Sixteen Months!

Happy Sixteen Months, Monkey Boy!


April 27, 2009
16 months old

Let's compare back to the same time last year and see if you notice any change....

April 27, 2008
4 months old

Holy cow - is that the same kiddo?!?! He sure has grown and continues to change every single day...learning exciting things and new ways to amaze and frustrate his parents. :)

Sorry that this gets a little long, but I just started typing and it just kept going....

We are beginning our "independent" stage already! For example, he wants to walk up the long flight of stairs when we leave daycare each day rather than be carried. However, he refuses to hold my hands to help him up the stairs, and would rather hold onto the railing himself. The railing is a little out of his reach though...so he stumbles and falls multiple times and will gladly grab for my hand during the stumble...and as soon as he's righted himself, he will stubbornly swat my hands away seemingly to suggest "Quit helping me! I am fine!"

The little guy is fascinated with pushing things such as the grocery cart or his unoccupied stroller. He cannot see where he is going (nor does he care) and will run into just about anything in sight, but as soon as he sees a guiding hand on the top of the cart/stroller, he loudly proclaims "NO...NO" in case we happen to have forgotten that he prefers to push it himself.

Quick funny grocery cart story...during our most recent trip to Costco, we checked out at the register furthest from the exit. We allowed Mitchell to push the cart (with a little secret guidance) out of the store. He would push the cart to the next register, and then stop pushing to walk up the end of the register and tap the end wall of the register - come back to the cart, push it even with the next register - walk up to the end of the register and tap the end wall of the register - back to the cart - so on and so forth through maybe six registers. It was very strange and very enterating for Jacob and I...and probably very annoying for the line of strangers that had to maneuver carts around us on that busy Saturday!

Mitchell is OBSESSED with cars/trucks/tractors/wagons/bikes...really ANYTHING with wheels! He LOVES them, touching them, pointing to them, riding in them and the BEST is pretending to drive them! He either says the words or signs them 100's of times daily. I took him to the Pet Expo a few weeks back thinking he'd really enjoy seeing all of the cats and dogs, little did I know that his favorite attraction would be the small display of new models of cars from a local car dealership. He was more excited than Christmas morning to be able to climb around in them! (Yes, I asked first!)

Next to things with wheels, books and balls continue to be his next favorites. He is starting to know the difference in the kind of sports balls...and I have no idea how because I don't think I've been teaching it to him. He can typically pick out a 'basketball' from a 'baseball' and can say both words. Just tonight as we were heading home from our nightly walk to the mailbox, he pointed at the neighbors basketball goal in their driveway and eagerly proclaimed "bas-ket-ball." I thought "How the heck does he know that?" That phrase often crosses my mind these days.

We had a first today at daycare....and it's not necessarily a good one, but one that is inevitable and unavoidable -- our first teethbite marks from another child. The daycare teacher apologized up and down. It did not break the skin, but I could definitely make out the upper and lower teeth marks right above Mitchell's wrist. His teacher did not offer up which child was the assailant, but I will be paying close attention to which child has a slightly crooked upper bicuspant - just kidding. Kids will be kids and although Mitchell doesn't seem to show too many biting tendancies yet..I can already envision the day the daycare will tell me that he was the one that bit another kid...and the guilt that I will feel. He's a tough boy and doesn't even seem to notice the marks. My co-worker attended a funeral last week for a friend who's 18 month-old daughter was somehow strangled to death in her daycare provider's fence on the very FIRST day they used this new daycare provider. The daycare provider happened to be in our same suburb of Kansas City (Shawnee, Kansas). I can NOT even imagine the pain this family must be enduring and the thought of receiving a phonecall of that nature is unimaginable to me! I think I can deal with small teeth marks.

Mitchell is still an active little fellow. He loves the outdoors, but gets a little restless in his stroller these days as he'd rather be pushing it instead (so long to my days of leisurely strolls around the neighborhood enjoying the spring weather). He is very fond of climbling stairs, outdoor stairs are very intriguing!

