Setri at 17 months

2 days before Setri hits 18m. Tonight he was chasing Xiaoxiao around, and Xiaoxiao hid underneath the table. "Where's Xiaoxiao, Setri?", I asked. "Neath! Neath!" Setri said excitedly, pointing at Xiaoxiao. Don't know when he picked that one up, but I have noticed a spate of instances where Setri will grasp a conceptual word from something I've said and turn it over aloud a few times. 'Before' was one he picked up on this morning, and I struggled to find a good way to explain it!

Also just thought of something Setri does just recently, he describes heavy objects as being heavy. Or, rather, 'hev'

Last night Setri was having some pre-bed boob. Without a word he stopped feeding, sat up and then leaned over and started suckling on the protruding part of my rib cage. "Setri", I said, "There's no boob there". Setri gave the skin over my rib cage another exploratory suck. "Booob", he said earnestly. "No, Setri, Mummy only has two boobs. See? One [pointing to boobs]. Two". "Uh-wun. Dih-din (other one. different)", Setri insisted. I could swear now he was just having me on. "Setri, here's my 'other boob'", I said, giving one a jiggle. "Do you want the other one?". "Uh-wun boob". Setri pointed at the spot where my rib cage protruded. "Setri," I said exasperatedly. "How many boobs does Mummy have?". That characteristic mischievous grin twitched at the corners of Setri's mouth. "Ree!", he said delightedly.
And that's how I found out that 17-month-old Setri can count to three.

Less than a week off 18m, Setri has confirmed he is toilet trained for wees. What did it? We opened up the door to the 2nd toilet, which is hardly ever used, and it seems sheer novelty was enough to prompt him to ask to do a wee in it. 2 days later and he has only weed in his nappy at night. He has, however, only done one wee sitting down, he mostly insists on standing on the toilet seat. We put him in a nappy to take him to Indooroopilly shopping centre today and not long after we got there he announced 'leelee'. We made the long walk to the bathrooms, went to the parents room only to be beaten to the bathroom there by a woman who'd taken her 8-ish yo son in there so he could go to the toilet! So I had to take Setri to the ladies', where he duly did his wee, washed his hands, freaked out at the hand-dryers, and we patted him on the back for being so good. Certainly didn't expect him to tell us while we were out! Unfortunately poos are another story. He absolutely refuses to use the toilet or a potty :( [Update: 4 days later and Setri only just did his first wee in the toilet for Mum while Gam and I were at work... he has been going to the toilet in the morning while we are here, and in the afternoons and evening before bed, but until today mostly refusing to do it for Mum. Oh and tonight he pooed on the floor... Still quite a way to go, hmmm]

Another money story. Setri was playing with his dragon moneybox (he likes to practice putting coins through the slot), when he suddenly held up a $1 coin. "Out." he said, gesturing towards the front door. "Buy mai". "Setri, that's one dollar!" I told him. "Not enough to buy a pie!". Setri picked up a 50c piece and held it together with his dollar, grinning. "Mai! Beer!".

Another concept now being explored by Setri is 'gone'. The word is always accompanied by a spreading of hands. If something gets eaten and there is nothing left, it's 'gone': "Lollat (chocolate) gone!". If someone leaves our house, they are 'gone!'. The 'big hole' in the floor of a cupboard in the laundry that Setri was very fond of telling me about, is now a story that goes like this:

Setri: Mumma. Big hole gone!

Sarah: Really, Setri? What happened to it?

Setri: Grumpah. [Who filled it in on his last visit, much to Setri's disappointment]

Stayed with about 20 friends in a house at the Bunya Mountains over the weekend. Setri has never been around so many people for such a long time before. He loved playing with our friend Liz's 7yo son, 'Lee' (Liam), who was surprisingly engaging with Setri. You'd think 7 is a bit too old to want to waste time playing with a 17mo, but Liam was really good. Setri (not surprisingly) found the presence of large numbers of people a bit intimidating, and wound up tired and cranky because our noise (and being overstimulated) kept him up late, but it was good to see him interacting with some of our friends. He hardly talked all weekend, though, even to us... As if talking to us could somehow set a precedent and ensure he was forced to talk to other people! On the day we arrived and us and Liz, Nic and Liam were the only people there he talked a tiny bit, and Liz said "How do you understand what he's saying?!" It'd be pretty difficult for someone other than us to comprehend more than about 30% of Setri's speech. We explained that the first rule is to remember that he (lately) begins almost every word with an 'L'! He left us on two occasions, once to go outside with Liz and Nic, and another time to play outside with Lucy. He hardly ever sees Lucy (we don't see our friends very often, and Lucy and her partner slightly less than the others), but she seems to be one of those people who every kid takes a shine to. She is a speechie too, who works with kids with autism.

Counting to 2: Setri has become very fond of counting to 2. He now frequently says 'looo' instead of 'dooo', which is a step backward (part of a pattern of replacing almost all his initial 'd' sounds with 'l'), but on the positive side, he can read the symbol, and pick up two objects and inform us that he has 'loooo' things in his hands, or tell us if he sees two of something (e.g. birds, bins). He also likes to inform me that I have 'looo' boobs... He doesn't seem to have a concept of zero yet, but does seem to have quickly grasped that if he gives one of his 'looo' objects to me, he is left with 'lun', and thoughtfully says this aloud while making a '1' sign.

