14 months old

14 months old

Cool toddler

Height- not sure

Weight- not sure

Diapers- Size 4 diapers during the day, Size 5 nighttime diapers

Retrieving Izzy's stomp rockets in MI

Milestones- Not only is Wes walking, but he has started to try to run for a few steps when he really wants to get from point A to point B (point B mostly being Mommy's arms these days)! He loves climbing up the stairs when allowed (we have now installed the baby gate which makes him very sad) and he loves standing on the couch watching what goes on outside (he especially loves watching squirrels). He can't get up on the couch just yet, but that may happen sooner than later. He plays peek-a-boo with his hands covering his eyes at least daily with us and thinks that it is HILARIOUS.

Playing peek-a-boo at a restaurant with his mat

He is now copying Izzy when she looks to be doing something fun. The other day she was jumping on packing bubbles to make them pop and he stood on another sheet of bubbles and did his best impression of jumping (moving up and down) with a huge smile on his face.

Sprinkler fun

Enjoying the water table

Finally, Wes is starting to actually build things instead of just knocking things down. I think that he has been doing it a lot at daycare, but not so much at home.

Language- Words so far- "dah" for dog, "uh oh" when he drops something, "ma ma" for milk, and "ah da" for all done. His favorite thing to say in the car is "va va" which has no meaning as far as I can tell, but he loves when I repeat it back to him. He shakes his head for "no" and cries/pouts when Izzy takes a toy from his hand or something that he shouldn't be playing with is taken from him by an adult. Mostly though he just points and grunts to let us know what he wants.

With every diaper change in his room he points to the shelf above and grunts until we give him the dinosaurs in the picture. He knows that there are three and will point and grunt until he gets all of them! Then of course will drop them one by one off the changing table saying "uh oh."

Favorite Toy- Wes is obsessed with his panda that my parents got him right after he was born. He sleeps with it every night and loves to give it hugs. He is also a big fan of the house that Izzy loved at this age.

Playing with the house while sort-of watching Zootopia

Favorite Book- The "Dog" book that Izzy destroyed. He will sit on the floor and turn the pages just like Izzy did all by himself. He is also obsessed with the "Chugga Chugga Choo Choo" book. Turns out he is really interested in trains!

"Reading" Izzy's book on the planets

Watching the train arrive at the park

Sleep- Wes is a great sleeper from about 7:30pm to 7 or 8am. He is generally down to one long nap at daycare and two naps on the weekend when home.

Clothes- 18 month clothing and on some of the shirts, his belly hangs out a little. I think it's time to move into 2t clothing.

Bright white belly!

Eating- Like what happened with Izzy right after she turned a year old, Wes has started to not eat things if he doesn't want to (and vigorously shake his head "no"). He loves fruit but he started to not eat certain veggies and depending on the day, meat. We'll keep pushing them! Wes has also become interested in using a fork/spoon so we will place the food on the utensil for him and he finishes the job by putting it in his mouth.

Teeth- No new teeth this past month.

Wes' new sweatshirt from his grandmother is awesome

Illness- It wouldn't be a trip to MI without Wes getting sick. This time it was pink eye. Otherwise this month he had a cold and his first puking incident. Thankfully his puking incident only happened twice and it was after he went to bed so other than having to give him a quick bath and change his sheets, he was tired and slept the rest of the night.

Misc- Wes finally got his first haircut. He hated the entire 4 minutes and cried and held onto me the entire time. I was so impressed with the woman that cut his hair and being able to do it while he was so unhappy.

Crying while getting a trim

Wes loves petting Buster (more like a patting of his fur)....Buster has been very good in tolerating it (especially if I am also petting him at the same time).

This month was also the first time that Wes was able to actively participate in picking apples off trees....I think that he liked eating them a bit more though.

