Setri at 11 months

I guess we've really just carried on full bore from last month. Setri still isn't walking, but he's more confident walking while holding onto an adult's hand with only one of his hands, and he is taking steps... usually while distracted (i.e. trying to steal something), or if we sneakily move out of his reach when he is standing unsupported he will walk a few steps to get to us. If we leave him standing up, move just out of reach and then alert him that we have moved and encourage him to walk to us, however, he will burst into tears because he thinks he can't do it.

UPDATE 06/04/2011: he started walking today, just like that. My second day back at work. Mum told us when we got home that Setri had taken 2 or 3 steps, and I didn't think anything of it because he'd done it before, but about 5 minutes later Setri was up and walking- proper walking! I bribed him with chocolate to walk across the room to me, but he was obviously enjoying showing off, because the next time I offered him chocolate to walk he walked and forgot to take the chocolate, then refused when I offered it to him later! UPDATE 08/04/2011: Having got that out of the way, Setri didn't walk at all yesterday (adamantly saying 'no!' whenever we suggested it), and then did only a little bit of walking today. It's pretty obvious that he prefers crawling still.

Setri's speaking has come along at an amazing rate, unlike his walking. He answers most yes and no questions (he says 'yeah', though, never 'yes'), rather than just saying 'no no no' when he doesn't like something. He does sometimes say an uncertain 'yeah' when he doesn't actually understand something. He sometimes refers to things with a possessive 'my' (e.g. "mah bowl"). He routinely strings two words together. Usually 'more' paired with whatever it is that he wants, or a demand along the lines of "Daddy: up!", or "Wan' lawnmower". I'm not sure how big his vocabulary is, but I'm going to attempt to document how many words he can say (and others that he thinks he can say but are only a couple of relevant syllables of the word he's trying to make) just out of interest and also for Gam's parents. I'm guessing about 50, about 15-20 of which would probably be intelligible to someone other than Gam, my mum or me. Gam's guess is higher, but I suppose we'll see once I actually write it all down.

Setri has actually started dictating to us the words he wants us to be using when we sing his favourite song (Wheels on the Bus). In the car just over a week ago, for example, we were singing 'Wheels on the car' to distract him when he was a bit whingy. Setri interrupted mid-way through the song to instruct us: "No. Buh. Lau lau." Surprised that he had interrupted his favourite song, we clarified: "Do you want us to sing wheels on the bus, Setri?". "Yeah", he replied. Since then he has stopped us singing about various things to tell us that he wants the lyrics about the 'og' (frog), or the 'bubba' (his word for 'baby'). I knew that sort of thing was coming, but I thought it was quite a way off! He is actually a fairly bossy little man, to the point where we (probably me more than Gam) have to be careful not to be so impressed by his language abilities that we let him dictate what he gets to do when we have other plans for him! The advantage is, of course, that he hardly ever throws frustrated tantrums... just tantrums where he has said 'no' to something where he has clearly outlined his wishes (e.g. wanting to go 'out' because he has heard or seen someone going out the door, or said 'no' to a nappy change).

Now, thanks to his Farm book he frequently says 'lawnmower' instead of just 'mower'. Whenever he hears a mower, whippersnipper or chainsaw or similar, he says 'mower'. When he hears a dog bark, he says 'dog', even though he can't see a dog.

He still makes really good attempts at words that he has almost no chance of pronouncing correctly. 'Uh-mah-mo' for 'tomato' comes to mind. Unbelievable as it seems, he can say 'eyelashes' so well it would probably be understood by the average person- it comes out as 'eyelath'. I don't think he knows he himself has any, but he reaches out and strokes my eyelashes very gently with one finger, and sometimes does the same to Gam. 'Glasses' is another one- he says '-lah-thir' while reaching for them with his smeary little hands... Lately he seems to have relapsed into saying something that sounds more like 'lah-le' for glasses though. Thankfully the context helps differentiate this from mention of his favourite food, lasagne, which he initially called 'lala'... it seems to be morphing into something closer to the actual word now though.

