Setri at 12 months

Physical:

Not sure how tall he is now, but he must be growing, because he's able to reach things he previously wasn't able to reach. ~12kg.

Now walks about 90% of the time, reverting to crawling when he falls over or gets excited and wants to go very fast (e.g. chasing a cat). He seems to crawl a bit more when tired.



Communication:

He can do even more things on command, including 'throw a tanty', as I discovered after trying to get a photo of him having a tantrum one morning: if not on a nice soft surface like the bed he carefully prostrates himself so as not to bang his head. When I tried to take a photo, the tantrum turned out to be a tokenistic one only a few seconds long, so I said to Setri 'could you throw another tanty for the camera?' And he did it!

Is still expanding his vocabulary, putting more combinations of two words together. He's started occasionally using 'r' sounds, and sometimes says 'rau rau' instead of 'lau lau'. He can say 'ruhruh' for 'run run' (but he can't actually run, yet). Loves naming things and also describing what he's doing. E.g. he might sit on the ground with a bottle or other cylindrical object, and roll it around, saying "roll, roll". Plus his long-established habit of saying 'down' when he plans to get down from somewhere has provided us on many occasions with a crucial few seconds' warning w which to save him from danger. This month he figured out how to make himself go 'round round' by sitting and using his feet to propel himself around, pivoting on his bum, and also how to turn in a circle while standing up (saying "lau lau lau!" with a big, proud grin on his face as he does it).

Another example of communication with Setri at this age: today (29/04) he asked Gam for the kitchen tongs, by gesturing and saying 'rollo' (to get Gam looking in the right direction, as the tongs hang next to the rolling pin), then saying 'no' and pointing to the tongs (which he couldn't say the name for) when Gam asked him if he wanted the rolling pin. A couple of minutes later, I saw Setri signing 'finished' at me, and asked if he was finished with the tongs (we have been working, very successfully, on getting him to hand objects to us when he is finished w them rather than just dropping them on the floor). "Yeah" said Setri, handing me the tongs then following it up with "Buh". "Do you want a brush?", I asked him. "Yeah", he replied. So I got him a silicone pastry brush to play with. He has enough words (and other sounds that we know the meaning of) now that he is nearly always able to communicate what he wants, rather than just pointing or waiting for us to offer him X or Y and then tell us yes or no. It's very handy.

One word of interest in Setri's language development is the word 'sneeze'. Setri's word for sneeze is 'neh', something he just started saying one day when someone sneezed (instead of whimpering in fear or outright bursting into tears). He also has a toy, given to him at 8 weeks of age by his Auntie Cil and Uncle Richard, a garishly coloured dragon named 'Sneezy the Activity Dragon'. Some time in the last month or so, Setri started calling Sneezy 'nehneh'! In the last couple of weeks, 'neh' has evolved to sound like 'nee'. Other times, however, he seems to go a bit backwards with his pronunciation. For a little while it was hard to tell if he was saying 'flower' or 'round' because he would consistently drop the 'uh' off 'lau-uh', and instead say 'lau'.


Sleep:

Sleep has been horrible, awful, terrible. Not so much for him, but us, particularly the time he was sick. He yells and thrashes in the early 'am and is hard to settle. Sometimes he actually wakes up, and demands we do too, but mostly it's him yelling and thrashing while being soundly asleep. Then around 5am he has started demanding to get up (saying 'Up!' And sometimes 'out!'). He talks in his sleep quite a lot, which can be funny, and he also signs in his sleep, which is even funnier. The sad thing is, we had a couple (3, to be precise) of really good nights, including 2 in a row. I got quite hopeful that things were changing with the 2 in a row.