Dear Aurick,

I am writing this post for you many months after it should have been shared. You turned sixteen months on the seventh of February; I am writing this on the sixth of July. Those last few months with Flannery’s pregnancy were difficult, and your monthly updates were something that slipped through the cracks. I hope you can understand. (Though, now that I look at it, it seems a lot of people are missing their sixteen-month posts. There must be a lot of cracks around that age.)

A favorite pastime of yours at 16 months was your cheesy face. You would scrunch up your face and show every bit of teeth that you possibly could in a grin, then say “cheeeeeeeese!” It was a real winner.

You also loved to jump in the Johnny-Jump Up. You could really go to town! I could set you up in the doorway to your room and turn on The Final Countdown and you would jump and jump and jump and jump, and to the beat, too.

I watched you for signs you were moving forward with your gross motor skills, since you still were not walking. You were following the same developmental curve as your brothers Anselm and Clive, though, so I wasn’t too terribly worried, only wanting to be sure there wasn’t another problem at the root that was slipping under my radar. You could get around just fine crawling, though, and were cruising fairly confidently.

You had an extremely contrary personality. We had a particular problem with you throwing fits at the dinner (and breakfast and lunch) table. We tried a couple of approaches, which were more or less successful, but many times you just ended up in time-out in your crib while we finished our meal in peace. You were generally happy in your crib, so it may be that you just screamed to signal you were ready to get down and go hang out in bed. I’m not sure.

You continued to wake up way earlier than I wanted you to. Nothing I did seemed to help you sleep in! I also see from our gallimaufry post from February that you were starting to rearrange your nap schedule. I can say one thing, for sure–you were busy keeping me on my toes!

other updates
Ephraim + clive + anselm + elvie + eldore + beatrice