His consonant drought is starting to produce some predictable confusion. Tonight, while saying goodnight to Gam and my mum, Setri started saying what sounded like 'lau lau', his attempt at 'round and round'. Unable to spot what might be going 'round and round', we asked him what it was. "LAU-uh!", came his slightly exasperated reply, pointing at the chinese painting of a flower above the kitchen doorway. In a similar vein he says 'buh' for bus, 'far-buh' for 'farm buggy' (see below... sigh)  and 'buh' for button ('bah-buh' for belly button)', with the context thankfully always dissimilar enough that we can tell just what it is he's referring to. He's sticking consonants on the ends of a few words now though- 'duck' (stuck) was one of the first (last month), and this month he can say 'burp' (he says it with a big, proud, mischievous grin). I think there's something else he's sticking a 'k' sound on the end of, but I forget. 'Up' is still pronounced 'uh'. 'Bear' is pronounced 'bar'.

Interestingly, he stopped saying 'yay-yay' to refer to Feifei a while back, instead switching to something that sounded a lot wider of the mark: 'var-var'... it seems like he was trying to work on producing the 'f' sound (very similar to 'v'), and he now calls Feifei something that sounds more like 'vfeh-vfeh'. He has also started calling Xiaoxiao the same thing. His default animal, however, is the dog. If he sees a new animal on TV, he will point and say 'Dog! Dogdog!'.

Because of his love for his Farm book (not animals, nor crops, solely pictures of farm equipment), Setri is picking up some pretty obscure words for an Farm 11-month-old. 'Digdig' (digger) isn't the most useful word, and nor is 'lawnmower', though he sees plenty of those around and loves to point them out. In fact it's gotten so that if he hears a lawnmower he starts saying 'Mower. Lawnmower' very insistently, wanting to be taken outside to see it. He isn't yet able to say 'tractor', but I'd bet he could identify one.

Hard to believe, but one of Setri's cute little words has actually gotten annoyingly overused. 'Duck' (stuck) is no longer restricted to him being in a precarious or dangerous position that he can't get out of. First he extrapolated it to mean that something was definitively out of his reach (like if a ball rolled under the couch). I thought that was clever. But now... 'Duck' is when he's on the change table and doesn't want to be. 'Duck' is when something is just out of reach and he has made a really half-arsed attempt to get it. 'Duck' is when one of us is carrying him and we haven't put him down fast enough for his liking... You get the picture. It's so bad that this afternoon he was playing with a drawer after I had already stopped him; I was right next to him, with my head turned away, chatting with Gam, when Setri started saying 'duck!' over and over. I am so used to it I actually kept talking for a few seconds as Setri's utterances of 'duck!' became more and more insistent, and when I finally looked around we saw he had shut his fingers in the drawer! Nothing particularly painful, thankfully (no tears), but I did make a mental note to tell Setri the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf as soon as he's old enough to understand it!



Sleep:

Was/is pretty ok now. Finally he was having two one-hour naps per day, but now all of a sudden it seems like he really only needs one. We're still co-sleeping with him, but I think he would rather have his own bed (i.e. he would like to kick us out of ours). I picked a bad time to write this post, as we had a night from hell last night (Setri was fine- he just yells and thrashes in his sleep without actually waking up, meaning he is generally bright and cheery the following day). He was having 2 one-hour naps per day but now seems to have dropped back to mostly having a single one hour nap, and possibly a shorter nap of about a half-hour or so.



Feeding:

Boob still comes a distant second to food, and for the first time a feed of breast milk is noticeably not enough to satisfy Setri's hunger- if he hasn't eaten I can give him a feed and he will subsequently ask for food. He's not at all fussy, but he also won't reliably eat any one food... except maybe lasagne. And when I say any one food, that includes chocolate, donuts, and all sorts of delicious things that kids are supposed to want to devour in great volumes. He will as often as not say 'no' in response to an offer of something yummy that Gam or I are eating, or stop after just one bite. So one day Setri might really enjoy sweet potato, and the next day he will say no when it's offered. Sometimes it's a real guessing game, but I guess adults are the same- it's not like I get the same thing out of the fridge or cupboard for lunch every day.




