Setri at 14 months

14mo:

Ok, for the most part this was written on my BlackBerry with the most recent stuff on top and the older stuff below, kind of like a newsfeed. This time I'm testing the email posting function :) Photos later.

Day before turning 15m, Gam and I wind up in a conversation about Setri, and I say, semi facetiously, "Setri knows his alphabet, don't you, Setri?", while Gam scoffs. "What letter does the word 'daddy' start with?", I ask.

I wasn't expecting an answer, but Setri immediately said 'Dee!'. Cue dropped jaws. Gam and I both being taken aback, Gam thought it was a fluke and I figured he was just regurgitating the results of the 'reading' we'd done together a couple of hours earlier when I'd arrived home (I was reading a magazine, Setri said he wanted me to read to him, and so I'd got through a few letters on the front cover before he lost interest. One of them was 'd for daddy'). I recovered quicker than Gam and said, still somewhat disbelieving, "See! I told you he knew his alphabet! Good boy, Setri! You are so clever!", then I scoffed at Gam and Setri chimed in with his derisive baby scoff.

A few minutes later we were changing his nappy and still marvelling over the whole dee thing. "It was just a fluke", Gam said. "Oh it was not," I replied. "Setri, what's another word that starts with D?". After a half-second's pause, Setri piped up 'Down!'. Cue even more amazement. That question was the reverse of what we'd asked him beforehand. It was still the same letter though. So I tried again. "Setri, what letter does the word 'bear' start with?". This time I cheated and prompted him: "Buh...buh...". "Bee!" shouted Setri. Fark. 10 minutes or so later I tried again. "Setri, can you tell me what letter the word 'boy' starts with?". No answer. I repeated the question. "Dee", offered Setri, sounding a bit unsure. Oh well. 4 out of 5 would be a reasonable score for a kindergarten kid, I told Gam. Certainly better than chance, right?

Despite Setri being seemingly so far ahead for his age, in other ways he is absolutely normal. In the last week and a bit he has been throwing soooo many tantrums. In addition, his enunciation of many words is still sometimes quite lazy, he still can't pronounce a lot of words because of his consonant deficit (especially p and t sounds... He will now generally say 'g' and 'z'/'zh' sounds). The other day Mum was contrasting Setri's tendency to have a go at words and make himself understood even with very imperfect pronunciation with my tendency as a baby to never say anything until I had practiced the hell out of it while (I thought) I was out of earshot and it was pretty much perfect. Can't have been true all of the time though, as I remember my parents and Uncle Richard telling me as a child that I used the word 'ersh' to refer to horses!

 Setri is still lazy about stringing 2 words together most of the time. For instance if he says 'more' and we ask him to say 'more, please' he will 9/10 times only say 'leez'. His motor skills, well, I don't know but I would say they are normal. He can pull his large duplo-style blocks apart and put them back together *some* of the time. He is quite good at opening screw-type lids (e.g. Mascara), and he clutches a pen or crayon in his fist to 'daw' with it.
His gross motor skills are probably quite a lot better. I have seen Setri stumble over something, lose footing for both his feet (both in the air) and recover his balance with apparent ease on several occasions.

 He does still fall over fairly often, particularly when running while carrying objects. He pretty much never cries. If he whimpers we ask him if he's 'had an ouchie' and he will ruefully rub the sore spot and say 'yeah'.

His "kkhhhkkkh" noise for kisses has evolved to a proper 'kishkish'. He has actually started asking for kisses again, too! Just as often, Gam or I will ask if we can give him one, however, and he will say 'no'. But if we then ask him to give us one he will say 'yeah' and quite happily plant one on us!

Singing! I nearly forgot about singing. Setri has always been quite good at indicating what song he wants us to sing, either through use of a sign (e.g. 'twinkle twinkle' or 'the lights on the bus flash on and off') or a word ('buh. rau-rau', for 'the wheels on the bus go round and round). If he wants me to repeat a song I have just made up and he can't say a word that associates well with the song he just asks for 'more lalala'. He sings 'baabaa' for 'baa baa black sheep'. Well, he came up with a new one the other day that I thought was exceptionally cute. Gam showed him for the first time a YouTube video called something like 'Happy Hippo and Stan sing The Lion Sleeps Tonight' which features an animated hippo singing 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' and a dancing animated dog. Setri loved it, and made clear he wanted more by singing a tuneful little 'Eeeeeeeeee. More'. He knows it's called 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight', and he is able to say 'lion', but I thought it was really cute that he asks for the song by singing that first little bit. He very frequently these days asks me to sing the Sesame Street-style song that takes a word and emphasises the first letter. I try and sing it more with letters/sounds Setri doesn't use very much. E.g. for the word 'packet', the song would go "Puh puh-puh-puh-puh -puh-puh-puh-paaack-et (repeats)... Packet is a word that starts with 'P'. Packet!". Nowadays I can barely say anything without Setri asking me to sing that song with whatever word it is that I've just come out with!

