December Recap
Happy New Year!
Elliott has changed so much in his language and cognition since last I wrote a full update. We are at the stage now when we really marvel at what he remembers, what he notices, and what he just plain knows.
A few weeks ago we realized that he finally knew his name. He had responded with “Eh-it” when asked his name on occasion, but he was not using a name to refer to himself. I used to ask Elliott if I could finish his food if it looked like he wasn’t going to eat it and I really didn’t want to toss it out. But he started getting upset when I did this, trying to reach into my mouth and saying what I thought was “eat.” Then one day we were playing with the harmonica. Elliott still didn’t understand exactly how to work it, and we were all taking turns. He would hold it out to John and say, “Dada?” and me, with a “Mama?” Then when he wanted a turn, he pointed to himself and said, “Eht!” In the space of 10 minutes, we watched him go from not understanding an instrument to totally mastering it – playing on the suck and the blow, knowing which side worked, wiping it off on his shirt when too much spit accumulated – and we also came to understand that our son understands who he is.
After this, we started using his newfound possessiveness to get him to eat more food. If Elliott asks to get out of his chair (or starts getting out himself), we ask if we can finish his food. If he really doesn’t like or want the item, he’ll say “yeah” and “mama” or “dada,” even holding it out to us. But more often he says, “No, Eht” and eats the morsel greedily. Though we don’t play “this many bite” games and generally respect Elliott’s ability to manage his own food intake, if he’s not full it affects us because he’ll wake more in the night and be even more of a nursing fiend than he is. Plus, he’s a little dude – 25th % in weight, 10th% in height – so we like to pack it in.
Fyi, for the foodies (and for future reference when Elliott’s tastes will no doubt change): He still loves vegetables – broccoli, peas, beans, carrot, celery, kale and cauliflower cooked in olive oil in the oven, potato, beet, tomato, pepper, zucchini. He will eat sweet potato in the form of fries cooked in coconut oil (which he helped prepare on Christmas Day), but he still won’t eat it baked/mushy, nor does he like squash. He likes eggs and usually whatever meat we give him. He now knows to ask for “coco,” which means coconut milk, usually with dried blueberries or banana, maybe some leftover rice or cereal (though we’re trying to cut back on that) and nuts. This is often his before-bed snack. Daytime snacks still include apples, rice cake or cracker with nut butter or hummus. At our New Years Eve dinner at a new Vietnamese restaurant, Elliott enjoyed pho (beef soup) and rice noodles and some of my spicy yellow curried vegetables. We realized after the fact that the curry had peanut, which we had not yet given him (but it was only of the only things they said did not have wheat flour, so that’s why I got it). He was a little whiny in the night and had some circles under his eyes today, so I will hold back on future peanut just to be safe.
Lately Elliott has taken a real delight in sushi, and he can say the word pretty well! After we’d had a studio photo shoot to document his crazy fun looks, he even ate a bunch of the little salad at Sushi-Zen, munching happily off of the chopsticks. At least two strangers commented on how much he ate, and at school they are always saying he eats well. So even though our home meals look a little crazy, he seems to be doing fine. We did finally get him a booster seat, and he seems to be enjoying sitting at the table with us. He loves his farm scene placemat, naming “tractor,” a variety of animals, and, pointing to the navel of the woman carrying a bunch of eggs in a sling, “be-bo” (belly button).
Back to the language: it seems like he picks up multiple new words every day. I keep being surprised that he called something by its name. When John put a bottle of sparkling soda in our basket at the grocery store, Elliott said “bucha,” thinking it was the fermented drink, Kombucha (which he enjoys small sips of watered-down). He’s really enjoying books these days and picks up new words sometimes just on one read-through. I would say that trains and babies are the most sought-after images in our house. He likes lots of books, but the “choo-choo train” books and the books featuring “bee-bees” are always hits, as is the computer (“pewa”) which he knows has photos of his new cousin Georgia. If we bring up her web page, he literally gasps. He is starting to put words together, like “Read book,” and, if I don’t get it right away, “P(l)ease” (that word he still signs along with saying, as he often does the “more.”) “More melo(n). Please.” (Yes, I know watermelon is not in season and it probably came from far away. But when your son is for the first time pushing around a mini “customer in training” shopping cart on New Year’s Eve and puts a container of watermelon into it, you go with it. Or at least I did. Now, the random bags of chips? We returned those when he wasn’t looking.)
