14 Months Old!

Well, it happened again.  Baby Emmett turned one month older today.  He is now 14 months old!  It's just crazy how fast the time is flying.  The biggest update of the past month is that he went from walking part-time to walking full-time.  He has said goodbye to his crawling days forever and, although it makes me sad, it is just the cutest thing to see him waddling over the place. In addition, Emmett has now started saying "Wee-uh" for Lia ALL the time.  In fact, I think he says it more than mama or dada.  I guess we know who his favorite person is!  He has also said the words "night night," "no no," and "oh yeah." He has said "nigh night" a couple of times when saying goodnight to Ron before I put him to bed.  He also thought of "oh yeah" all on his own which just makes it even funnier every time he says it.  Emmett also started trying to put on his shoes or other people's shoes before walking around the house in them.  His favorites are Ron's slippers as they are so big and easy to slip on.  Emmett also started dancing to music all on his own one day when he heard some playing in the background.  He now dances all the time when he hears music and it is the cutest thing.  He continues to point at things all the time and loves it when I stop to talk about things on the wall or on the furniture or outside the window.  You can tell that he is really listening and thinking about what we are talking about.  Emmett also moved out of his baby car seat this past month and into a booster seat in both of our cars.  Since Ron is still using the old, front-facing booster seat in his car, Emmett seems to enjoy it much more than the rear-facing, booster seat in my car.  He always is happy to sit in Ron's car and kicks his legs whenever we put him in that booster seat, but he usually puts up quite a fuss whenever I try to put him into the seat in my car.  I don't blame him.  I would be tired of facing the back of the car, too.  

With the return of the warm weather, Emmett and I have started going for walks in our neighborhood between his morning and afternoon nap.  He really seems to enjoy this and never makes a peep as we walk around the loop that I normally take him on.  In addition, Emmett is still an eating machine and loves absolutely everything that we put on his high chair tray.  I have also dropped both the morning and remaining middle-of-the-day nursing this past month as he has finally mastered drinking milk from a sippy cup.  I now only nurse him for a few minutes for comfort every night before I put him down to bed.  I know that it is only a matter of weeks before he outgrows this last feeding so I am trying to savor every bit of it while I can.  Emmett has also continued to sleep well at night ever since we went through the rough, sleep training process back in January.  I normally have to get up one to three times a night to put his pacifier back in his mouth, but he usually goes right back to sleep without making a fuss.

We did have one very strange and scary incident this past month that I never blogged about that I wanted to include in this post.  On the evening of President's Day, February 17th, we went out to dinner at Applebee's as a family.  After coming home, we gathered in the family room to quickly complete our scripture study before heading to bed.  After sitting down on the couches, we noticed that Emmett kept on falling while trying to walk over to us.  He would take one, two, or three steps before falling down.  After doing this several times, we started to get concerned and really started watching him.  We realized that his left leg kept on giving out under him which would then cause him to fall.  After he fell about 15 times in a few minutes, we decided to stop everything.  I quickly called the consulting nurse and was told to take him into Urgent Care after answering a series of questions.  It was so scary as we had no idea what was going on with our baby.  Ron and I immediately started worrying about things like meningitis or a stroke or a brain hemorrhage.  Ron took the kids upstairs to get them ready for bed while I packed up some things, put Emmett in my car, and drove out into the dark at 7:45 p.m.  I was so worried that our Urgent Care would be closed due to the holiday which would mean that I would have to drive to Tacoma instead.  Much to my relief, I pulled up to our Urgent Care five minutes later to see lights on the building and cars in the parking lot.  After checking in, I was amazed to be called back by the nurse less than five minutes later.  We were then taken to an exam room and met with the doctor within a matter of minutes.  It was so fast which is amazing for Urgent Care especially after being told by the nurse that there had been a three hour wait the previous Monday!  After a thorough examination and being asked a series of questions, the doctor diagnosed Emmett with something I had never heard of called Synovitis.  This is a temporary inflammation of the hip that can occur one to two weeks after catching a cold.  This inflammation makes it difficult to walk--especially for babies and toddlers.  Since Emmett had caught both of his sisters' colds exactly two weeks ago, the doctor thought that this was a logical explanation.  She gave Emmett some Tylenol to help with the inflammation and informed me that this should pass within in a matter of hours.  The doctor told me to take him in for x-rays the next day (to make sure that there wasn't a break in his leg) if he was not walking normal by the morning.  Although I could tell that he was extremely tired that night after we got home as he fell asleep nursing which he never does anymore, he was walking totally normal the next day.  As a result, I did not have to take him in to get x-rays taken on his leg.  Overall, we were all so relieved that there was nothing seriously wrong with Emmett and that he was able to bounce back so quickly from such a strange medical condition!