Mitchell has become a 'spider monkey' at bedtime. Right around 8pm, you can just see him start to get drowsy and slow down. We go through the bedtime rountine, which ends with starting his nighttime music CD and rocking him in our arms by his crib. He will proclaim "no, no" a few times as if to suggest that he was only pretending to be tired and is not really ready for bed yet. We know the truth and press on... He will slowly lay his head on your shoulder and start to slowly fall asleep, but as soon as you make the move to try to lay him down into his crib, he will become a spider monkey and wrap his little arms around your neck and legs around your waste as tight as he can to prevent you from laying him down! I usually give in a time or two and continue rocking him, at which time he'll reach his hand around to the back of my neck and play with my hair as he continues to slowly fall asleep in my arrms. Sometimes I just take advantage of this time, knowing that there will be a day that he will be too big and independent to allow his mom to rock him to sleep...but eventually I will lay him into his crib and if I'm lucky he'll curl up on his tummy in a ball with his legs under his body in fetal position and drift off to sleep.

Mitchell's nighttime schedule is fairly good these days. He still wakes rather early some days (5 or 6am), and usually when we go get him out of bed he will request one of three things...1. Banana, 2. Crackers 3. Drink. If we give him his requests and then sit down and rock him in our rocking chair, he'll lay his little head down on your shoulder and fall slowly back to sleep. If you're lucky this might last up to an hour, during which time he'll probably wriggle around and pull back at times to look you in the face and smile or give you a little giggle. I love this time, and somehow it's not so hard when I hear him yelling for us to get him out of his crib at the early hour.

My biggest struggle with Mitchell as of lately is getting him into his carseat. As mentioned above, he LOVES cars but would MUCH rather be driving the car than buckled tightly in the backseat. He is a strong little fellow too..so when he thrusts those little hips upwards and wriggles and kicks around, it TOUGH to get him buckled in. We have gone round and round more than a few times, but somehow Mommy always wins. Somehow the victory is not so sweet when you're frustrated, frazzled and sweaty, and have a bawling 16 month old in the back seat. :(



Mitchell, may the battles continue and God grant me the patience to deal with them.

May you enjoy daycare just enough not to throw a fit when we leave you, but not so much so that you're still excited to see us at the end of the day.

May you continue to teach Mommy and Daddy as many new things as you learn each day.

We love you, Monkey Boy.

Dubuque Weekend

Well we survived the long drive and had a WONDERFUL weekend with my family! We had 32 family members in all on the mini-vacation!

I picked a few of my favorite pictures to post...you can check out the remainder in the slideshow off in the sidebar. You can double click on the slideshow to enlarge it. Also, I know that many of you that went on the trip are blog followers, so if you want any of the pictures, you can download them directly off of the Web Albums website (for free) or you can email me :)

My immediate family were good sports and humored me in a picture request. We are so rarely all together at the same time, so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to get some good shots of us! I think we succeeded! Here are a few pictures of my sisters and my Dad.

Check out my artistic attempt with the colored street in the background.

And a good one of all of my Dad's Offspring :)

Our family is really fun...and a little crazy! We decided to have a Toga party one of the nights, and as you can imagine, this created lots of fun and plenty of picture opportunities!

The Little Caesar

We went shopping in Gallena, Illinois on Saturday, where we also enjoyed their parade. Mitchell had choice seating and scored a cute fireman's hat!

Despite the long drive (over six hours) and schedule changes (little nap on Saturday..stayed up 'til 10pm!) and new sleeping arrangements (pack n' play shoved into our hotel bathroom so that we could shut the door and still watch TV), Mitchell behaved beautifully :)

Our onery little guy :)

Charging down the stairs....he thinks mommy's hand-holding makes him invincible...let's hope he's right!

Michel Family Vacation 2010....shall we start planning?

What Happens at Grandma's....

What Happens at Grandma', Stays at Grandma's (says the shirt)....unless Grandma sends you pictures!

Here are some cute pics that my mom took while Mitchell stayed with her during our crazy spring travels in late March and early April (Napa vacation, etc).

He played with Aunt Kel's old Cabbage Patch doll.

As you can tell by his face, he really enjoys driving Grandpa's tractor.

He is certainly not afraid of a little mud!!! In fact, when Jacob picked him up at daycare today, his face was covered in dirt from playing outside! He is SUCH a boy!

Mitchell made it a full day at daycare today and ate a lot better. He acted a lot happier at home too, so we're certainly hoping he's on the up side of whatever bug he had! The one-year molars are almost all the way in, so I think maybe we've survived the worst of it! Fingers crossed!

We're off to Iowa tomorrow - wish us luck for the long car ride! We'll have lots of pictures to post upon our return!

