Bradley Baby Party #3

Lest you think, "Wow, that Elliott is sure getting big; he must tower over his age-mates," here's a photo showing our small but usually scrappy boy with his first friends. He was asleep for the first half of the party. Then he alternated between very peppy and slightly clingy. He wasn't exactly in host "let me make you feel comfortable mode." That role was played by Samuel who has spent most of the last year in Tunis and, after a month Stateside, will be flying back over the pond, this time to settle in Syria. International travel sure has taught that kid how to have a good time!

Walkin' and Talkin'

John and I are so super in love with our son. He is a lot of fun and really changing every day now. He has started to use sign language meaningfully. He has asked for cheese by sign and verbally ("deez") and banana by sign and "nanana." Tonight I asked if he wanted more of dinner and he signed for cheese. John and I agreed that it was a good idea and just might help my bland dish. Elliott is also finally tapping his fingers together for "more." Many other kids have been doing this for months; it's so exciting for me to see Elliott do it, and to see him so happy with himself! After bath with John, Elliott apparently made the sign for milk, expecting that he'd come back downstairs and nurse one more time before bed. We have started having him nurse and have a snack after bath/before bed. One night we got things out of sequence unintentionally, and, when downstairs after bath (a while after dinner), Elliott climbed into his high chair as though expecting to eat. So we all ate coconut milk and almond cookies. That night he slept soundly from 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. He's never gone eight hours before. He fussed for just a minute about midnight but I was not in bed, and he put himself back to sleep. Thus we now conclude that it is indeed hunger that makes him wake and not easily fall back asleep, so we'll do post-bath snack for a while and see how that goes. He's also taken to climbing into his high chair in the morning even before I've got breakfast ready. The chair is on the floor because he stands up toward the end of his meal, so it's easy for him to just climb in and wait to be served. Right now I'm accommodating him and feeding him something right away while the eggs cook; it's so exciting that he's able to show what he wants!

And it's also exciting that he's walking. We had a few days of not walking much in public and just a bit at home. Now he'll walk in public fine and is doing a lot of walking at home. It's so weird to see him just saunter into the kitchen from around the corner. Well, actually, it's more like ambling or something; he still has that drunk staggering look. When he's really tired, his balance isn't great, but he always catches himself well with his arms or just by sitting backward. We went to Nordstrom for his first time trying on shoes, and I got him a pair of Pedipeds, a soft-soled shoe just a bit thicker than Robeez. When I was showing them to John, Elliott got pretty excited and was trying to put them on his feet. Then with them on he seemed to walk around the house more confidently. Maybe he's just excited not to have that elastic digging into his chubby ankles.

Elliott is interested in putting his little potty seat on the toilet. Sometimes we get lucky and sometimes it's just an exercise. But the fun thing the other day was, while I sat in front of him , he pointed at the flowers on my pajamas, which prompted me to do the baby sign for flowers - putting fingers to nose and sniffing. Then he did it and has repeated it other times since. He's been panting like a dog occasionally when he sees a dog for a week or two, but now he's more quickly imitating sounds like the sniffing, a brrrrrooo elephant sound, grrr bear sound... But his own language is still a lot of "takka takka takka" and "boulidibibib." He does say "mama" and "dada" for the two of us, but he also uses "da" or "ba" with a raised hand and pointed finger as his "Hey; that looks cool! Let's take a closer look!" And he still shrieks. His laugh has gotten deeper and funnier to hear, more like a "I crack myself up" undertone with accent notes of "damn, life is good" and "this is the **** (stuff)", finishing with "come on, you know I'm right."

There's something he's eating that he's not reacting well to physically, and I'm guessing it's tomatoes. He really loves the grape and cherry ones from our garden and from our local CSA share. But he's got mild circles under his eyes and some diaper rash that tells me to cut back. That's the only food of which we've dramatically increased his intake recently, except maybe peaches. I really hope it's not the goat cheese because I love that he knows the word and sign! When eating blueberries tonight, he looked at me expectantly as if waiting for me to show him the sign. I didn't know it and I didn't feel like interrupting the snack to check the online ASL dictionary, which I had done at breakfast to learn what "peach" was. It's pretty cool to just watch someone sign on a 5-second video.