Another concept recently being explored by Setri is money. It's been a month or two since he progressed from raiding my wallet to fling the cards all over the floor to heading straight for the notes compartment and demanding 'Muh-muh (money). More!'. He now gets money out and holds it out while saying 'buy'. Usually he says he is going to give the money to a 'lady', but he held it out to a 'man' on the TV the other day. He knows that he can't buy things from Gam and I! When asked what he is going to buy, he usually replies 'Buy mai' (pie), or 'mimi' (pizza). I let him get his little paws on some coins for the first time the other day, my Dad is visiting and gave Setri $1 . Setri trotted to the door while holding out the coin and saying 'buy'. When informed that $1 was not sufficient to purchase the pie he wanted to buy, Dad asked him what he would buy instead. Setri broke into one of his mischievous grins. "Beer!" he crowed. First time Dad has been subjected to one of Setri's beer jokes- he looked quite taken aback!

Mum travelled to NSW late last week to visit my brother and his wife, and my dad. Setri didn't appear particularly distressed by her leaving- he asked for her every evening so he could say goodnight, and asked for her every morning so he could clamber onto her bed and shout 'Hey!' and be Grandma's naughty boy. He would instinctively ask for her when he had something to share- a flower to smell or a food to taste. But he seemed to accept it when I reminded him that Grandma had gone on an aeroplane to visit Grandpa and she would be back in 3 days.

On the day she was due to arrive home he was so agitated after his afternoon nap that I eventually called to find out where she and Dad were on their car journey from Kempsey to Brisbane. Setri had been running to the door every time he heard a car, saying "Uh-wun car, Mam-ma!". When she did get back, he was overjoyed. When it came time for him to go to bed, however, he kept hopping out of bed and running away to go and find her, clearly worried she would leave. He sat on her lap until he was almost nodding off, and when put to bed he escaped again, only returning to bed when Mum came in with him (by that point she was ready for bed too). He wailed and tried to follow her when she finally extricated herself from his clutches, finally giving in to sleep when I reminded him that the sun had gone down and it was dark outside. Night-time, therefore time to sleep (his favourite new concept).

Setri has been exploring the concept of day and night time a bit more lately. Instead of just the idea that the sun goes down and goes to sleep, he's been announcing every evening (rather repetitively, actually) "Lun. Down. Dark. Night. Leep". Occasionally he seems to get a bit confused, and when he wants his day nap he will point outside and tell me it's dark! Incidentally, although it would appear he is stringing 5 words together there, I wouldn't call that one a sentence, as it's not at all fluid. He does appear to have kicked up his 2 and 3-word sentences a notch or two lately, adding more and more to his repertoire. The only new one I can think of right now is that he no longer needs prompting to say 'no thank you' instead of simply 'no'.

I haven't spoken about sleep for a while. We had a bad run a couple of months ago when Setri was teething. He'd go to bed between 8-8.30pm, wake at 4am and not settle down until about 6am, then wake for the day at 7am, which was pretty hellish. Since then, though, he has been sleeping through the night without waking from around 8pm until 6am, when he wakes for a feed, which is bliss: our first wholly uninterrupted sleeps in months and months and months. He still only naps for between 45-75min in one stretch in the early afternoon, and is obviously just one of those kids who doesn't need much sleep. I used to wonder if we were doing something wrong, but I figure in hindsight that Setri never went by the book on anything else, so why would he when it comes to sleep? It's unfortunate for Gam and I, but hopefully Setri will be one of those naturally energetic people who don't need a full 8 hours like me. Since Setri arrived, normal life has consisted of us being sleep deprived, exhausted by running around after a mysteriously energetic baby who seems to need less sleep than we do, then stretching our very limited time together in the evenings a bit longer than we should, while not being able to make much productive use of it because we are too exhausted!
Another one of Setri's colour jokes. Tonight he pointed at my pubic hair and said 'Lair. brown'. Then an evil grin spread across his little face. "Green!" he shouted, giggling at his own joke. He then proceeded to tell me with equal glee that the hair on my head was gray.
Setri went to his first birthday party on the weekend- other than his, that is. The little girl's name was Jasmine, an immensely cute, friendly little girl whose mother Mum has come to know through the baby/toddler sessions at either Annerley or Fairfield library. The party was held at Harmony Gardens, a park on the Dutton Park side of the Eleanor Schonell bridge. Setri, predictably, took off running towards the park, shouting 'Mark! Mark!' and spent almost the entire time playing with the small selection of equipment that can be made to go round. He did enjoy Gam pushing him very high on the swing, and the majority of his time not spent on the play equipment was spent chasing any of the large number of bush turkeys who happened to get close. Barely interacted with any of the other children, except a 4yo boy not belonging to the party who was playing in the park. There was a 15mo girl there, also a very cute little thing, friendly and secure. Cognitively there did not seem to be much difference between her and 12mo Jasmine. She didn't seem to talk at all, and when I was handed a cup of apple juice to offer while I was minding her, I had to ask her twice if she wanted some. It was as if she wasn't used to being spoken to directly, at least not spoken to in a normal fashion. She looked surprised but cottoned on very quickly to what I was saying. A world away from Setri at the same age, she was walking but she was really 100% a baby. I suppose she was perfectly normal. There's a big variation at that age, and kids often aren't as responsive to other adults as they are to their caregivers. Little Jasmine was evidently well on her way to talking though, I could pick up quite a few things in her babble that sounded like words in the context of what was going on around her.
Setri often seems to want to impress or gain the approval of older children, and does a bizarre little dance with a big smile on his face as a way of expressing this. Of course it never works- he may as well not exist in their eyes, but it's very cute! He also copies older children. We once met a 3yo boy in the park who goes to the same Playgroup as Setri. The little boy was showing off tricks learned at his gym class, including a handstand with his legs propping him against the wall. Setri immediately (alarmingly) tried to copy, and has since performed the trick at home on days where he has seen this same little boy.
He's completely different with younger children. Younger children he is more likely to give kisses or cuddles to, or in some cases poke them lightly with a single finger like they are some kind of specimen, and loudly announce what colours they are wearing.
Speaking of colours, I have been working on getting him to identify hair colours. He usually defaults to 'brown', but can also identify grey hair. Sometimes even I have a hard time telling if someone's hair is brown or black! Red hair is an interesting one. Rarely is it so red that it would be as readily identified as, say, a red flower. And it's quite rare, so he rarely gets that one right when I ask. He seems to understand 'blonde' but has never got it right in a pop quiz... Though it's a tricky one too. When does 'blonde' turn into a light brown, exactly? Unless someone has Nordic, white-blonde hair it can be tough to say for sure whether it ought to be called brown or blonde. Thankfully most people have brown hair! I haven't exactly worked on 'bald' yet either, as I can see that backfiring into some kind of social faux pas one day. No need to hurry that day!
Setri now points out when the sun is going down in the evening. When it's low in the sky he says 'Lun. Down. Leep', signing 'sleep' before making his distressed 'aaah' noise and accompanying dismayed facial expression.
About 3 months ago, Mum borrowed a book from the library for Setri. It was called 'Noodles has a bedtime', Noodles being an anthropomorphic panda. Even though it involved Setri's most hated subject (sleep), he loved the book. Mum returned it to the library when the loan fell due, and ever since then Setri has repeatedly requested 'Book. Noonoo'. Seriously, it's 2 months on and he's still asking for Noonoo, and looking quite sad when we explain that Noodles has gone to the library. Mum has been looking for the book every week but it's obviously been borrowed out again.

