Growth check: None this month, I gave the accurate scale to Kate for when Luther is born. About 22lbs according to the differential in my weight holding Ant vs. not. I figure I'll report height/weight when we have our doctor's appointments.
Talking: Ant is acquiring words at close to an exponential rate. 16 the first month he was talking, 31 the second, and 58 this month. I'll list them all here, but I think this might be the last month I can do that! Ready? apple (ap), boots, bowl, bib, bubbles (buh-buh), brush (dush), baby, boo, beans, chair, control as in remote control (cohn), camera (carya), comb, couch, door, ears, fork (hork), fly (hy), granny (gangy), glasses (gah), gate, hey, hi, hands, hummus (hoom), in, ice, juice, Kate, knee, kiss, lock (ock), more(moh), nose (no), no, out, open (ohp), on, papa (Cup, Pup), pot (cot), Pooh, phone (hone), pizza (peetz), please (pees), puck (pup), rock (gock), spoon (hoon), Sami (hami), shoot, swing, turtle (turt), tissue (shoo), teeth (tooth), toothbrush (tooth), toes, truck (teesh), touch, tower (tow), two (after one), yogurt (gog). Phew! There are also another ten words that I think he might have, but not clear - I'll spare you those! He's also started to put together two word combinations, he's done it about five times now, which leads me to believe that it's a bit more than just coincidence. There are a couple I don't remember, but he has definitely said "key gone" when he can't find one of his favorite (i.e. the BMW) car keys. He said "mama hair" when touching my hair, and just tonight "hy gone" after Mark finally managed to swat the fly that has been haunting us for the last five days. (After which Ant proceeded to say "gone" another hundred times or so!)
Movement: Ant started learning to get off the bed and chair last month, then perfected it this month. Doesn't mean he always does it (like tonight when he basically just walked straight off the edge of the bed - Mark was right there so no worries), but he certainly can, with no prompting. Climbing onto the easy chair that's in his room with the little stool in front of it is also de rigeur. He started 'hopping' (i.e. jumping) this month. Doesn't get much clearance off the ground, if any, but he has the right motion, the knees bending, straightening, and bending again. He also stomps his feet if you ask him nicely. In terms of manual dexterity, he was actually able to get a straw back into a juice box after having pulled it out, with much less difficulty than I would have expected. That's a small hole to get the straw into! He is also starting to make the twisting motion required for screwing and unscrewing cap s - which is going to mean more babyproofing! He still doesn't seem interested in learning how to go down steps on his own. He just wants to walk down with us holding his hands.
Mental: So much going on in there these days. One fun thing is that he's started really imitating us - he likes to 'brush his teeth' (has let me *really* brush them once or twice), brush his hair, and also likes to help us with things - I've been taking my temp in the am to track my cycles which he's seen a few times, so now he enjoys picking up the thermometer and sticking it in my mouth! Also finds it highly amusing to feed us either with his hands or a spoon. I think he's starting to nod 'yes', although it's not 100% clear just yet. One really nice thing is that he does not seem to be in quite so much of a mommy phase. There have been a couple of nights when he has been SO excited to see Mark when he gets home - raising both hands in the air, running around, and squealing with delight. He also finally started holding out his arms to go to Mom when she arrives to babysit, and doesn't cry when I leave anymore. Somewhat bitterswe et ;-) The other things that are new are using the remote control with purpose to turn on the tv, physically turning on the tv (although if we ask him to he'll shut it right off again), turning the clock radio in his room on and off, and in fact just yesterday he really impressed Mark by opening up his closed laptop, then turning it off and on about 47 times. What's funny is that he'll often say "off" or "on" as he's doing it! Over the weekend when Michell, Kevin and Brendan were here, there were a few things that I was surprised by - first, that he wanted to play next to Brendan a lot. He's mostly been off in his own world before. Second, that fairly quickly he was able to understand their names - we could say "touch Kevin", or "touch Michelle", and he would go over to them and touch them, of course, saying "touch" as he did it. Finally, they had a little workbench that counted up, "one, two, three..." all the way to ten. He would push the button to make it say one, and then say "TWO". This went on all weekend, so it was definitely intentional.
Toys and games: More taking things out of containers - my pocketbook and toiletry bag were this month's favorites. The BMW car keys are almost like his lovies - we can give them to him when he's upset and he'll calm right down. Also gets quite upset if he wants one of them and can't find it.
Teeth: This month saw Ant's third eye tooth (bottom right) coming through on 10/17, fourth molar (top left) first cut through on 10/21. The last eye tooth seems to be on it's way with a bit more fussing than these other recent ones. Hopefully it cuts soon. Then all we have left are the two year molars!
Feeding: We are now solely on sippy cups, the bottles have all been washed and put away. No complaints at all, which is nice! We give Ant warm milk first thing in the am and for his bedtime, and cold during the day. Figure he might as well get used to it both ways. Not much else new in the food arena, except that he's starting to eat more veggies that are not pureed. He also likes salmon and scrambled eggs now, but only with ketchup. Definitely his father's son!