Sharing:

Setri can now 'give' an item without immediately wanting to take it back. He has also taken to occasionally offering his food to me.



Play:

All Setri's bears dance. He grabs them, shakes them around while saying 'dah dah' (the word for dance he has been saying since he was 6mo, still no closer to the real word!).



Empathy:

I don't think kids Setri's age have developed empathy, as such, but there is something starting to show there... we had some little incident where Gam and I were mucking around on the bed with Setri and Gam accidentally banged my hand or something fairly unmemorable that caused me to say ow and stop playing. Gam jokingly started insisting it was all my fault, and Setri got quite upset at this and crawled over to give me a cuddle and pats. It was very cute, very endearing.


Toilet training:

Hasn't progressed at all, as I've been holding off trying anything until Setri can actually get on and off the potty by himself. He does generally try and wait in the shower after I get out if he needs to wee, which I encourage, and can tell me 'more' if I ask if he has finished his wee and there is actually more to come... although alarmingly he has told me there is 'more' once or twice, strained a little and produced not wee but a fart- hopefully there is never anything more than a fart!

Yesterday, Setri was able to name the computer mouse for the first time. 'Mau' (pronounced like 'mouse' but without the 's' sound). My computer mouse has a wheel, and wheels are a great favourite of Setri's. So he spent time, as he usually does, making the wheel go round-round ('lau, lau'). He has also taken to spinning me around on my chair while saying 'lau, lau'

This morning, trying for a change from his favourite 'farm' book (equipment, not animals, with pictures of tractors, lawnmower, combine harvester etc etc), I brought out his 'animal' book. When we happened upon the picture of a mouse and I said 'mouse', Setri knowingly said 'lau, lau', and made a circular motion with his hand... Not really sure how to explain things like that...

Setri at 10 months

This was the month Setri ate his first ever chocolate biscuit!

What a month!

Maybe 8 and 9 months seemed to pass with Setri developing at a leisurely pace. He didn't grow much, he didn't really hit any major milestones. I kind of stopped worrying that he was growing and developing too fast for me to properly enjoy and appreciate every minute. It seemed like Setri was going to stop and be a baby for a while, if that makes sense.

Well, in the 9 month post I mentioned that Setri seemed to have voluntarily/intentionally stood up by himself (albeit briefly) for the first time, just a few days before hitting the 10 month mark. Bang on 10 months, he started practising standing up without hanging onto something, like he was trying to impress us- even holding his arms up in the air in a victory pose for the few seconds before he began to lose his balance and inevitably plonked his bottom on the ground. He's extended the length of time he can do that for to maybe 30 seconds or so, and seems fine to clap, rub his face, or play with a toy while he's doing it, but he mainly seems to practice on the bed, in the cot, or in 'baby jail' (the playpen/portacot), places I suppose it must be softer to land on one's bottom. It's gotten so that he expects a nightly audience and demands to be taken to baby jail so he can show off for a while before being taken to bed.

Rather than cruising along the lounge now, he frequently walks parallel to it while holding on with one hand. He also shows a marked preference for walking while holding onto our hands instead of crawling. Around half the time when he has expressed a desire to go someplace, instead of dropping to the ground and crawling, he will keep hanging onto our hands and expect us to 'walk' him there. He still can't quite stand up by himself without using something to steady himself as he gets up (he has done it, but only in baby jail and on the bed), but he's clearly working on it, getting halfway before lowering himself to the floor again.