It was a couple of months ago that Setri first started using the word 'big' to describe things, but today is the first time he has used it in the context I expected that he would find it most handy in. See, Setri has long expressed a preference for receiving the larger portion of anything he is being offered. If we break off a piece of something to feed him, his typical response is to point at the larger piece that it was taken from and say, expectantly "thank you". Almost without exception he is told he can only have the small piece. About half the time this will precipitate a little whinge. This morning Setri saw some dark chocolate I'd chopped into pieces on a chopping board the night before and thought he'd get in first and specify which bit he wanted. "Lollat. Big." he ordered! Secretly I wanted to reward his efforts with the big piece (a whole square), but given that it was breakfast time and he is a notoriously poor eater of breakfast I thought I'd better only give him a tiny piece. [He's since done this again, except he this time specified "Lollat. Big bit"!!]

Setri has started to sing tunes, not just tunefully, but using different notes. The other day he made a little rhythmic ditty out of the word tickle. Or, rather 'liddle', which was really interesting. He can't sing any songs, although he sometimes says the words at the same time, but he can sing a syllable (usually 'la') using 3 different notes a whole tone apart. It's really cute :) He is also frequently requesting that I 'help' him play the piano by grasping his wrists and helping him pick out the notes to a song with his stiffened thumb or forefinger. He also likes to 'help' me the same way when I'm playing something for him. I don't play much at all though, he usually prefers to play by himself, and I've always got something else that needs doing and never find the time to practice during the precious 2 hours we get to ourselves after Setri goes to bed. Something else I have noticed is that I can play 'Wheels on the bus' on the piano for him, without singing, and he will perform a different set of actions every verse, like he has a script in his head for how it should go. I find that really interesting. Speaking of WOB, however, Gam and I have had to stop playing him YouTube videos of different versions of it, as his extreme enjoyment of it seemed to have teetered over into pathological obsession territory. He was demanding WOB videos first thing in the morning and first thing after we would arrive home in the evening, as well as throughout the day if we were home. We weren't giving in to most of these demands, generally restricting viewing to the evening, but when he started throwing tantrums when we would get up from the computer after playing 10 or more WOB videos in a row we knew it was time to put a stop to it!

Our neighbours told us a week ago that they are expecting a baby, due date on Setri's 2nd birthday. Early days yet, only 11-12 weeks at the time of writing, but I am really excited for them. They are genuinely lovely people... It always makes me happy to hear that good people are expecting a child. A bonus is that the baby's age means it will be like having a sibling for Setri!

I allowed Setri to raid my wallet yesterday (in return for not raiding some forbidden object). "Muh-muh", he said, going straight for the note compartment. "More". "You want more money?" I asked him. "Yeah", he replied. The note compartment was empty. I fetched a five dollar note that was sitting on the kitchen bench. "You see this Setri?", I asked. You can have it if you tell me what that number is in the corner", I said, pointing to the five. "Lye", he replied almost immediately, stating his word for 'five'. It's obviously not the first time he's read a number correctly but wow... For a little boy who doesn't have the attention span to put up with any of our efforts to actually teach him any of this stuff, he absorbs stuff so well from his everyday interactions and play. He just continues to amaze me.


It seems Setri's communication has developed to the point where he can give quite a detailed account of his day. Take the following exchange I had with him just now after arriving home from work. Setri has just awoken from a nap:

Sarah: What did you do today Setri?