Tomorrow (or today, as it's 1 a.m.) we're having all five of the other couples and babies from our Bradley childbirth class over. It will be our first time trying out the pool Grandma Marcy sent us in our own front yard, but I'm sure Elliott will love it. We went to Katie and Joey's toddler pool briefly on Friday and Elliott had a blast splashing around on two feet and didn't mind if he fell that the water was about at the level of his face when on hands and knees. He really takes to the water. And this is the Aries kid who chose not to be a Pisces.

Well, it's now a full hour into cousin Zach's birthday, so perhaps I should do a little yoga and go to bed.

Steps and teeth

I only have a short time but wanted to share a few photos and some info. More than three weeks ago, Elliott took his first five steps... and then freaked out about walking and got pretty clingy in general. In fact, he stopped even standing on his own for a little while (I noticed when it came back). Last Sunday we attended a party in a friend's back yard, at which he hauled off crawling toward the baby pool so fast we couldn't get his clothes off before he stepped one foot in. He had a great time. There were tons of babies his age and younger walking (plus older kids), and John accurately predicted that this would motivate Elliott to try biped life. Once we got home he took a few steps . The next morning he took a few to me after a library program, and now I would say he's walking for about 15% of his movement, maybe a little more. He still isn't totally stable, but I think his arms are so well developed that if he falls forward he easily transitions into crawling, and there's also the old fall-on-the-cushy-cloth-diaper trick. I laughed when I came into the living room to find him standing on these two yoga blocks.


We got a used toddler chair a while back and now he is really liking to climb into it and grab a book to look at. It's quite cute. Today he even fell a little getting out of the chair to grab a book on the floor but he kept right on going and climbed back without missing a beat.

He has 13 teeth now - the eight in front he's had forever, three of the four 1st-year molars (check out that big lower left molar in the photo!), and the top two eye teeth, though those haven't really dropped down much yet. He has been drooling a lot more and chewing on his fist, so I hope those last three (for now) are coming soon.

One of Elliott's favorite things to do is stand at the front door and bang on it. I thought his face smooshing into the glass was so funny I told John he had to come out the side door with the camera.

Elliott has taken to unorthodox eating positions. We put the high chair lower to the ground and allow some creative sitting as long as he seems to be interested in food. He had his first tomato from the garden and kept pointing intently to the plant and going "unh! unh!", so I gave him the other ripe one and even another that was a little on the orange side.

July

I notice I'm forgetting cute things if I don't write them down. I know I said over a week ago that Elliott started blowing me kisses before bed. A few days later, he even, upon request, blew some kisses at some nice women he was hanging out with during their al fresco dining experience in Shirlington. We were sitting on a bench waiting for carryout food when he was making eyes at one of them, who enticed him with "Quieres venir?" So John took him over and he sat in her lap for a while as she and her friends -- apparently women from several different Latin American countries -- fawned over him. So at the end, he was happy to blow some besos to them. Now he's really getting into the smacking aspect - no longer just the hand to mouth gesture but very much the sound effect.

We've got lots of very intricate babbling but still no words we recognize as English, French or Spanish (or German, for that matter, though the sound is closer). We've decided that, despite Elliott's fair complexion and red hair, he really is Slovenian. During the few seconds he managed to pound on my laptop the other day, he did a Google search for ZDUS, known in translation as the Slovenian Association for the Dramatic Arts. There's an alternate organization, Zveza društev upokojencev Slovenije, but I don't know what that is.

This week Elliott got to play with Mack, Courtney and Brian's son, who is just about the same size as Elliott now, but with lots more red hair. Elliott did not, despite Courtney's prediction, walk right up to Mack. In fact, he hasn't really taken any new steps since last I wrote. He seems a little freaked out by the idea. He still cruises with hardly any support and will walk holding only one hand, but if we set him down when he's not in the mood, his legs buckle and he goes down on his bum to wail.

