floor. We’ve been trying to wean him off the bottle, but because his weight is so low, I’ve been afraid to cut him off the bottle cold turkey yet. Our little man is STUBBORN!!

Micah is not a boy of many teeth. He got his first 2 teeth back in October/November just before he turned 11 months old. A few weeks later, the doctor told us his top two teeth were on the verge of breaking through. All we know is that you can actually see the white teeth just below the gum, but they refuse to break through!! They’ve been sitting there for over 6 weeks now, and I’m not sure they (or any other teeth) intend to grow.

Micah has recently determined that everything is a phone. As my grandmother’s dementia worsened, she started to confuse the remote control and the phone. Every night, Grammy would call my mom up and tell her that the remote wasn’t working. My mom would explain to her that she had to point it at the tv, enter in the channel (she usually told her 24) and then wait for the channel to change. My grandmother would say “okay” and seconds later… you could hear the phone beeping and then my grandmother saying it hadn’t worked. My mom would again explain that she was using the phone not the remote, and half the nights my mom ended up driving over there to fix the tv. We even went so far as creating labels for the phone and tv … but it didn’t seem to help. I tell this story because I was hysterically laughing remembering all this stuff the first time Micah picked up the remote and held it to his ear like a telephone. We joked that he was taking after his great-grandmother. Since then, Micah likes to treat everything as a phone…puzzle pieces, remotes, toys…it really doesn’t matter. If you say to him “where is the phone” or “say hello” he grabs whatever he can and holds it to his ear. It is clearly adorable – and he obviously understands the concept of phone, he just hasn’t figured out that only certain things are phones.

Micah’s other favorite habit is drumming. He likes to bang/drum on EVERYTHING. My parents want to buy him a drum set…I think we are in BIG trouble!!

For his birthday, one of my friends bought him a singing donkey. He has loved this toy from the beginning, but he has recently figured out how to push the red button on the donkey’s leg and make it sing. He could spend all day turning it on and off.

And some video of Micah “playing catch” and showing off a few other tricks: