Our little guy had his 15-month check-up with the pediatric nurse the other day.  Yes, this is the same nurse who can be a harsh critic when it comes to things like sippie cups, bottles, and anything else she perceives as leading to bad oral habits in adults; namely smoking and drinking alcohol.

She gave our little Beeber a few age-appropriate skill tests, such as stacking blocks (he stacked them ALL, which is very impressive, even to the experienced nurse – might I consider sharing my Lego collection with a certain little builder in a few years?), following a flashlight with his eyes, and throwing and catching a tennis ball.  He did really well with all of them, but I felt badly for the little guy because he did everything that was asked of him, but after he performed the test with each toy, he seemed to assume that he would then have his turn to play with them.  But nurse Judy swiped them all away before he knew what was happening.  It all became too much for him when she started poking him with that nasty wood-tasting gag stick – who can blame him for crying; I could never stand that thing either!  And, in a true kid’s toast to irony, he began to cry the moment the nurse asked, “Is he always this mild-mannered?”  Then, “WAHHHH!”.  Hilarious!

Our 15-month old (and first boy of the family) is 31 inches long and 22 lbs. 11 oz.  He is in the 40th percentile for height and 25th percentile for weight.  This means that if you take a sample of 100 15-month-olds, my son is shorter than 60 of them and lighter than 75.  He is the first one of my kids to be under the 50% mark.  Two of the girls were around the 90-100% mark, so Beeber is a little guy!  That’s cool; you can be good at baseball if you’re on the smaller side 😉

Overall, he checked out very well and impressed the nurse with his development.  Although he gets into so much trouble at home with his constant climbing and desire to spill liquids and throw things, it’s still a blast to witness this stage of toddler-dom.  Case in point:

My son will be 15 months old on October 11, which makes him due for his next check-up with the doctor.  I made the appointment today and found out that all 15-month appointments are made with our pediatric nurse rather than our regular pediatrician, whom we really like.  We like the nurse also, but some of her ideas about health care are a bit extreme for our tastes.  For example, she thinks sippy (sippie?) cups are just about the worst things ever invented.  Her opinion is that a child should be weaned off the bottle around 1 year of age and that he or she should be given a regular cup with just a little bit of water in it.  No juice, nothing but water and milk with meals.  Ok, that’s fine, but once the baby becomes a toddler, the nurse teaches that they should only be given a glass of water at the sink, several times a day.  No bottle, and certainly no sippie cup ought to be carried around the house or elsewhere.  I personally don’t have a problem with my kids drinking (especially if it’s water!) away from the sink or out of a sippie cup – I don’t really have the time to be cleaning up even more spills around here, which is what would happen if my kids didn’t graduate to sippie cups from bottles.  I have three kids who have weaned off of sippie cups just fine.  So anyway, the nurse is nice but can be kind of a stickler about certain things…

And as for the newest milestone – he’s walking!  He’s been walking for awhile now, but before Sunday, it was only a few steps at a time.  Then he started walking with little push-toys, and he was really good with those; he would make push-toys out of things that weren’t even supposed to be push-toys, like my daughters’ step-stools, strollers, etc.  He’s gotten so good at maneuvering the push-toys that he can practically run while pushing, and by now, he’s also great at steering them.  We took a walk today, and instead of putting him in his stroller, I let him push his push-toy down the sidewalk, and he was off and running!  He got so excited that he took a hand off the push-toy, raised it in a wave, and yelled “Hi!” to the kids playing in the schoolyard we passed.  But aside from all of these awesome first steps (pun intended), he really officially started walking yesterday.  Yesterday was the first day he began to take lengthy jaunts across the house on two legs without the assistance of a push-toy.  He was on a roll;  he’d walk over, pick something up, and then straighten up to throw or pass the object rather than flopping down onto his knees and going into a crawl  as he would have done weeks ago.  So, my son is taking baby steps to learn to walk, haha.  But we think that yesterday was a big breakthrough, err, a big step for his learning to walk, and I would bet that by this time next month, he will be walking and running around just like a full-fledged toddler…  wonder what the nurse will say about that when she has to chase him all over the room?