Setri: Leep. (Makes sign for sleep).

Sarah: Oh. Yes you did, I suppose. What else did you do today?

Setri: Baa-baa.

Sarah: Did you sing Baa-Baa Black Sheep?

Setri: Yeah.

Sarah: And what did you get up to before your nap?

Setri: Out.

Sarah: Where did you go?

Setri: Mark.

Sarah: That's great! What did you do at the park?

Setri: (no response- didn't seem to be able to find the words).

I asked my mum about Setri's responses, and it turned out they had indeed gone to the park, sung Baa-baa Black Sheep prior to nap time, and of course he had just had a sleep, as he stated. I'm not just really impressed with his ability to answer open-ended questions like this accurately, I am really happy that he seems to be developing this ability prior to going into childcare. I am not really comfortable putting him in if he has no ability to tell us about his experiences there.


Setri tells a number of jokes like this

Sarah: *puts on a bright orange skirt* "I'm just putting on my skirt, then we can go outside"

Setri: *pointing* Ler. Oran.

Sarah: Yes, very good, it's orange!

Setri: *cheeky grin* Gay!

For some reason, saying something is grey when it's clearly not is a very funny joke.


Conversation with 17mo Setri while breastfeeding

Sarah: I love you, Setri

Setri: Mumma

Sarah: You love mummy?

Setri: Yeah. Daddy. Mam-ma (grandma), buddy (everybody).

Sarah: You love everybody.

Setri: Yeah. Boob.

Sarah: You love boob. That's nice.

Setri: *indecipherable* Rahbra

Sarah: What's that? What else do you love?

Setri: Rahbra.

Sarah: Huh?

Setri: *blows massive raspberry on boob*


Setri decided at dinner that he wasn't hungry, and refused almost everything offered to him. Then, when I sat down to eat some leftover pizza I'd heated, he sat on my lap and lo and behold he was hungry. I removed the cheese and he ate about one third of what I'd prepared for myself. I had a bit of a grumble to Gam, who was sitting next to me, about the disappearance of my dinner. "And I'm really hungry", I complained. Next thing I knew, Setri's little arm stretched out and thrust his piece of pizza at my face. "Mumma", he said earnestly, not just offering me a bite but handing it over completely. Beautiful little boy. I felt so bad for complaining, especially for complaining like he wasn't right there sitting on my lap.

Setri at 16 months

Ok it seems I've overdone it this month and written more than my BlackBerry is capable of pasting into an email. Same format as usual, recent updates are written first, getting older as you read down the page. Will post the rest soon :) [Update: done!]



Tonight, we were arguing over whether to put bacon in the meat sauce Gam was making for nachos. Needless to say, Gam wanted the bacon, I was against it. "Let's ask Setri", Gam said. "Setri, who does most of the cooking in this house?". "Daddy!", said Setri, most emphatically. "Setri", I said. "Who is a better cook, Mummy or Daddy?". Setri paused and thought for a second. "Daddy". Soooo... guess who won that argument?

Earlier today:

Grandma: Setri, would you like to go to Woolworths, or to the park?
Setri: School!

Setri has wondered from time to time why I call his grandma 'Mum' and his daddy 'Gam'. Once in a blue moon he has tried the words himself, as might be expected, and been satisfied with my explanation for why I use them. Last night he sounded like he really liked saying the word 'Gam', so I told him Mum's name (Teen) and my name too. He pronounced Teen as 'Leen' and seemed quite pleased, and seemed a little unsure of himself with my name, saying 'Lair-luh' (he pronounces his own name as 'Leh-li'). Tonight he copied me again, calling out 'Gam' instead of 'Daddy' when I called out to Gam. He answered correctly when asked what my name and Mum's name was too. Also when watching a video tonight of him at 6 months of age (he requested it by pointing to the thumbnail on my desktop and saying 'baby'), I told him "That's YOU!", and he proceeded to ask that the video be repeated by asking for "More Leh-li". Awwwwww :)

Toilet training has gone backwards. Since I stopped letting Setri have so much play time in the shower after doing his wees, he has stopped telling me when he needs to do one (or rather, he will say he needs to do one, then say 'no' when I ask if he wants to go the bathroom)! He even refuses to go outside these days, except in his plastic clamshell (the exact reverse of what we are trying to teach him!). A couple of times we've been outside and he has been holding on so long that a couple of drops of wee will leak out. I'll ask him if he needs to wee, he'll say 'yeah', then refuse my offer to take him to the bathroom, and ignore me when I suggest he does it on the grass. He will wait until I take him in, then do an absolutely massive, flooding wee in his nappy the minute I put it on. He will wee in the shower, but only on the proviso that I turn on the shower first for him to play with. It has nothing to do with being unable to go if the water is not turned on; he has 'performed' before for the promise of the tap being turned on, and also for the prospect of seeing his wee go down the plug hole and being able to use the shower hose to wash it down... He has realised, I think, that these options leave him less time for playing with the water, because it only comes on after he pees. I think we really need to work on finding a comfortable potty or kiddy toilet seat, and something that works as a bribe to keep him there. Hard to believe that someone like me could wind up with a kid who isn't reliably interested in chocolate or lollies as bribes!