Going in the car with Setri is really pretty fun these days. He still calls it 'Lar'... sigh. But he makes 'brrrmbrrrm' noises and shouts 'Go!' whenever we stop at a red light. Then when we explain that the light is red and we have to wait until it turns green he says 'yeah' like he understands and waits a few seconds before shouting 'Go!' again, regardless of whether the light has changed or not.

A couple of days ago I lent him my BlackBerry so he could 'make a phone call' (he still loves to pretend), and I then needed it back briefly to press a button. Setri refused. 'No!' he said, clutching the phone to his chest and looking very sulky. 'Mine now!'. Hehe that reminds me, I have taught him the concept of 'me'. Say to Setri 'who is the cutest boy in the world?' and he grins the cutest grin and says 'Me!'. I don't mind if he's a bit up himself, I'd rather he had an inflated sense of his own awesomeness than wind up a shy perfectionist like me! He seems to get what I'm actually asking, as he mostly answers correctly to 'who'-type  questions where the answer might be 'daddy' or 'Feifei' rather than 'me'. I still find myself assuming he is just *saying* something some of the time, but time and time again he demonstrates quite complex understanding of things (more so in this 2nd half of 14months, I think), so more fool us.

Gets cross when I read Playboy and don't keep turning pages to the booooooobs.

Setri had gotten into a puzzling/frustrating habit over the last month or two of pointing at various objects that he didn't know the name of and garbling 'Uh-wuh. Uh-wuh' to indicate he wanted it. He would get quite frustrated when it drew a blank from us. Well we finally figured out what 'uh-wuh' means, and as usual it's us who are the fools, as it makes perfect sense. Uh-wuh = 'other one'.  What finally made me cotton on was when Setri wants to swap boobs during a feed he was pulling off and piping up 'uh-wuh', while reaching for the other boob. I twigged that I often ask if he wants the 'other one', and simply asked him if that's what he meant. 'Yeah', he said patiently, sounding somewhat relieved! So, it turns out that 'other one' also applies to things other than the objects he can name. Which is really not a bad way to use the term at all. One other downside is that when he asks for boob and I say no for whatever reason, he figures he has only asked for *one* of my boobs, so he will then ask for the 'uh-wuh'. Oh and when he has already had boob and I tell him "But Setri, you just had some boob a few minutes ago" (he often asks for boob during/after a tantrum), he will reply "More!".

Held out a yellow chopping board to me. I said "Setri, what colour is that chopping board?". "Booo", he said. I shook my head. "What other colour could it be?", I asked. "Yewwow", he replied. He correctly identified and pointed to a green peg without prompting a day or two ago, too (I haven't really bothered 'teaching' green except to point out when I put a green nappy on). [ETA: since then, 'gee' has become one of his default colours. He now randomly points out green objects and says 'gee', and will often reply 'gee!' if we ask 'What colour is that?'... even if it is blue.]

Playing piano, I became aware of Setri fingering the 'a' in the Roland badge stuck to the piano, saying 'Ay... Ay...'. He pointed to the 'a' again straight away when I told Gam about it and he came over to see if I was hallucinating. When I pulled out a book to see if he could reproduce his trick, he completely ignored me.

1 day later he did it again, this time pointing to a capital 'A' when asked, and another day later, pointed to the 'a' on the cover of his 'Beach Book' without hesitation when I asked. I still can't quite believe it, but it seems too reproducible to be a fluke- he hasn't got it wrong once. I asked mum if she had been trying to teach Setri to read and she said no, so we can only guess that perhaps he learned it from Sesame Street? Of course we haven't been trying ourselves, 14 months is too young, right? Looks like our stupid assumptions and low expectations might be the main thing holding our little monster back...


Has learned a new kind of joke. He is still very fond of the 'look at me doing something I know is naughty, am I going to get a reaction?'. But now he has added a new one to his repertoire: *pretending* to do something he knows he's not supposed to do in order to elicit a reaction. Background: Setri knows he's not supposed to eat paper, and these days he generally doesn't. When he does, he generally gets a reaction out of one of us. Mostly when he finds a little piece of paper on the floor he will pick it up, hold it in the air and say 'bin!', and either hand it over to one of us or toddle off to the bin to put it in, if we ask him to.

Last night, Setri found a small piece of paper. He picked it up between thumb and forefinger and waved it in the air for Gam, Mum and I to see. "Is that for the bin, Setri?", my mum asked. "No", said Setri, waving it around once more before bringing it to his mouth with a dramatic flourish and pretending to pop the paper in before dropping his hand by his side and licking and smacking his lips like he'd just eaten it. Because the piece of paper was so small we were nearly fooled, it was only because I was off to the side that I could see he was still clutching it! Because of our initial gasps and cries of 'don't eat it!', Setri continued his little performance with a broad and mischievous grin of satisfaction as he repeatedly brought the paper to his mouth, oh-so-nearly touched the paper to his tongue, made a big show of lip-smacking and then grinned, because by now he was getting positive attention for the fact he was playing a joke on us!

