With your birthday just a sleep away I thought I would highlight
a bit of the little boy – because you are definitely not a baby anymore - you
have become over the past year.
You continue to love food of all sorts, especially all
things dairy and eggs. You have become
very adept at using a spoon to feed yourself, with minimal spillage. It’s really quite good I think for your
age. I think some of this hand skill
comes from your reluctance – wait, let’s call it what it is – complete refusal
to give up your pacis. You insist on
sleeping with 3 of them and during pre bedtime stories you deftly swap them in
and out of your mouth often holding 2 in the same hand at once and still
maneuvering them around – all the while rubbing your eyes with the ones in your
hand.
You are an amazing
sleeper. It took until about 13 or 14
months, but then you just got the hang of it and now you go to bed at 7pm and
sleep straight through until 7 or 7:30 am without a peep. It’s awesome!
And I think you are a very happy kid because of it! You are always smiling and laughing, and
generally pretty well behaved and pleasant.
You are starting to have your moments of terrible two-ness – which mostly
extend from not being able to get your wants across to us…or by getting them
across and not accepting “no” as an answer.
I expect this will increase over the coming months, but overall, your
happy little self far outweighs your occasional tantrum.
You started to walk this past year – at around 18
months. So while you were a bit of a
late bloomer on that front, you went from not walking to being very stable in a
short period of time! You now RUN
everywhere. There is no walking pace for
you. You also walk backwards – and usually
make a beeping noise like a truck backing up when you do it. I’m not sure where you learned that, but it’s
funny! And you can jump now – and actually
get a small amount of lift off!
Your language skills are starting to explode! It’s so fun to have you chatting away with
us, albeit a lot is still unintelligible yammering (at least to us), but more
and more it’s real words in real (and really short) sentences. I would estimate you have well over 100 words
these days and every day you both add more and put them together in different
ways. Just this morning you were chasing
Flax around and she hid under the bed where you couldn’t see her and you lay down
to look under the bed then looked up at me and said “Kitty! Where are you?” I didn’t even know you knew “where are you?”! You amaze me every day with little things
like this, and I love watching you grow and learn!
You are also way into all things that go. Cars, trucks, trains, buses – especially schoolbuses
- garbage trucks, dump trucks (which you refer to as “dump dumps”), etc. All vehicles which have sirens and lights (so
emergency vehicles, but also things like snowplows) are called “people”. I think this is because you used to get very
scared anytime you heard a siren and would run to Dad or me almost crying, and
we told you it was okay, the sirens were because they were going to help
people. Somehow this translated into
them just being called people to you – I fear you will be confused about what people
actually are for a while.
You in general love all books and are very content to sit
and flip through them by yourself pointing things out on the pictures, and of
course you love being read to as well.Your favourite book these days (and has
been for a while now) is Richard Scarry’s “Cars and Trucks and things that go”
which you simply refer to as “Goldbug”…and ask for it constantly!
You are also a fairly contented solo player and will sit
playing with your “guys” as you call them (the fisher price little people –
which you don’t call people for the reason stated above) putting them in and
out of various vehicles – trains, cars, fire trucks – and making up some sort
of story for them along the way. I can
tell your imagination play is really getting going because sometimes when you
are playing you will randomly say something we understand that to our minds
doesn’t seem at all to fit in with the situation we are observing, but clearly
makes sense in the imaginary world you created.
You also clearly think about other people you know when they
are not around. The other night you had
me draw, one by one, all your different friends from daycare on the
magnadoodle. And sometimes I can tell
that you are incorporating your friend Greta and her dog Vito into your
imaginary play because their names will pop up in your conversation.
Since the summer you have taken a definite liking to Edgrrr,
your stuffed tiger. You want him with
you everywhere in the house. You pretend
to share your paci with him, and your milk.
You hug him and have him give Dad and me kisses. You think it is absolutely hilarious when we
ask Edgrrr questions and have him shake his head no or yes in response. In the past week you have also taken a shine to Osa the oso
(your stuffed bear). I suspect these two
are going to be very helpful in getting you to give up your paci when we decide
to push the issue.
You are an amazing little person and we love you very, very
much and are excited for the year ahead to watch you learn and grow and
continue to develop your own little personality.
Happy Birthday!!
And now some pics from our last day before the deep freeze
hit us here (it’s been anywhere from -20 to -28 here for the past 3 days) and
we didn’t want to venture outside for long!
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| bundled up and ready to head outside! |
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| "stomp stomp" |
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| making snow angels...sort of |
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| helping Dad shovel the walks |
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| he insisted on using the heaviest shovel we have |
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| headed for a walk up the block |
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| walking in a snowsuit is tiring! |
