There Can Only Be One, Too

I wrote this post about Will just after he hit fifteen months. It was also a couple of weeks before Finn was born, which is shocking to me. How was I not panicking that I was about to have a baby when I still had...a baby?!? Will didn't feel like a baby to me, though.

Finn does, and so I'm amazed by the non-baby traits that keep cropping up. Here's a partial list of his words as of this week:

Up, outside ("ah-sigh"), upstairs ("usta"), car, truck ("uckuck"), Will ("Bee-uw"), more, uh-oh, hi, buh-bye, hat, dog, Nan ("Naaa"), Mamp (he said "Mampa" today), Dada, Mama, bread, Goldfish ("goh")...

He loves to read, particularly: Fire Truck by Peter Sis, Opposites by Sandra Boynton (and add "oppa" to the list of partial words he can say), The Three Bears by Byron Barton, and Good Night, Gorilla by Peggy Rathmann.

(He also loves belly buttons, and saying "tick" as he lunges for yours.)

He still signs "please." Then there's the ubiquitous "yeah" and "no," accompanied by the appropriate head movement. This has been going on for at least a month, and it's the most helpful thing Finn's done in his short life thus far. As long as you can make your question conform to a yes/no format, you can ask him anything! (It wasn't as helpful as I would've liked the other morning, when I was trying to get him back to bed after a 5 a.m. wake-up and said, "Do you want to go back to sleep?" "Naw," he said firmly, turning his head left to right. Oooookay. What now?)

This week was a triumph of sorts for Finn: Monday was his first "one-nap" day, and I rearranged our schedule for every subsequent day so we'd have the best shot at keeping the streak alive. And we did it! Dave and I may have had to maneuver some weird 2 a.m. CIO sessions, and I might have whispered some bad words under my breath after today's nap (consisting of one hour) ended abruptly today, but overall: success!

Finn's definitely a cold-turkey kid. We cut him off from pacifiers altogether overnight, and that was that. We did the same with bottles somewhere before thirteen months, and he was cool with that, too. He's never attached to a "love-love" the way Will did with (his now multiple) Gogo(s). Finn prefers people. He's a nuzzler and a snuggler.



At his fifteen-month appointment, he came up 28 lbs. and some undetectable amount of inches, since he wouldn't stand (literally and metaphorically) for his height check. Our doctor guess-timated 31, but I think he's closer to 32. Will was 34 inches, and you can clearly see the differences in body type when you compare Finny wearing this same 3T PJ one-piece from the pictures of Will at the exact same age.

"Right now, he's heftier than he is long," chuckled the doctor. Let me tell you why this is unsurprising: I thought Will could eat, but this kid can Eat. A normal breakfast for Finn consists of a cup of diced peaches, two slices of raisin bread with peanut butter, a WHOLE banana, and a cup of milk. He eats a mid-morning and an afternoon snack, and his lunch and dinner are as preposterous as his breakfast, in terms of volume. We buy three gallons of milk per week; one for Finn, one for Will, and one for me and Dave. Guess which one has a bit left over on Sunday? THE ONE THAT IS SHARED BY THE TWO FULL-SIZED ADULTS.

I submit as evidence: his tummy is about to bust out of this Idaho tee courtesy of his Great-Aunt Kathy (Dave's godmother) and Great-Uncle Tom.







As I'm sure most little brothers do, Finn watches his big brother like an Us Weekly paparazzo. Lately, though, Finn's also been branching out into some independent play. He used to sort of hang around Will, waiting for attention or to see what was going to happen. But he still laughs uproariously at almost anything his brother does.

My sweet fifteen-month-old has probably had five tantrums so far, but each is a total "Whuuuuut?" experience for me, since my two-and-a-half-year-old has never really had ONE. Yet. (And when Will starts to whip his arms around and makes his preparatory shrieking noise, we say, "Will, stop it. Hands are not for hitting." And he STOPS. And then snuggles with us, likely because he feels guilty or something sweet like that.) Finny does the full-on sequence of tantrums like the ones I've seen on YouTube: 1) Whine with an open mouth, baring splayed, emergent front teeth; 2) Intensify the nasal tone of the whine, throw head back further; 3) Fall to floor in despair, 4) Roll side to side, screaming at the floor as if it's to blame for your woe; 5) Wonder vaguely what you're supposed to be upset about, allow yourself to be distracted by something more fun, end tantrum.



So far I've watched with a bemused eye, because I really don't know what to do with this irrational behavior. My older kid is SO rational. You explain things to Will and he processes my reasoning and moves on. Oh, not so with my Finny Finn!

And fifteen months later, I honestly don't know how I ever lived without him.