Communication:

Setri's vocabulary has seemingly exploded, with the constraints of his primitive.pronunciation the only thing holding him back. I had been working hard on getting him to point to things he wants, or to places he wants to go. He now points and says 'dat', if he doesn't know the word for the object he is after, and 'dair' for a place he wants to go to. We have been extremely accommodating, in an effort to encourage this language development, to the point where Setri will throw a bit of a wobbly if we say he can't go 'dair', or can't have 'dat', or can't go 'down' the stairs. He also uses 'down' in another context- when he wants something brought down to him. He attempts to copy a LOT of different words that we say. Mostly he makes a pretty damn good approximation, for someone who only seems to be able to pronounce 'd', 'b', 'n', 'm' and 'l' sounds with any level of consistency. The other day he attempted 'turkey'. With his consonant deficit it came out as 'durdee'. Not a bad try for a 10mo. His vowels are still great- he says 'ow-er', for shower, for example, and 'ow-el' for towel. He now calls Gam 'Daddy' pretty much all the time, but I'm still 'Mum-ma'. He is finally able to stick an 'n' sound on the end of 'down', though not every time, but what impresses me most is that he is able to use 'down' in a number of different contexts. He will crawl to the stairs on our front verandah, for example, point down and say 'down', but he can also be on the floor and identify something he wants brought down to him (mostly by pointing or grabbing), and say 'dowwwn!'.

That's only the beginning, really. He wails 'duck!' when he's stuck, he says 'yeah' in the right context. He says 'more' all the time- not just as a way of getting more of something, it has become a proxy for 'want'- a very useful word.

Setri: More.

Gam: More what? More coffee?

Setri: Yeah.

Setri after his first chocolate biscuit.  I was only going to give him a taste, but he grasped it with both hands with a "For me?! You shouldn't have!" expression on his face, and then celebrated by holding it above his head and saying 'yay!'. How could I take it back after that?

His celebrations were so priceless that we couldn't even tear ourselves away to go and fetch a camera (hence no pictures of that).

Gam and I have both got him to string two words together using 'more' a couple of times. Just like the first time I got him to say 'more'- if there's something he really wants, chances are he'll be motivated enough to force out the word! He says 'mower', too, pronounced more like 'morwer', getting very excited about anything with wheels. 'Dog' gets a real workout, also, as he loves those (but cries with terror whenever one barks). He also has 'words' that he says consistently that wouldn't mean much to anyone else but are identifiable to us because we're familiar with Setri-language. 'Leh-leh' is 'lemon', '-LAH' is 'glasses', 'nan-nah' is 'grandma', 'nano' is 'piano'...

My very very very favourite word, one he uses only rarely, is 'cuddle'. Setri can't actually say 'cuddle'... he says 'doddle'... and I pretty much die of happiness every time he does. He usually says it when he wants a cuddle from Gam: 'Daddy... doddle' (*mummy dies of cute overload right about this point*). He isn't a mummy's boy like I hoped, but he is a very affectionate little boy with us. He's so lovely :)

Setri has also started pretend play, putting phones up to his ear as if he is making a call. He is also able to identify the whereabouts of his head- if we ask him to put something (hat, glasses etc) on his head he will touch it to his head.

In addition to wheels, Setri loves anything that goes 'round and round'. His favourite song is 'wheels on the bus', and he does a little dance at the mere mention of the song. The wheels on the pram, the mower, toy cars, the washing machine, the dryer, the fans (still a big favourite), the microwave (we now have one because Mum brought it up with her)... even a little cardboard-paged book titled 'Farm' that features pictures of tractors, utes, combine harvesters and the like, anything that goes 'round and round' is a massive favourite, and Setri will illustrate this by saying 'lau lau' (like the 'ow' in 'loud') and making a circular motion with his hand.


Sleep:

Sleep is worth a mention this month. Setri's still not an easy baby to get to sleep, but he is reliably having 2 naps a day and IF I am there to resettle him the second he wakes up, he will sleep for an hour each time. Thank **** for that.