The Mitchell Report

Mitchell's health has not bounced back as quickly as we'd hoped! He made it through daycare until 4:30pm, so basically a whole day until we got 'the call'. He didn't eat his breakfast or lunch (NOT like him) and actually fell asleep at his little lunch table (also NOT like him!) He is running a low grade fever too. He seems to be doing okay tonight..maybe he just needed his mommy and daddy :)

Here are some cute little pictures I took during happier times :)

He is adding a new word to his vocabulary seemingly every day! One of my new favorites is "bubble"...it's really cute how he says it :) I will try to post a video in the near future.

Ridem', Tex

Mitchell loves his riding toys...including his dog :)

Mitchell's been struggling a little since his Thursday shots. He had a touch of a fever today, so he was a little lazier and cuddlier than normal. I didn't mind the extra cuddly part :) Hopefully he'll bounce back by tomorrow!

Jacob and I's busy season/vacation pounds caught up on us quickly! So we're back on our 'eat healthy' kick and have a competition going. We weigh in each Saturday and whoever is worse for the week has to mow the yard that weekend. It's actually pretty good motivation for both of us b/c neither of us enjoy mowing! :) As luck would have it, I won this first week, but it's been so rainy that he's not going to have to mow this weekend!

Jacob's home ALL WEEK this week (first time in 2009?), and we're really excited to head to Dubuque, Iowa on Friday for my family (on my Dad's side) big spring trip :) My Dad is one of 8 children and I have LOTS of cousins....many of my Aunts/Uncles & Cousins & Cousin's spouses and children are making the trip. My Dad and Sherri & both of my sisters are going too, so it should be a blast! I'm sure I'll have many pictures to post!

Still a big guy :)

We had Mitchell's 15 month well baby check-up this morning! He is doing just fine in all categories :) He had to get 3 shots....no tears for the first one and about 30 seconds of crying for the 2nd and 3rd. He's a pretty tough fellow!

Here are his stats:

Weight - 29 lbs - 90th percentile
Height - 33 inches - 90th percentile

He is the average size of a 21 month old.

He is soooo much fun these days. He's adding a new word to his vocabulary about every other day... the latest are 'bubble' and 'apple' which are very difficult to distinguish from each other without the sign :)

He's also understanding so much more than he can communicate. This weekend Jacob and I were feeling lazy, so we were laying on the couch under a blanket together watching Mitchell play and Mitchell went over to the trunk of blankets that we have in the living room, found his frog blanket that my mom made him and brought it over to us to cover us up! We thought it was very cute :)

Easter church

We went to the Children's service at church on Sunday. Jacob and I went to that service (somewhat mistakenly) a few years back and we could barely hear the sermon over the children! Somehow it's much less annoying when your child is one of the loud ones! Ha!


"What are these funny looking white things?"


He actually behaved very well! There was a little boy behind him that brought his plastic easter eggs to church and came up to our row to let Mitchell play with them. That certainly helped!

Jacob is home from California....but now he's in Omaha. He will be home on Thursday and Friday (and the weekend too!), so we're looking forward to having him around! :)

We're thinking we might start hitting some garage sales this weekend - one of our favorite spring/summer pasttimes! We are junkies for a good deal! Is it sad that it's only Tuesday and I'm already blogging about our weekend plans!?!?

Happy Easter!

We had a great Easter weekend -- kicked off by Mitchell's 1st Easter Egg hunt with our neighbors. He wasn't quite sure what to do at first, but he caught on quickly :)

He LOVED cracking open the plastic eggs to see what was inside! Mommy and Daddy helped him devour the contents :)

It's a good thing we did the egg hunt on Saturday, because Sunday's weather was nasty and rainy. We ventured out to church and to visit the Easter bunny anyway though! He was very intersted in the easter bunny! He signed bunny over and over again and kept looking for him! When we got really close he stuck to me like glue though...but he did give the Easter bunny a "five" a couple of times. I wish I had a video of hims signing bunny. It's the cutest :)

Mitchell's First Royal's Game!

We took Mitchell to his first Royal's Game yesterday! Our friend, Courtney, was kind enough to tell us that Guest Services gives kids the above certificate at their first game! How cute :)

He LOVED it! He really enjoyed looking around at his surroundings!

"Yeah! Everyone is clapping -- for some reason?!"