Elliott delights in saying thank you when he’s given something he asked for. It’s really sweet, especially when he says, “dat you, Mama.” [I have been surprised that in the past few days, he has started trying to call me Mommy. It’s as though he’s just finding the “me” in his repertoire. I didn’t realize I referred to myself as mommy so much more than mama, which I actually prefer. Occasionally he calls John “Don.”] When Elliott is less polite is when he thinks an opportunity is being withheld from him. I go to the bathroom and he starts dragging out his seat that goes on the potty, shouting “Eht turn! Eht turn!” When we do the “can I eat it?” procedure, he gets wide-eyed. “No. Eht turn.” (gobble gobble)
After we saw Elliott enjoying the harmonica so much, we got out the flutophone and recorder I’d purchased a while back. He’s having a blast tooting on them. Somehow he can create polyphony with creative embouchure. But when he’s stuck as a one-note wonder, sometime I come by to cover the thumb hole and play a few other notes, which gives him a smile. Eventually I’ll get something out to learn how to actually play the instrument myself, but for now we just want him to have fun with sound. We also got him some finger symbols and a triangle, which have gotten good play in the past few days.
We spend a lot more time coloring with pencils and crayons these days. He’s also into putting stickers on paper, and we had fun with some paints a few weeks ago, too. We are finally at the stage where Elliott takes delight in helping to clear his dishes and/or bring them to me, to help unload the dishwasher, and my personal favorite (not really), to wash dishes in the sink. He loves the water if I let him stand on a step-stool.
When we’re not in the house, Elliott enjoys playing in his little coupe car (multi-generation hand-me-down from a neighbor), which he can now stop and turn pretty well with his feet, even going down the hill next to our house (with me holding on, but not as much as I had to a few weeks ago). He also likes helping his father rake the yard and dribbling a soccer ball with his mom. He asked for a tomato when I finally took down the wire stabilizer cone (and the dead stalk inside it). There is also a special fondness in his heart for the front seat of our real Honda. He loves to sit there and listen to music. On Christmas Day we got the whole car cleaned out and vacuumed with him there! I try not to let him bully me into hanging out there when we’re in a parking lot somewhere, but in the driveway while Daddy rakes, it’s a good spot.
One of the more embarrassing interests Elliott has is trying any toiletry item he can get his hands on – putting lotion on his face, putting deodorant on his shirt. We try to keep things out of reach, but it’s a tiny bathroom, and he’s getting taller (one would hope!) At least nothing has harsh chemicals. We do keep the bathroom door closed if we let him sit upstairs on his own for a few minutes in his room (the blue room where his stuff is; he still sleeps on the futon next to our bed in our room). He loves looking through books on the floor or in his toddler chair, playing his CD player and watching the FP aquarium that we took off the crib we lent out to a friend. He can sing along with the whole Brahms lullaby, and he sings to a lot of other tunes, as well. It especially cracks us up when he does the tonal and rhythm patterns from Music Together, either with the CD or with us improvising. And though we don’t sing it enough for him to really have it down, he certainly knows the tune for “Twinkle, Twinkle” and sings what he can whether it’s that or the ABC song version.
Socially, Elliott is starting to move into interactive play rather than just parallel. He likes to hand people toys, which was great to see when we visited with Mack, Courtney son, on Christmas Eve, and Joey, Katie’s son, on Christmas Day. Outside of one or two moments that required hand-prying, he mostly just went with the flow and chose generosity, which is so great to see after our biting and grabbing episodes a while back. I had fun reading books with Elliott and Joey, and they again gave each other such lovely hugs and kisses. Toward the end of our visit with Mack, whom Elliott has only seen three other times in person, Elliott actually used his name to say, “Hiya, Mack.”
Elliott definitely is a man with opinions. He’s very clear about what book he does or does not want to read, whether it’s calling it by some kind of name, or pointing, or simply bringing the book and putting it in our hand. “Read.” He carries out directions quite well – at least two-step directions and probably more. It’s so cool to realize how much he understands.