Elliott has been pointing for a while, but now it seems more intentional. He appears to point at food that he wants and rewards us with a happy chuckle when we give it to him, and he often raises his right arm when he wants more. This morning I stayed in bed for a short while until Elliott pointed upstairs and said "Mama" a bunch of times. We left him with Karey for an hour to go to an appointment, and she said he pointed at the door and got a little sad every ten minutes or so.

On the food front, he's become a fan of tomatoes and is still liking watermelon and blueberries a whole lot. He's eating egg more and will try most anything. Tonight he happily sat in the chair munching snacking on baba ghanouj, chicken shwarma, tomato with mint dressing (and rice cake and apple from home) had a great time greeting people as they came into Lebanese Taverna. John asked, "What did we do to get you?" Elliott is a lot of fun. However, at home he's taken to standing up in his high chair. Even if we have him strapped in, he wriggles out and wants to turn around and look in the window. Or into the kitchen. Or at whatever is behind him, however we turn the chair around. So then we lower the chair to the floor and sometimes leave him in it and sometimes take him out to stand in front of the tray. Sometimes he'll be okay and stand and eat or play with something on the floor, but often he whines to be picked up; he wants to sit with us and pick off our plates. It's tough to know what to do. If we have mealtime just be over, he'll just want to nurse more. So we tend to keep letting him eat as long as - and wherever - he's interested, at least until we're done eating, but we might come to regret that.

We had our first paddling experience on the Potomac this week. A woman I know from one of my email lists owns a canoe and kayak and has all the gear for adults and kids. So Elliott and I drove out to meet her and her two kids and another couple and their 20-month-old. We tried Elliott in the front of the canoe with me while the other woman steered and her 4-year-old sat in the middle. Elliott was fine for the first few minutes but then freaked out. I took off my vest so that I could nurse him. Then he was happy to just stand there, attached, as I paddled. We stayed away from the shore.

Later he had a great time hanging out on the grass as we all had a picnic. Then he had even more fun frolicking in the water, sitting and playing with a yogurt tub and watching a dog play fetch by swimming out to retrieve a tennis ball. Water is a big hit, and I think we should get a little pool. Tonight after dinner he pointed to the fountain at Pentagon Row. Once we got there and watched it, he seemed disappointed that I couldn't hold him out to stick his hand in the water like we did in Shirlington. I got a nice photo of that on my phone, but before I got a chance to transfer the file, Elliott did some chewing and I think fried the phone. He's got three of his molars in (so that's eleven teeth total), and one of the eye teeth is about to break, too. Should you be curious about when teeth usually make their entrance, here's a link to Web MD: http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/dental-health-your-childs-teeth

Finally, Elliott's other favorite thing these days is putting tops on things - bottles, jars, etc. He gets mad if they are screwed on too tight for him to lift off. He's started to mimic screwing them on but hasn't really figured that out yet. One fun but a little scary mimic was when he tried to gently stick a q-tip in my ear. I really think he thought he was helping.

Throwing and rolling balls have become easier and more fun for Elliott. He is also enjoying climbing playgrounds and going down slides. He's pretty good at climbing up the slide for someone who can't walk. He's gotten strong enough to open the drawer on our coffee table, so we had a whole new explosion of random stuff littering our living room floor this week. He enjoys putting an electronic phone from Grandpa Jim in this drawer. The freaky thing is that every time we turn on the TV (which sits atop this coffee table), the phone chirps, "It's A-B-C time!" or "Goodbye!" We have no idea how these appliances are communicating.

It often sounds like Elliott's attempts to communicate are more for the benefit of dogs than humans. His barks do really sound canine, and they tend to come more emphatically when he sees dogs, so the imitation is not lost on anyone.

Well, Blogger seems to be crashing when I try to add photos, so I'll pause here for now.