Vonn Kaleb was around 9 months old when we moved to our current house. That was when I told Vince that I'm putting Vonn Kaleb in his own room. He slept in his crib in the same room with us up until that time. Since then, he has been sleeping in his own room. It helped us to finally get more sleep at night but it wasn't an easy transition either. He really didn't sleep through the night until probably around 14 months but even still there are times when he still cries and calls for attention in unholy hours of the night. After we came back from our recent Caribbean vacation, we noticed a big improvement in his bedtime routine, in that it's now a lot easier to put him to bed. Less resistance, less rocking, less "sleep fighting." And yes, less waking up too = more sleep for all of us! Hoorah!
Since he's turning 2 soon, we decided to transition him to a big boy bed. I was thinking of getting him a regular-and-nothing-fancy toddler bed but his dad got all excited and went all out and bought him a pirate ship bed. Ahoy, matey!
Vonn Kaleb had fun while we were assembling the pirate ship bed ;) He probably thought it was a big toy we were putting together. Hehe! Most importantly, I really wasn't expecting the transition from crib to bed to be easy, but surprisingly, it was. He has been doing so well sleeping in his big boy bed, which means Vince and me have been getting more than 40 winks in the comfort of our king bed :)
There's really no stopping Vonn Kaleb from growing. He graduated from the crib and has now moved up to a toddler bed. I understand that not all kids mature at the same phase, with some advancing faster and others who take their time to eventually catch up #latebloomers. For us who came far to achieving a sleep-through-the-night status, this is an accomplishment we are happy and proud of. Each step towards independence albeit how little they may appear to others, like weaning off the bottle and transitioning to sippy cup or learning to use the fork to feed himself, these are triumphs that we celebrate in our family. In the short time that I've been a parent, I have learned that parenthood is anything but easy and those benchmarks and milestones make it more rewarding and worth it :) Having said that, I'll sign off using a very appropriate parenting remark from my husband, "Sulit na. Hindi ka naman lugi." ☺☻
Says sentences with 2 to 4 words - *Although his comprehension is very good and bilingual I should say, his speech is somewhat behind. That kinda' get me concerned, so I spoke to a pediatrician I know and she advised me to wait and see until Vonn Kaleb is 2 years and 2 months. She told me that some boys just take their time and most of them they catch up - and this is also what my husband has been telling me. She told us that what she tells her patients is that if by 2 years and 2 months, if the child was still not talking as he was supposed to, then that's the time to consider evaluation and speech therapy. Since I was being antsy and anxiously worried by the delay in Vonn Kaleb's speech, Vince and I agreed to give him until 21 months, and seek help if he's still not talking at that time. Guess what, he started saying "daddy" and "baby" very clearly at 21 months! Well now he's still "bulol" (sorry can't find the exact translation of this Filipino word in English) and does not pronounce all the sounds/letters of words - like "moon" is "boo", "car" is "ca", "chips" is "chi", "chocolates" is "cho", "spoon" is "poo", "sky" is "ky", and so on, but what he used to say as "baba" for "bye bye" is now really "bye bye" and same goes for "hi." There are words which he enunciate very well like "go", "daddy", "baby", "puppy", "key," etc.