Too bad the Royals didn't give us more excuses to clap. They lost :(

One of the signature things of the ballpark are the water fountains above the outfield. Mitchell kept pointing at them and then signing "bath". Oh, how I would love to give him a bath in one....don't think that's ever going to happen! Ha!

"What are those little men doing down there with that ball?"

Jacob bought Mitchell his first Royal's hat! $22 -- we usually don't splurge on those types of things, but couldn't resist :) You can see he had already torn the hat off of his head before I took these pictures!


"Why does Grandpa think it's so funny to prentend that I'm drinking this?"

There were a few random strangers at the "K" that took pictures of Mitchell, some with their cell phones. I couldn't decide if I was flattered...or disturbed :)

"These fold up chairs are so tricky! GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

He was such a good little boy! He really behaved well! Can't wait to take him again!

San Francisco

We had a wonderful weekend trip to San Fran! I was really worried about the 3 1/2 hour plane ride by myself with Mitchell, but he was SOOO good! We did LOTS of fun sightseeing and he slept better there than he has at home lately...I think it's because we wore him out :)

Mitchell was nice enough to nap in his stroller, so Jacob and I planned a wine tasting for Saturday and Sunday during his nap times! Yumm! :)


Daddy & Mitchell on the sight seeing bus

Mommy & Mitchell on the ferry to Alcatraz in front of the Bay Bridge

Picture of the San Fran skyline in the background with Daddy and Mitchell in the foreground

Mitchell LOVED the aquarium! He signed "fish" over and over again and shreaked with excitement!

We flew to Minneapolis on Monday, and he's spending a few days with Grandma and Grandpa while I'm working. We'll fly home on Thursday in time for his first Royal's game on Friday!!! :)

Our little troublemaker

Oh, man...Mitchell is quite the little troublemaker lately! He means absolutely no harm, and it's my fault for not always keeping a better eye on him....but I've mastered cleaning up messes lately.

Example 1
Mitchell enjoys playing in our panty and usually enjoys the 'tupperware' shelf. Yes, after he's done there will be tupperware scattered all over the kitchen floor, but it's easy enough to clean up and no harm done. The other day he must've decided he grew tired of the boring tupperware because he went for the 'spice' shelf instead. He twisted one of the spice lids open and emptied the contents onto the floor - see below. No worries, the Dyson cleaned it up in 2.5 seconds :)



Example 2
Mitchell was playing with my toothbrush in my room while I was showering this morning, but unfortunately he's learned to open the doors now, so he let himself out of my room into the rest of the house. I quickly toweled off and followed him to find out what he was doing. About 90% of the time, he'll be doing something completely innocent and I'll feel bad for doubting the little guy. This was not one of those times! He had made his way into the room where we keep the litter box and was using my toothbrush as a rake through the litter. Ick! Needless to say, the toothbrush was quickly disgarded into the trash can!

Example 3
Mitchell has NOT been sleeping well lately. He has woken at 3:30am the last three nights and refuses to go back to sleep for a matter of hours! I finally gave up one night and decided to make use of my 4am time to get our dishes put away in the kitchen. Meanwhile Mitchell wandered to my bathroom. I peaked in on him and he was playing innocently with his bath toys. I let him be and headed back to the kitchen. About 2 minutes later, he came into the kitchen COVERED HEAD TO TOE in BRIGHT PINK nail polish! It was in his hair, all over his face, his hands, and his feet! He had somehow found a bottle of my nailpolish, dropped it on our bathroom tile floor and it had busted open. Thank God he did not step on any glass or try to eat it (yes, it could have been worse). Mitchell must've mistaken it for finger paint, because he had painted a nice little design all over the bathroom floor tile. I stripped Mitchell down and put him straight in the bath, where I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed him! Then I let him play in the bath, while I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed the tile floor. An hour and a half later at approx 5:15am, exhausted from too litle sleep and too much mess, Mitchell and I both fell asleep in the living room recliner. We woke up about 2 hours later, and I seriously had to wonder to myself whether I had dreamed the entire thing...until I say the still pinkish tint to his hands :)

The troublemaker and I are headed to San Francisco tomorrow to spend the weekend with Jacob. We're looking forward to seeing some of the sites of downton San Fran this time!

Jacob will stay in San Fran for the week again, and Mitchell and I will fly directly to Minneapolis on Monday. I will work up there again for a couple of days next week!