Well, that’s a big dump of info not well organized, but at least it’s down before more new things happen and I forget.
A few weeks ago we realized that he finally knew his name. He had responded with “Eh-it” when asked his name on occasion, but he was not using a name to refer to himself. I used to ask Elliott if I could finish his food if it looked like he wasn’t going to eat it and I really didn’t want to toss it out. But he started getting upset when I did this, trying to reach into my mouth and saying what I thought was “eat.” Then one day we were playing with the harmonica. Elliott still didn’t understand exactly how to work it, and we were all taking turns. He would hold it out to John and say, “Dada?” and me, with a “Mama?” Then when he wanted a turn, he pointed to himself and said, “Eht!” In the space of 10 minutes, we watched him go from not understanding an instrument to totally mastering it – playing on the suck and the blow, knowing which side worked, wiping it off on his shirt when too much spit accumulated – and we also came to understand that our son understands who he is.
After this, we started using his newfound possessiveness to get him to eat more food. If Elliott asks to get out of his chair (or starts getting out himself), we ask if we can finish his food. If he really doesn’t like or want the item, he’ll say “yeah” and “mama” or “dada,” even holding it out to us. But more often he says, “No, Eht” and eats the morsel greedily. Though we don’t play “this many bite” games and generally respect Elliott’s ability to manage his own food intake, if he’s not full it affects us because he’ll wake more in the night and be even more of a nursing fiend than he is. Plus, he’s a little dude – 25th % in weight, 10th% in height – so we like to pack it in.
Fyi, for the foodies (and for future reference when Elliott’s tastes will no doubt change): He still loves vegetables – broccoli, peas, beans, carrot, celery, kale and cauliflower cooked in olive oil in the oven, potato, beet, tomato, pepper, zucchini. He will eat sweet potato in the form of fries cooked in coconut oil (which he helped prepare on Christmas Day), but he still won’t eat it baked/mushy, nor does he like squash. He likes eggs and usually whatever meat we give him. He now knows to ask for “coco,” which means coconut milk, usually with dried blueberries or banana, maybe some leftover rice or cereal (though we’re trying to cut back on that) and nuts. This is often his before-bed snack. Daytime snacks still include apples, rice cake or cracker with nut butter or hummus. At our New Years Eve dinner at a new Vietnamese restaurant, Elliott enjoyed pho (beef soup) and rice noodles and some of my spicy yellow curried vegetables. We realized after the fact that the curry had peanut, which we had not yet given him (but it was only of the only things they said did not have wheat flour, so that’s why I got it). He was a little whiny in the night and had some circles under his eyes today, so I will hold back on future peanut just to be safe.
Lately Elliott has taken a real delight in sushi, and he can say the word pretty well! After we’d had a studio photo shoot to document his crazy fun looks, he even ate a bunch of the little salad at Sushi-Zen, munching happily off of the chopsticks. At least two strangers commented on how much he ate, and at school they are always saying he eats well. So even though our home meals look a little crazy, he seems to be doing fine. We did finally get him a booster seat, and he seems to be enjoying sitting at the table with us. He loves his farm scene placemat, naming “tractor,” a variety of animals, and, pointing to the navel of the woman carrying a bunch of eggs in a sling, “be-bo” (belly button).
Back to the language: it seems like he picks up multiple new words every day. I keep being surprised that he called something by its name. When John put a bottle of sparkling soda in our basket at the grocery store, Elliott said “bucha,” thinking it was the fermented drink, Kombucha (which he enjoys small sips of watered-down). He’s really enjoying books these days and picks up new words sometimes just on one read-through. I would say that trains and babies are the most sought-after images in our house. He likes lots of books, but the “choo-choo train” books and the books featuring “bee-bees” are always hits, as is the computer (“pewa”) which he knows has photos of his new cousin Georgia. If we bring up her web page, he literally gasps. He is starting to put words together, like “Read book,” and, if I don’t get it right away, “P(l)ease” (that word he still signs along with saying, as he often does the “more.”) “More melo(n). Please.” (Yes, I know watermelon is not in season and it probably came from far away. But when your son is for the first time pushing around a mini “customer in training” shopping cart on New Year’s Eve and puts a container of watermelon into it, you go with it. Or at least I did. Now, the random bags of chips? We returned those when he wasn’t looking.)