Was wondering a few days ago how Setri was doing with his numbers. At the moment we don't have any counting books out of the library and his interest in participating in 'how many is that?' games/pop-quizzes waxes and wanes. Tonight, however, he was watching 'In the Night Garden' and two of the wooden peg-doll characters called the 'Pontipines' were on screen. 'Dooo' announced Setri, holding up his index finger and thumb, before pausing and using his other hand to manipulate the first while he tried to figure out how to sign it correctly. 'Dooo'. Whether the narrator had also just mentioned that there were two Pontipines I'm not sure. Quite possibly. But Setri definitely showed that he grasped the concept of the number two, without any input from us. I was so impressed :)

Last few days Setri has seemed perfectly healthy but has been right off his food. Nothing can tempt him. Today it's nearly 4 and all he has eaten is most of a ripe pear and a few sultanas. I stayed home so he has been able to have breastfeeds.. Same thing happened yesterday only I wasn't here so he ate nothing all day and only drank a tiny bit of water even though mum offered juice and soy milk. He's a funny little boy. When we ask him what could tempt him to eat he jokes with us and replies "Beer!", or occasionally "Mai (pie). Beer!" He even does 'pie hands' when he says beer! [Next day update: asked him what he would like for breakfast this morning. "Mai! Beer!"... And as we laughed, he piped up and added "Liine!" for good measure]. Little jokester still asks for "Daddy boob" quite regularly, too! I remember doing a child psych subject in undergrad at uni and reading that kids basically don't have a sense of humour and take everything literally until they are 5 or 6. What a load of crap!

Pretending: Setri regularly pretends to do things that he sees us doing. Not surprising. What is surprising is that he can demonstrate that he knows the difference between pretending and doing something for real. For instance, he has known and been able to use in appropriate context the word 'burp' since he was 11-12 months old. If I were to tell him to burp, he would try. But if he was unable to produce a burp he would follow that try by saying 'no' to indicate his inability to do one at that point. Now, if I tell Setri to *pretend* to do a burp, however, he makes an 'erp' noise just like anyone pretending to do a burp. Another example is something that happened a week or two ago. Setri frequently gets hold of bottles of skincare products and motions as if he is getting product from the container and applying it to his face. Stupid as it sounds, I didn't fully realise he knew he was pretending, or grasped the concept of pretending vs doing something for real. When mum came into the bathroom as Setri pilfered my moisturiser jar one morning, I told Mum to watch and share in the cuteness. "Show Grandma how you put the beauty treatment on", I told Setri. Instead of cutely pretending to moisturise, Setri looked at the jar in his hand, held the jar up to me and said 'ope'. Oh. I didn't want him doing actually doing it! I didn't know if he really had much of a grasp on 'pretend', but given that he understood the difference between real and pretend burping I tried anyway. I asked Setri "Can you *pretend* to put moisturiser on?". Whereupon he duly performed his cute little moisturising ritual for his Grandma, and simultaneously impressed me once again with just how smart babies can be :)

We hardly ever drink, but (embarrassingly), Setri can identify wine and beer by their respective bottles, and by the glass too. Tonight he pointed to a glass of red wine that Gam and I were sharing: "Liiiine". "Yes, Setri, wine." . Setri pointed to his nose and sniffed loudly to indicate he wanted to smell the wine (this is something he does a *lot* lately, every day he asks to smell different spices from our spice rack). I held the glass under his nose so he could smell the wine, and he leaned forward, took a sniff, then stood upright and touched his index finger to his tongue. "Teth" (taste), he instructed. "Setri, are you a baby or a man?", Gam asked. "Baby", replied Setri (phew!). "And that's why you can't have any wine", said Gam. Unlike a lot of things, this didn't precipitate a tantrum because Setri already knew he isn't allowed to taste alcohol (being a baby who happily sips tea and coffee, counts gherkins and liquorice among his favourite foods and yesterday ate a bite of raw onion, we know that chances are he would probably quite like the taste of alcohol). [Next day update: this morning I was drinking orange juice in a regular glass and asked Setri if he'd like some. His answer: "Liine". I asked if he meant iron, seeing as I have iron supplement in my OJ, and he said "No, liine", affirming what he meant when I asked if he'd just said he wanted wine for breakfast!][Further update: now when Gam asks him the 'baby or man' question, Setri says 'Man!'.]


Can answer questions in the past tense even if the subject has disappeared. E.g. A car travels down our street, we can ask him "Did the car go up or down the hill, Setri?" Or "What colour was the car?".

'Mine' is getting used more and more frequently. And, of course, generally inappropriately when he has pilfered something particularly desirable. Not always, though. He has an old mobile that we have always told him is 'his phone', and he was only happy to pretend to use it when he was very young, say 10-11 months, until he realised that it didn't work and that other phones have lights and make beepy noises. So any suggestion along the lines of "Why don't you use your phone, Setri", when he asked for one of ours would precipitate a tantrum. Just recently though, I was surprised to see that Setri had dredged his old mobile out of the toybox. "Mine", he told me, clutching it to his chest. I have explained to Setri what it means to borrow something that belongs to someone else (i.e. you may have it in your possession, but it is not *yours*), but he is yet to use it in conversation.

