Thanks to Squirt’s burgeoning independence, frequent exertion of will power and having stronger opinions of what he wants and don’t want, we now have reached another milestones of having regular power struggles over the simplest requests.

The last month hasn’t been easy on us as Squirt is beginning to show us the not-so-pleasant side of him by being uncooperative over meal times and refusing to go to bed at bedtime. He demonstrates this by saying a firm, “NOOOO!”, running away from us as well as screaming his guts off in defiance.

When the soft approach of cajoling doesn’t work, we usually just pick him up, let him wail as he screams and kicks and just allow him to be unhappy. The only good thing with Squirt is that temper tantrums come in drifts and hardly ever prolonged. He is quite easily distracted and would quickly forget that he is unhappy when he is being redirected to something else. At least, he still is able to calm down, give us a smile even though he has tears running down his cheeks.

Squirt has hardly ever fall sick in his last 22 months of life and while there has been bouts of coughs, his flu or fever has been pretty mild and he tends to stay quite active. Last week however, he fell sick for the very time with a fever of about 38 degrees Celsius. I don’t think I have ever seen him looking so sick, and this time, he got a little clingy, cranky and even walked a little wobbly. He slept a lot and luckily for us, the nights were relatively uneventful as he managed to sleep almost through the night with little interruptions; although there was one morning where he woke me up at 4 am asking for “Susu” (milk) – something which he hasn’t done before.

Squirt babbles like a champion and enjoy parroting whatever we say. He has also been actively trying to articulate his words and string several words together. He thinks every number is a 2 or 8 and is starting to find pleasure playing with cars. When I ask him for kisses at bedtime, he prefers that the kisses are given by all of his 7 bedtime buddies instead. He would readily smile and hand me his stuffed animals to my nose, one by one until each and everyone of them give me my much needed kiss while he sits in his cot grinning from ear to ear.

While he has got a couple of molars sprouting out, his bottom front teeth still stands at 2 after all this months. He still doesn’t have that many teeth for a 22 month old, and so transitioning him to real solid and textured food has been a pretty slow process as he still prefers soft food with the occasional bites of rice and spaghetti. He still seems comfortable sleeping in his little cot and has so far, not shown any signs that he would be needing a transition to a bigger bed soon.

From teeth to real solid food to transitioning away from the cot bed, this guy seems to be taking it all slow and does things in his own time. And no, he still cannot sit still.

I am only hoping that his terrible two phase isn’t going to be as challenging as we once had with his sister.

Related post(s):

Spud 22 month’s update