Teeth:

Setri got 4 teeth in 5 days when he was 10 and a half months old. I was right when I predicted several months ago that it would be one of the top teeth to break through first (they are both through, along with one of the upper lateral incisors and one of the bottom central incisors), just way off on the timing. All things considered I think we had an easy time of it with teething... Now that the teeth are through he is way more interested in solid food again, but a temporary disinterest in food was really the only thing we had to deal with. His sleep was a bit unsettled some days, but that's the case even now, so I don't think any sleep woes were attributable to the teething. By the standards of any teething baby, Setri was remarkably good (even though he caught a little cold around the same time); considering he popped 4 teeth in 5 days he was an angel.


Social:

We won a term's worth of Gymboree sessions/lessons when I entered some online competition a few months ago. I hadn't even considered taking Setri to Gymboree because I thought it was some kind of glorified Playgroup- and Playgroup is so cheap as to be pretty much free. Boy was I wrong about Gymboree! We opted to go to the Sunnybank one on Saturdays so Gam could go too. I don't know what it is about the place, but our shy, reserved little boy (who routinely greets adults with a stern frown and cries if another adult gets between him and his parents) suddenly forgot we existed. He was not only crawling around excitedly trying to make friends with other babies (and steal their toys), he was crawling up to other parents and being smiley and chatty, playing with them without giving us so much as a backward glance. I don't know what it is about the place (nearly all the other parents at the first 2 classes seemed to be first-timers too, around our age, friendly, nice-looking, and have gorgeous kids), but Setri has an absolute ball there. He and one other little boy (2 months older and walking) are the 'naughty kids', ignoring the routine when it suits them and socialising and getting into mischief instead. It's really great to see. Playgroup has nothing on Gymboree in Setri's eyes!

We have also been taking Setri to swimming lessons. He looooooves swimming, but isn't 100% in love with the lessons. Part of it is due to the fact that the environment is rather loud and lessons proceed at a fast pace without it being properly explained to him what's going on. Still, there are aspects of it that he loves- part of the lesson involves crawling through a foam tunnel floating on the water, and Setri is always champing at the bit, flapping away trying to get to the swimming instructor so he can be put in the tunnel (where he tries to camp out and play instead of crawling through to Gam at the other end like he is supposed to...). After two lessons it was obvious he'd picked up at least a little bit from the lessons when he spontaneously started trying to blow bubbles in the water on the shower floor.

To think, a few months ago Setri was rocketing ahead in terms of his motor development and seemed to be lagging his peers slightly in terms of babbling. Now, babies who first crawled and cruised months after Setri started are taking their first steps, according to Facebook, and Setri is focused elsewhere. He's obviously coming along just fine, but if there were any expectations we'd built up for him, it was more to do with his initially phenomenal size and strong motor development. Now he is much more normal in that regard.



Life changes:

My mum moved in with us when Setri was 10 and a half months old. I'm going back to work next month, just before Setri's first birthday, and we wanted to get him used to being cared for by her for periods of time before I went back (and also give me time to get stuff done that I need to do). I don't think any of us were sure about how it would/will work out (the main concern being that my dad can't handle her being away), but it has actually been really good so far. Setri loves his Grandma, and Mum is quickly learning the things that keep him happy (things that go round, walks, lots of outside time- let's hope Brisbane's weather holds up!).

Photos still to come [Update 22/05/2011: and finally, I got around to it!]

Away from Setri, getting back to work

I think today is the first time since getting home from hospital after Setri's birth that I have been alone. My mum has moved in with us for a while to look after Setri when I go back to work, and we are aiming to set a pattern that gets him used to being looked after her for certain hours in the day. We are beginning with me working at home in preparation for returning to my PhD. It's been just under 2 hours and I'm already getting antsy about Setri being away so long! He does love his grandma though, I'm not worried that he is particularly missing me.

Mum has been here about a week now, and I think it has been really good. I'm not sure how Gam feels about it yet, it's probably not as bad as he might have feared. We went out to dinner together for the first time since Setri's birth- only the second time we have been out on our own since he was born. I'm really looking forward to having a bit more time with Gam... I'm not pleased about how I've managed the relationship side of things since Setri arrived, though there is a whole post's worth of musings on that topic, if only I had time to make it.

Back to work now, I simply don't have time to procrastinate any more!