For a couple of weeks now, when Setri (or *cough* one of his toys) asks to go out and we say "Where are you going, Setri?", he doesn't reply 'mark' (park), he says 'cooo' (school). This is all Gam's fault. Gam teases me by saying Setri will soon be putting on a little backpack and waving me goodbye, just like Timmy the lamb does on the Aardman animation show on the ABC kids channel. Of course Setri never passes up a chance to join in teasing me, so he now regularly tells me he's off to school. He always follows it up by telling me that "Mummy, Daddy, Mam-ma... everybody" is going with him to school :)

Piano 'man': Setri has shown a renewed interest in 'Roland' since he has been allowed to sit on the bench seat on his own. Instead of wanting to mash the buttons (it's an electric), he 'plays' rather dramatically, and sometimes even somewhat tunefully when he is up there on his own. He really likes applause from Gam, in particular. Occasionally he still likes me to play his favourite children's songs, especially Wheels on the Bus. Mostly I sit to his right, playing the upper registers on the piano. Yesterday, because he was in the way, I played at the lower end. Then I stopped. "More bus", said Setri. "Man". Huh? "Did you say 'man'?", I asked him. "Yeah," said Setri. "More man". He was telling me he wanted me to play Wheels on the Bus using the low notes! I thought that was a really interesting way he conveyed his message. He liked it so much I wound up playing Wheels on the Bus about 20 more times while he sat on the chair bouncing up and down, frantically performing all the actions... [Update: now when he wants me to position the piano stool so he can muck around on the low notes, he says 'man'.]

He can reliably hold one finger up when asked to show '1', and five fingers for '5'. He tries hard for '4', but not sure he's nailed that yet. He says 'Lor' if I hold up four. I don't know if he really gets what the numbers mean yet, but for obvious reasons I'm not going to assume he doesn't, either.

Pulled a square block out of his trolley this morning, saying 'lair'. He also says 'lair' for 'hair' and 'pear'. This is the first time he's said anything about shapes, other than to tell me that circle shapes are round but they don't *go* round and round. Again, apart from the circle thing (which we taught him so he would stop expecting every circular object to entertain him by spinning), we have only mentioned shapes in the most offhand of manners. So I wasn't sure if 'lair' really meant square or not. I therefore asked Setri if he could get me a triangle block, which he duly did, bringing it over to the lounge and placing it in my lap.
I've noticed that lately Setri has become a little sensitive to being corrected on his pronunciation. A correction and request for him to repeat a word can elicit a bit of a grizzle from him, where it never used to bother him. Also requests for him to say difficult words seem to bother him occasionally these days, whereas he always used to just have a go and garble something, whether it approximated the word requested or not. He also gets very upset when he says he wants something and we suggest that perhaps he might prefer something else. For instance if he asks for boob and we suggest a drink of water instead. It makes sense, because if he wants a drink of water or something else he says 'Ding' or 'Ding. Awah/jew/whatever'... It is kind of patronising to suggest that he doesn't really want what he has just asked for. He reacts better to an outright refusal of his request, because we have at least acknowledged what he has asked for! One doesn't really think not to patronise a 16mo baby/toddler, though, it's so ingrained that that is what we do to kids. I have resolved to stop prompting him to repeat himself, even if he starts saying a word that he previously used to pronounce better (e.g. last night he said 'law' for 'draw', where he used to say 'daw'). I will model the word for him and move on. His vocabulary is so darn impressive I have to keep in mind that his pronunciation is perfectly age-appropriate and it will match up in time! Don't want to give the poor little guy a complex.

Halfway through this month now. Setri strings 3 words together very regularly. Mostly along the lines of 'Mumma, (*instruction), NOW', or '(*instruction), (*instruction), NOW', 'Mumma, (*request), Leez?) or '(*Request). Now, Leez?'. He has- get this- started saying 'bed', and saying 'leep' making the sign for sleep when he is ready for bed! We are so shocked! Sometimes he folds out his toddler-couch, says 'leep' and screws his eyes up tight. I just die of cute overload when he does that.

He still has a bit of an imperfect grasp on reality, and exactly what a photo is. He will often see something in a photo that he would like to change and demands it be made to do what he thinks it should be doing, e.g. a doll sitting down will be told to 'dan-duh', a box will be told to open.
Nailing his colours with 100% accuracy, with the exception of colours that even I find difficult to label (e.g. Pinks that are very close to purples or vice-versa, colours that could justifiably be labelled either an orange-y yellow or a yellow-y orange). Blue, yellow, red, green, pink, purple, black, white, brown and grey. Trying to teach him indigo, teal, beige and 'mustard colour' now.

Physically, Setri is just over 80cm tall but very hard to measure! He seems to have gotten noticeably heavier recently, but when we last tried to weigh him a couple of months ago our own scales were blatantly inaccurate (putting him at 10.5kg or something stupidly low like that). Haven't bothered getting him onto a scale somewhere else- I'd guess he's around 13kg?

We are just past 16m and 1 week, and it's getting hard at this point to explain the concepts that Setri seems capable of grasping! These days we quite often seem to be able to reason with him. The other day I needed to wash his bottom in the sink, and he kicked up a fuss because he wanted a shower, squalling and refusing to squat down in the sink to make it easier for me to wash him. I explained that we would be finished faster if he squatted down, so he stopped crying and did it. Gam also explained why Setri should not pull his hat off his head the other day, and Setri left it on thereafter. This doesn't happen every time (particularly nappy changes, or when there is little perceivable benefit to him in our actions, such as when we remove the car keys from his custody after he has pinched them off the table), but often enough that we can call him quite a reasonable baby on the whole :)

I had a work colleague the other day tell me her daughter had hit the 'terrible twos' and not take me particularly seriously when I empathised over the tantrums. "You wait, it'll get worse", she and an older colleague with 4 children told me, before going on to say that she expected the tantrums to get better once her daughter was able to say the words for what she wanted. They were in the process of trying to teach her the word 'more', something Setri has been able to say since 9 months of age! I didn't tell her that, though. Because Setri is fairly reserved/shy, he hardly talks around strangers (though he has started answering- very quietly- yes/no questions from strangers), so he really does seem fairly normal, maybe even underpowered in the speech department. It's only when talking to us, such as when he points out a yellow object and announces 'Yellow!' that people pause for a second in surprise.