Final house renovations

Okay so I can wait until our house is completely clean and ready, or I can just show you what we did to our house when it is super close to being complete, but not completely clean. :-)

If you forget what our house looked like before the reno, I have a few pictures on this post and a few more on this post. I also posted updates throughout the renovation here and here. And if you are feeling extra bored, you can go to the "house stuff" tag on my sidebar and read all of the posts since August 2012 detailing what we have done so far.

Without further ado, our new and improved house! We'll start upstairs and make our way down.

First up- our new master closet. It was just one door a few months ago which meant that CP's stuff on the right hand side was getting lost. We had the contractor re-do the door frame and put on two doors so that we both have access to the closet- my stuff on the left, his stuff on the right.

Not a super exciting change, but it makes CP's life a lot easier.

Next up, the second floor bathroom, our only full bathroom in the house. We made a few changes to make the room feel bigger (raised the ceiling above the shower- it used to be curved), shortened the closet to the right of the shower so that it is flush with the tub instead of sticking out, and moved the door so that it now swings out into the hallway. A few things make this room feel bigger even if the footprint did not. Plus it's soooooo nice to not have a black bathtub anymore!!

I wish we had room for a larger counter, but we try to put most of our stuff in the medicine cabinet.

Now down to the first floor where we knocked down the entire exterior fireplace because it was a disaster. If you have brick, please don't paint it. Not only is it bad for the brick but then it makes it impossible for contractors to figure out where there are problems. So instead of worrying about our fireplace falling over in high winds, we now have a lovely new one outside!

Inside there was a problem with the actual firebox (or something- I didn't quite understand what was going on) so we had to get one of these firebox covers/faces (the black thing). I think that it will actually work out well because it is a bit of a hybrid and while it burns real wood, there is a fan that circulates the hot air into the room, potentially heating up more than just the 5 foot area around the fire. Because the white mantle wood came too close to the black box we had to get new stone to surround it as well as you can see below. I love the way it turned out! (Now we don't love the red tiles surrounding the fireplace but that is not a high priority right now.)

Next up our first floor half bath. We moved the wall that juts out on the left back a little bit so that when you sit on the toilet you are not as closed in as before. Whomever put up the walls of the bathroom did not use drywall or plaster so in order to fix that we had to totally rip everything down and start fresh.

Next up is CP's favorite new room, the new and improved kitchen! We totally gutted the old one and bumped out the back of the house about 8 feet to create the new open kitchen that we love! I love how open the room is with both the dining room and the new family room. Izzy loves sitting at the island on the stools to eat.

Hard to see in the picture but the island is a dark blue and there is some blue in the countertops as well.

CP's new baby- a Wolf commercial oven/stove. We had a different backsplash but happened to come upon this awesome Ann Sacks concrete tile (thankfully not expensive) and decided to go for a big pop instead! I love it (hard to see but it is blue).

A bookshelf for all of CP's cookbooks!

The kitchen opens up into the new family room which is also a few feet bigger than the old one. We still need some shelving, curtains, and at some point, a sectional instead of the couch and armchair but the latter isn't financially feasible right now.

The new larger opening between the dining room and the family room:

The new larger opening between the dining room and the new kitchen:

Next we head down to the basement. We walled off the mechanical stuff and now have a large space for shelving and storage, but at least we have separate rooms now. Here is the new hallway with new flooring and a painted wall which leads to the new  basement. Clearly we haven't unpacked the kids' toys just yet. :-)

My new laundry set up which is just okay.

The new basement (it resides under the expanded part of the kitchen and the new family room). It two will eventually house a sectional, cubbies for the kids, and of course, my lovely new treadmill (pictured).

Outside is where most of the final work is to be done. The contractors ripped up most of our patio so every time it rains this area is a mess. I'm not sure where the big pavers have gone so we might just have to make do until the spring when we can hopefully cobble together enough money to get the patio done.

The new back part of our house (they still have to fix the driveway).

Other than that we did mainly not-so-fun things like revamped our HVAC system to install another zone on the second floor, installed another sump pump and battery backup for the new part of the basement, etc. Can't wait for the entire project to be done!