Elliott delights in saying thank you when he’s given something he asked for. It’s really sweet, especially when he says, “dat you, Mama.” [I have been surprised that in the past few days, he has started trying to call me Mommy. It’s as though he’s just finding the “me” in his repertoire. I didn’t realize I referred to myself as mommy so much more than mama, which I actually prefer. Occasionally he calls John “Don.”] When Elliott is less polite is when he thinks an opportunity is being withheld from him. I go to the bathroom and he starts dragging out his seat that goes on the potty, shouting “Eht turn! Eht turn!” When we do the “can I eat it?” procedure, he gets wide-eyed. “No. Eht turn.” (gobble gobble)
After we saw Elliott enjoying the harmonica so much, we got out the flutophone and recorder I’d purchased a while back. He’s having a blast tooting on them. Somehow he can create polyphony with creative embouchure. But when he’s stuck as a one-note wonder, sometime I come by to cover the thumb hole and play a few other notes, which gives him a smile. Eventually I’ll get something out to learn how to actually play the instrument myself, but for now we just want him to have fun with sound. We also got him some finger symbols and a triangle, which have gotten good play in the past few days.
We spend a lot more time coloring with pencils and crayons these days. He’s also into putting stickers on paper, and we had fun with some paints a few weeks ago, too. We are finally at the stage where Elliott takes delight in helping to clear his dishes and/or bring them to me, to help unload the dishwasher, and my personal favorite (not really), to wash dishes in the sink. He loves the water if I let him stand on a step-stool.
When we’re not in the house, Elliott enjoys playing in his little coupe car (multi-generation hand-me-down from a neighbor), which he can now stop and turn pretty well with his feet, even going down the hill next to our house (with me holding on, but not as much as I had to a few weeks ago). He also likes helping his father rake the yard and dribbling a soccer ball with his mom. He asked for a tomato when I finally took down the wire stabilizer cone (and the dead stalk inside it). There is also a special fondness in his heart for the front seat of our real Honda. He loves to sit there and listen to music. On Christmas Day we got the whole car cleaned out and vacuumed with him there! I try not to let him bully me into hanging out there when we’re in a parking lot somewhere, but in the driveway while Daddy rakes, it’s a good spot.
One of the more embarrassing interests Elliott has is trying any toiletry item he can get his hands on – putting lotion on his face, putting deodorant on his shirt. We try to keep things out of reach, but it’s a tiny bathroom, and he’s getting taller (one would hope!) At least nothing has harsh chemicals. We do keep the bathroom door closed if we let him sit upstairs on his own for a few minutes in his room (the blue room where his stuff is; he still sleeps on the futon next to our bed in our room). He loves looking through books on the floor or in his toddler chair, playing his CD player and watching the FP aquarium that we took off the crib we lent out to a friend. He can sing along with the whole Brahms lullaby, and he sings to a lot of other tunes, as well. It especially cracks us up when he does the tonal and rhythm patterns from Music Together, either with the CD or with us improvising. And though we don’t sing it enough for him to really have it down, he certainly knows the tune for “Twinkle, Twinkle” and sings what he can whether it’s that or the ABC song version.
Socially, Elliott is starting to move into interactive play rather than just parallel. He likes to hand people toys, which was great to see when we visited with Mack, Courtney son, on Christmas Eve, and Joey, Katie’s son, on Christmas Day. Outside of one or two moments that required hand-prying, he mostly just went with the flow and chose generosity, which is so great to see after our biting and grabbing episodes a while back. I had fun reading books with Elliott and Joey, and they again gave each other such lovely hugs and kisses. Toward the end of our visit with Mack, whom Elliott has only seen three other times in person, Elliott actually used his name to say, “Hiya, Mack.”
Elliott definitely is a man with opinions. He’s very clear about what book he does or does not want to read, whether it’s calling it by some kind of name, or pointing, or simply bringing the book and putting it in our hand. “Read.” He carries out directions quite well – at least two-step directions and probably more. It’s so cool to realize how much he understands.
Well, that’s a big dump of info not well organized, but at least it’s down before more new things happen and I forget.
posted by Jessica at 10:16 PM
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