Over the past month he has sprouted a few more teeth. He has chipped both his bottom middle incisors, only little chips but it bothers me. The first chip was when he took a bit of a tumble down the back stairs at about 11-12 months, the second happened more recently, probably from biting something made of metal I'd guess. Will ask dentist about it in near future in case he has some kind of defect that causes his teeth to be softer than usual.

In the last few days Setri has been tacking an irresistibly polite and adorable 'Leez?' onto the end of almost every request he makes. He must have known he was onto a winner the minute he tried it, I can never say no!

Setri seems to enjoy drawing with his crayons, but not nearly as much as I thought he would.

At any given time, Setri can identify with about 70% accuracy any of the numbers from one to ten. Mum arrived back from a brief visit to NSW a week ago, and sat down with Setri to read a book (a really good one from the library, called 'One Mole Digging a Hole'). She began reading the book with Setri, asking him to identify the numbers from 1 to 5 as they moved through the book, without pausing much because she didn't expect much in the way of answers. "I think 5 is enough, we'll stop there", she said after reaching number 5 and Setri answered it correctly, being rewarded with a high five. She wasn't going to stop reading of course, just to continue without offering Setri the opportunity to participate. A couple of months ago I was doing the same thing. "Keep going Mum, you'll be surprised", I told her. Setri then proceeded to correctly identify 'Lic, Lehleh, eight, nine and Len' to his astonished grandma (he had flunked 1 and identified 3 only after I had held up my fingers and counted "One, two..." for him).

This morning I let Setri run around with no nappy after he'd done his poo. I was sitting drinking tea and Setri made a distressed noise and came running up with an anguished expression on his face. "Mumma, oh NO!", he said, pointing to a spot on the floor. There was a puddle of wee. Setri made his distress noise again (the one he uses if he sees someone sleeping, sad, or being hurt) and looked at me anxiously. I realised that last time he'd weed I'd reacted pretty much the same way! I reassured him that it wasn't his fault and told him that if he couldn't make it to the bathroom in time, what we do is get a floor towel from the cupboard to mop up the wee (something manageable for him- I didn't want to go on with wet sponges or mops and buckets!). Well, a couple hours later I had a chance to see whether my previous overreaction had scarred him for life. I'd just taken off a nappy so wet I thought for sure it would be a while until the next wee. I was in the kitchen while Setri toddled off to the study to play, when he reappeared at the kitchen door: "Lee." he said. Do you need to do a wee? I asked. "Lee", said Setri again, pointing down the hallway. "Do you need to go to the bathroom or are you telling me you already did a wee?". "Did", he replied matter-of-factly, taking my hand and leading me to the study and pointing at a puddle located alarmingly close to an open book on the floor. Sigh.

Mostly because of time constraints, I haven't talked much about my mum living with us for the past 7 and a half months. She has been such an important part of Setri's life and I feel so lucky to have her here looking after Setri while I work. I feel much more comfortable about Setri going into daycare around the 20-21-month mark in January when Mum goes home than I would have when he was around 11 months when I went back to work. Setri LOVES his Grandma (Mam-ma). He loves to throw open her door in the morning and shout 'Hey!' (Part of his 'I'm being naughty' game where we are supposed to say "Hey! Whatareyoudoing?!"), and 'No-no-no' in the naughtiest tone of voice he can muster. He also says 'Awah. No no no' when he spies a bubbler/drinking fountain, as Mum is always trying to keep him away from those (particularly the ones with dog water dishes attached) when she takes him to the park! Setri saves his cheekiest grins for his Grandma. She is really the only family member he knows and loves apart from Gam and I (although he seems to have this instinctive love for my cousin Natalie even though he's only met her 4 times, I can't say she reciprocates in the head-over-heels way that a first-time Grandma does). It's thanks to Mum's presence here that Dad visits so often, and Setri has finally started treating him like someone he knows instead of an almost-stranger.

We watched Funniest Home Videos tonight, something we usually despise for its content of old people being injured and parents thinking it's funny to film their child/ren in situations that actually require a parent's intervention for the child's wellbeing and/or safety. Despite Setri getting some joy out of seeing a seal and some dolphins (episode was filmed at Seaworld), and us getting a laugh out of Setri saying 'Loof loof!' To a barking dog on the screen, we wound up having to change the channel because he found it distressing to see people falling down and hurting themselves. Even after I explained that people who do stupid things kind of deserve it, the sweet little soul.


Sent via BlackBerry® from Telstra

Having your cake and eating it too: Learn how to simultaneously destroy and protect the environment at an Archers Body Corporate seminar!

