January 28, 2008

Neil is almost a year and a half old. There are so many heart-warming moments and drive-me-up-the-wall-I-want-to-pull-out-my-hair moments as well! This morning, Neil wanted the Vaseline jar that I told him he cannot have. He started howling and throwing a tantrum. This has become very common these days – if he cannot have something or if we tell him it’s not for him, he starts howling and throwing a fit. I kept repeating that he cannot have it, and he stopped crying, toned down his voice and said “peass” which means “please” (plus he signed the word please in his baby sign language)! It was so very adorable! I had to fight my emotions hard to stay put and continue to say no to him! That’s what parenting is all about, I suppose!

Last week (Jan 21-24), Neil had very high fever. It was the first time, his fever went up to 104.4. Almost scared us into going to the ER but we didn’t. He was doing fine in terms of his day-to-day behavior and activity. He did get lethargic for 2 days and stayed clinging on to me. Poor guy! Just the week before on Jan 11 when he completed 16 months, I stopped giving him the bottle for his night-time milk and middle-of-the-night milk feeding. I switched to offering him the sippy cup. He didn’t protest too much but reduced his intake of milk. I am being very persistent about this although it breaks my heart to see him not have even 16 oz of milk in a day. He did start sleeping much better but the last 2 days he has been waking up a lot at night. I wonder if its because he is hungry! I am contemplating giving his last feed for the day in the bottle and cutting out the middle-of-the-night feeding and then slowly scaling back. No one said parenting was going to be easy! It’s a tough choice!