Can answer new kinds of questions. Last month he could answer yes and no questions, 'what-does-that-animal-say' questions and two-choice questions. Now he can answer more complex ones. E.g. 'Where are you going, Setri?' 'Out'. 'And where are you going when you go out, Setri?' 'Mark' (Park). 'What would you like to eat, Setri?'- 'Mai!' (Pie).

He is inconsistently making 'p' and 't' sounds, finally.

He is getting more and more enthusiastic about books. It's not uncommon to have to read the same book several times in a row, or to have to read 5 books without a break. He toddles over, clutching a book and earnestly says 'Boo. Boo'. No-one can refuse!

Has started not just making his toys 'dance dance' but also wave their paws and say 'hello' and 'goodbye'. The 'hello' is something I used to do ages ago, before Setri was really capable of playing with the toys himself. Imagine my surprise when I was sitting next to Setri while he pottered around with his 'Lambie' one day when all of a sudden he started fiddling with Lambie's 'hand' and muttering 'loh... loh...!'. "What's that, Setri?", I asked him. He turned Lambie to face me and started making a more deliberate waving motion with Lambie's fluffy limb. 'Loh', he said again, more emphatically. I still didn't get it, and thought he was trying to tell me that Lambie was doing a 'round round' sign, or something. I almost gave up, then Setri came out with a big frustrated 'el-LOH' and kept waving lambie's hand at me, and I finally got it! Since then, all his bears/lambs/bunnies all say 'loh' and 'bye'. He seems to have cottoned onto the semantic relationship between the two words, as he will quite often make one of the animals say 'loh', wait for one of us to respond, then wave the animal's paw again and say 'bye bye!'. He still won't say hello to most people though, and if I prompt him to he generally fixes the person with a scowl and says 'No!'. He will, however, say hello to cats and dogs... Sigh.  (ETA when we had Mum's side of the family over on the evening of Gam's birthday for his and Grandma's 30th and 95th respectively, Setri would not say hello or give kisses, as expected, but he did, surprisingly, take the bear he was given as a present by his Auntie Natty (Natalie) and get the bear to give everyone kisses when asked. And once again he was head over heels for Auntie Natty, it's quite amazing. He even willingly gave her hugs and kisses, and even tried to share his piece of garlic bread with her, which bemused her no end- we had to explain it was because he loved her).   


Can walk backwards competently, likes to do funny little hop-steps and dance around.

Has started insisting on being settled by Gam and no-one else. Whether it's at bedtime or waking in the middle of the night, he will call 'daddy' insistently until Gam takes him for a cuddle. If I offer 'mummy cuddles' he will say exasperatedly 'Mumma... *daddy*'. (ETA: a couple of weeks later he has grown out of this and now insists on 'Mumma' to go to sleep).

Pulled out potty from under sink and tried to sit on it, saying 'leeee'. Said 'yeah' when I asked him if he wanted to wee (this was obvious when I took off his nappy). After about 10-15 seconds of sitting on the potty he appeared to be uncomfortable and wanted to get up; I cajoled him into sitting another 15 or so but nothing happened and he was very insistent on getting up; he proceeded to wee on the bathmat, the second time this has happened. He seems to know exactly when he's going to wee, but when asked if he wants to do it in the potty he says 'no' almost every time.(ETA: Since then he has actually been pretty good, but he will wee in the shower in preference to the potty. I did get him to wee in the potty standing up once, but I managed to get wee on his pants, so since then I have just taken them off and let him do it in the shower. If we see him kind of grabbing at the front of his nappy we ask him if he needs to wee. The answer is invariably 'yeah'. Next question is 'would you like to do it in your potty/the shower', to which he will usually reply 'yeah' and we cart him off to the bathroom. When he says 'no', we ask 'do you want to do it in your nappy?' And he says 'yeah'! We really need a bribe that will work consistently. The problem with having a baby who doesn't always say yes to offers of chocolate or sweet things is that they can be very hard to bribe!).

 Poo is even worse. If we are in bed in the morning and he needs to poo, he will say 'poo', and confirm 'yeah' when I ask him if he needs to poo, which is good, but he will never agree to do it in the potty. Also, if we are in the kitchen or living room and he heads off for some private time and I ask if he needs to poo he will as often as not say 'no'. Same if he has done one and doesn't want to go to the bathroom for cleanup, he either ignores me or lies very insistently that he hasn't done one (this has been the case for months). I have asked him on a few occasions whether he is going to learn to do his poos in the potty and each time he looks very concerned and says an empahtic 'no!'.

Still has his keen sense of comic timing. Was putting him in car today after shopping, and told him after he was buckled in that we were about to 'Ready, steady, go'. 'Go!' shouted Setri. 'Shall we leave Mummy behind?', Gam asked. I was fervently hoping he'd say no, but a mischievous (some might say evil) grin curled at the corners of his little mouth and he said 'Yeah'. Out of the mouths of babes and all that, I sometimes hope he is just saying yeah or no to something he doesn't understand... But he followed this 'yeah' up a second later with 'Go!' and then his patented evil-baby-henchman scoff like he knew he'd said something Gam would find really funny.


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