Sleeping: Routine is still mostly the same, although recently am wakeup time has moved from 5:45-6 to closer to 7. Which is key with the upcoming daylight savings transition! We're pushing everything back 10 min/day this week to try and make that less difficult. I also think that we're at the point where we could go to one nap at any time - Mom had him nap just once last Friday when I wanted to take Ant to my work halloween party and it worked out just fine. We don't need to fully transition until daycare starts at the beginning of Jan, but will probably do it mid this month, when the Rinaldis are back from FL.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Ant diary: Thirteen months
Growth check: At his one year appointment, Ant was 31 inches (so my home measurement of 30.75 was pretty good!), and 21lbs 6oz. So a bit heavier than I had thought. He's stepped on the scale the last couple of days and come in at 22.5lb (with clothes on), so think he's still putting on about half a pound a month, which is about right.
Talking: I am absolutely amazed at the rate at which Ant is picking up words. He is definitely well on the precocious side with his verbalization skills! He added somewhere around 30 words this past month. On top of the 16 from the previous month - only high-chair and night-night didn't make much of a reappearance from those first 16. This months words were: balloon, cat (tat), cheese, camera (cac), cake, cord (caw), cup, cute, choo-choo, down, Donald Duck (Don Da), dirty, duck, eyes, Elmo, fish (hish), Freckles (hoc), gone, help, hop, hair, keys, more (mowah), Nicole (cole), off, prunes, shoes, squash, towel, and toast. Freckles is a little bear that came with a bedtime book, you feed Freckles his milk, take off his clothes, bath him, brush his teeth, put on pajamas, read a night time story and then put him to bed. I have *no* idea how one gets "Hoc" from Freckles, but that is clearly what Ant calls him. There are also abou t another 20 words that we heard but weren't sure of. He's clearly enamoured of words that begin with "c", he has twice as many of those as the next closest letters, which are H and D. We're starting to notice a few letter substitutions, but mostly he just skips the letters he can't say. One other thing I thought was funny - he doesn't really do the sign for milk anymore, so I was asking him the other day to say "milk". He kept saying "cup" (which is now how he asks for his milk at night). Me: say 'milk' Ant: cup Me: 'milk' Ant: cup... about three more times :-)
Movement: This month Ant figured out how to get up to standing from sitting in the middle of the floor. He also learned how to kick things this past weekend; spent a good long time kicking his stackable cups up and down the hallway. He really likes it when we "hop" while holding him. Giggles galore. He's also starting to learn how to get off a bed or chair - backwards and feet down. Still not good enough that we'd let him do it on his own, but he's starting to get the hang of turning around, and doing it without our prompting him.
Mental: Ant started balancing things on other things this month; his cup of juice on top of a bowl, his monitor on top of an old hard drive inside its case that Mark has up in the office. His understanding of concepts is phenomenal. He knows what it means when he asks for "help", and will do that when he's unable to do something like getting the lid off a container - or getting his gymini out from behind the couch which he's asked for a few times this month. Points at it and says "help". He also clearly grasps the concepts of hot and cold, particularly hot. There have been a number of occasions when he's put his hand on something and said "hot" - I'll say "I don't think XYZ is hot" - but I touch it, and sure enough, he's right! The other thing he's often right about is he'll look out the back sliding door and say "tat" (i.e. cat), there have been times when I haven't been able to see the animal, but if I look hard enough, one of them i s out there. Although more recently he's been saying it when he wants to go and find the cat too. He knows that his stuffed rabbit "hops", and also said "hop hop hop" to Mark while bringing him his Peter Cottontail book, where Peter hops down the bunny trail, hippity hop.
Toys and games: Taking items out of containers was this month's amusement. Clothes out of the drawer, cupboard, or laundry basket, pots out of the cabinet, toys out of the basket, pens out of the container I keep them in in the office... He enjoys pushing buttons on everything from his new fire truck to the TV to my cell phone.
Teeth: Well, after 4.5 months of no new teeth (longest since he was born), Ant cut five teeth in the last two weeks! His bottom left molar was felt by Ann (Mark's mom) on 9/13, I noticed the top and bottom on the right on 9/23, and then to my complete astonishment when I was at Kate's on Friday I saw that the top right eye tooth was through, with the top left close behind. That is also definitely through now, so I'm going to call that 9/30, although these are all plus/minus a few days. He has been surprisingly sanguine through the pain of getting FIVE teeth at once - definitely more emotionally fragile than usual, but otherwise not much difference. Sleeping and eating just fine. Thank goodness!!! (And yes, I DO know how lucky we are!!!)
Feeding: We switched over to whole milk pretty quickly. I gave Ant an ounce about a week before he turned one, and he threw up three times that day. So I was a little leery. But at his birthday party, he apparently drank 3oz of Sami's milk and was just fine, so I figured it was something else that caused the spitting up the previous time. So we switched completely to whole milk over the next week or so, using up the last of the formula in the process. He's also drinking totally out of a sippy cup except for his bedtime bottle, which I anticipate transitioning to a sippy cup very shortly. He really doesn't seem to mind the cups, so we might as well get rid of the bottle sooner than later.
