Nicky Update

Perhaps the most significant change since the last time I blogged about him (almost 5 months ago!) is the fact that he’s walking everywhere. He started walking at 12 months, but at first he would revert to crawling whenever he wanted to go fast. Now however, he’s almost always upright. And boy, can he zoom around. Sometimes he’ll take off and start walking laps around the house, just because he can. Like all of us, he prefers barefoot, and will toddle over rocks and dirt without a second thought.

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And the mobility doesn’t stop at walking. He climbs on everything: chairs, sofa, beds, rocks, bricks, stairs, tires, etc. He’ll get up on anything that he can straddle and start making a noise like he’s riding a horse. He can go up and down the 9 stairs to the bedrooms. We make sure we’re around when he backs down the stairs, but he doesn’t need any help.

He’s not saying many real words, but he signs a fair amount and babbles constantly. He has his own sounds for different things to make himself understood, which of course Leo loves. What amazes us is how much he understands. We can give him fairly complex commands and he’ll jump right to it. He knows pretty much all the parts of his body, many animals, all the rooms of the house, different types of food, and a bunch of other stuff.

His playtime is also getting more advanced, as his dexterity increases. He can stack nesting cups and rings, put Legos together and take them apart. He can play for a long time on his own, but also loves to race around the house with Leo or us. He is super into books at the moment, and isn’t content unless you’ve gone through at least 5 with him. Balls and cars remain a favorite.

Food-wise he’s doing OK. He’s still nursing, but is also drinking cow milk and eating real food. For the most part he eats really well, whatever we have. However, he has been teething almost non-stop and when each tooth punches through he seems to lose all appetite.

He now has 12 teeth, with the vampire ones on their way. Just like Leo, his front tooth descended with weak enamel and chipped – same tooth, same place. We’re not exactly sure what has caused this in both boys. Leo’s tooth eventually developed a cavity and got painful, so a dentist put a crown on it. If at all possible, we want to avoid this with Nico, as it was a terrible experience for Leo and us. So, we have started making small changes to our diet. We already eat a lot of fresh fruit, vegetables and meat from our own grass-fed animals, but we have started eating more of the organ meat too. We have also almost completely cut out grains, except for a sourdough bread I make (it’s said that the yeast in sourdough can break down the phytic acid in grains that inhibits nutrient absorption). We also take an uncooked cod liver oil supplement. In the two months that we have been following this diet Nicky’s tooth has re-calcified (and my only cavity no longer hurts when I eat sweet stuff). We’ll keep going and maybe even get a little stricter (like getting a goat again for raw milk), and see what happens.

Other than that, Nicky is an extremely healthy little guy. He hardly ever gets sick, and the few colds he’s had haven’t lasted more than a day or so. He’s very active and will go outside as often as we’ll let him. He’s also very strong for his age.

He gets mad occasionally, but usually not for long and so far no real tantrums (although we know they’re coming soon). In fact, he is the calmest, happiest baby I know. He is almost always smiling or laughing, takes pleasure in just about everything, and seems to take most things in his stride. He’s not too keen on being picked up by anyone besides us, but he’s very flirtatious with people when on the floor or in our arms. With us, he’s extremely affectionate.

We haven’t been blogging at all while redoing our site, so if you want to look back on photos for the past few months, click here.