Sleeping: Still about the same routine - bedtime around 7:15-7:30, am wakeup at 5:45-6 (although he'll usually doze / be happy in his crib by himself until about 6:45), two naps of either 40 min or 1h20min at 9:30 and 2:30. He has had a few days when he's only taken one nap though, and despite my hopes, that's usually not more than an hour long. Hoping he's not going to transition to that just yet, or when he does move to one nap that it gets longer!
Talking: I am absolutely amazed at the rate at which Ant is picking up words. He is definitely well on the precocious side with his verbalization skills! He added somewhere around 30 words this past month. On top of the 16 from the previous month - only high-chair and night-night didn't make much of a reappearance from those first 16. This months words were: balloon, cat (tat), cheese, camera (cac), cake, cord (caw), cup, cute, choo-choo, down, Donald Duck (Don Da), dirty, duck, eyes, Elmo, fish (hish), Freckles (hoc), gone, help, hop, hair, keys, more (mowah), Nicole (cole), off, prunes, shoes, squash, towel, and toast. Freckles is a little bear that came with a bedtime book, you feed Freckles his milk, take off his clothes, bath him, brush his teeth, put on pajamas, read a night time story and then put him to bed. I have *no* idea how one gets "Hoc" from Freckles, but that is clearly what Ant calls him. There are also abou t another 20 words that we heard but weren't sure of. He's clearly enamoured of words that begin with "c", he has twice as many of those as the next closest letters, which are H and D. We're starting to notice a few letter substitutions, but mostly he just skips the letters he can't say. One other thing I thought was funny - he doesn't really do the sign for milk anymore, so I was asking him the other day to say "milk". He kept saying "cup" (which is now how he asks for his milk at night). Me: say 'milk' Ant: cup Me: 'milk' Ant: cup... about three more times :-)
Movement: This month Ant figured out how to get up to standing from sitting in the middle of the floor. He also learned how to kick things this past weekend; spent a good long time kicking his stackable cups up and down the hallway. He really likes it when we "hop" while holding him. Giggles galore. He's also starting to learn how to get off a bed or chair - backwards and feet down. Still not good enough that we'd let him do it on his own, but he's starting to get the hang of turning around, and doing it without our prompting him.
Mental: Ant started balancing things on other things this month; his cup of juice on top of a bowl, his monitor on top of an old hard drive inside its case that Mark has up in the office. His understanding of concepts is phenomenal. He knows what it means when he asks for "help", and will do that when he's unable to do something like getting the lid off a container - or getting his gymini out from behind the couch which he's asked for a few times this month. Points at it and says "help". He also clearly grasps the concepts of hot and cold, particularly hot. There have been a number of occasions when he's put his hand on something and said "hot" - I'll say "I don't think XYZ is hot" - but I touch it, and sure enough, he's right! The other thing he's often right about is he'll look out the back sliding door and say "tat" (i.e. cat), there have been times when I haven't been able to see the animal, but if I look hard enough, one of them i s out there. Although more recently he's been saying it when he wants to go and find the cat too. He knows that his stuffed rabbit "hops", and also said "hop hop hop" to Mark while bringing him his Peter Cottontail book, where Peter hops down the bunny trail, hippity hop.
Toys and games: Taking items out of containers was this month's amusement. Clothes out of the drawer, cupboard, or laundry basket, pots out of the cabinet, toys out of the basket, pens out of the container I keep them in in the office... He enjoys pushing buttons on everything from his new fire truck to the TV to my cell phone.
Teeth: Well, after 4.5 months of no new teeth (longest since he was born), Ant cut five teeth in the last two weeks! His bottom left molar was felt by Ann (Mark's mom) on 9/13, I noticed the top and bottom on the right on 9/23, and then to my complete astonishment when I was at Kate's on Friday I saw that the top right eye tooth was through, with the top left close behind. That is also definitely through now, so I'm going to call that 9/30, although these are all plus/minus a few days. He has been surprisingly sanguine through the pain of getting FIVE teeth at once - definitely more emotionally fragile than usual, but otherwise not much difference. Sleeping and eating just fine. Thank goodness!!! (And yes, I DO know how lucky we are!!!)
Feeding: We switched over to whole milk pretty quickly. I gave Ant an ounce about a week before he turned one, and he threw up three times that day. So I was a little leery. But at his birthday party, he apparently drank 3oz of Sami's milk and was just fine, so I figured it was something else that caused the spitting up the previous time. So we switched completely to whole milk over the next week or so, using up the last of the formula in the process. He's also drinking totally out of a sippy cup except for his bedtime bottle, which I anticipate transitioning to a sippy cup very shortly. He really doesn't seem to mind the cups, so we might as well get rid of the bottle sooner than later.
Sleeping: Still about the same routine - bedtime around 7:15-7:30, am wakeup at 5:45-6 (although he'll usually doze / be happy in his crib by himself until about 6:45), two naps of either 40 min or 1h20min at 9:30 and 2:30. He has had a few days when he's only taken one nap though, and despite my hopes, that's usually not more than an hour long. Hoping he's not going to transition to that just yet, or when he does move to one nap that it gets longer!
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