I find it both hilariously ironic and kind of scary that our email from Archers Body Corporate one week enthusiastically promotes by-laws that prevent people who live in units from hanging their 'unsightly' washing to dry on their balconies, and their email the next week is titled "Energy Affordability", with the byline "After a whopping 13.29% increase in electricity prices on 1st July 2011, and further increases expected in the future don't miss your opportunity to attend the next Education Seminar Series with a focus on how to reduce your electricity use and save you money into the future"
Sent via BlackBerry® from Telstra

RBWH birth, maternity, complaint response whinge

Speaking of bad customer service, I just wanted to give a big middle finger to the RBWH for their handling of our complaint over mine and Setri's treatment there following Setri's birth. I haven't finished responding to all of the points made in their reply, but they managed to 'forget' to reply to every single important point, and pretty much call us liars too. I am actually shocked that they thought they could leave this stuff out and not have us notice. But they are extremely sorry that we *felt* distressed, even though they essentially say there was nothing to be distressed about. When I'm done, I'll be posting it here and everywhere else I bloody well can. I don't want to forget that the majority of nurses and midwives we dealt with there were wonderful, but the people and institution I'm complaining about need their noses rubbed in their own mess in a big way. I am so insulted and angered by their response that words can't really suffice to express how I feel.

Urban Utilities screw-up

Over a year ago I made a post whinging about the excessive water use figures (upwards of 700L per day) appearing on our bill. We checked for leaks but there were none. Quite a long time after that, after we had received our second bill showing water usage over 1100L per day (!!!), I wrote to Urban Utilities telling them I wasn't going to pay the bill until they had checked out possible problems at their end. By then we had had a plumber confirm that there was no possibility of a leak of that magnitude at our end. They told me to phone back for follow-up, and I requested that they conduct any follow-up correspondence by email. I like to have stuff in writing, and I don't see why I should pay to sit in their phone queue. I received no further correspondence.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago we received our latest water bill, with the previous unpaid bill also included in the amount.

Urban Utilities had replaced our meter, so obviously it was faulty.

Figures for the new meter (I had to get a calculator and work it out myself) showed an average of 348L per day being used- in line with what UU says is our local area average household consumption. So I just wrote them another email, which I thought I would post here for posterity (and I always like to be contacted by fellow pissed off customers who find these stories :) Let's hope they do the right thing... I was going to tag this post with the 'BAD customer service' tag, but I will allow that failing to consider the lower usage figures with the new meter (and the implications of such for past apparently excessive bills that I had complained about previously) could have been due to an oversight, a lack of conscientiousness. I will see how Queensland Urban Utilities responds to my email before whacking them with that tag.

Hi,

I emailed Urban Utilities some months ago regarding what appeared to be excessive water consumption figures on our bill. I requested follow-up by email but received none.

I see from the latest bill we have received that a new meter was installed on 19/05/2011. The water consumption with the new meter works out at 348L per day, pretty much in line with the local average household usage. Since our household size increased from 2 adults and 1 baby at the beginning of 2011 to 3 adults and 1 baby in March 2011, it is likely our actual water usage prior to then was even less than 348L per day.

I had suspected that we were being over-billed for quite some time, and the figures you will see below confirm that, being in all cases an awful lot higher than 348L per day. In two cases it was well over 1000L per day. The erroneous usage figures appear to date back to the time we moved into this house, in November 2009.

Issue date 29/04/2010: 726L per day
Issue date 26/07/2010: 547L per day
Issue date 26/10/2010: 1165L per day
Issue date 01/02/2011: 732L per day
Issue date 05/05/2011: 1109L per day
Issue date 01/08/2011: 547L per day (before new meter: 594L per day; after new meter: 348L per day)

I also see that this previous over-billing has not been taken into account, despite becoming obvious since the new meter was installed. The amount from the previous bill showing usage of 1109L per day (which, I informed Urban Utilities would not be paid until they investigated the excessive water usage figures), has been added to the current bill, without review or modification.

Given the evidence that I have been significantly over-billed on the basis of erroneously high usage figures for about 22 months, sometimes for water usage up to almost three times higher than what would appear to be our actual usage, I believe that the following ought to occur:

Either
A recalculation of all previous bills to my name (and my husband's) at this address be made in line with the new water usage figures (348L per day) and the amount I have overpaid be credited, with suitable interest (I note that Urban Utilities states that they charge 11% interest on overdue amounts) to my account.
OR the existing bill be waived in its entirety.


Thank you to the customer service-personnel whose job it is to deal with complaints like these, I am aware that none of you are personally responsible for the problems outlined here. I am keen, however, to receive proper follow-up of this matter in due course.

Kind regards,

Setri at 15 months.

Setri always puts his hand up in the water when the big shower head is running and says 'laining' :)

Everything below the '15mo' written below was written on my BlackBerry but I didn't make updates for a couple of weeks, so it goes up until about 15 and a half months. Since that time he has gotten shockingly good at naming his colours- we've moved on to grey, brown, beige, silver and gold because red, green, yellow, blue etc. are obviously down pat. He can identify pink. He says it backwards in the same way he says 'pig': gih. He still can't make 'p', 't', and 'r' sounds reliably, can't say 's' sounds at all. He can identify purple, but says 'yurlul', which sounds ridiculously close to yellow. One of his recent favourite activities is to get us to play a YouTube video featuring numerous pictures of tractors (set to dance-y music), and he will sit there naming the colours as the pictures flash up. He doesn't always get it right, and if a tractor is multiple colours he won't always get both (e.g. he may say "Yellow. Gee" for a green tractor with yellow wheels, or he may just say "Yellow."). He can identify about 4 numbers from one to ten, specifically 2,4,6 and 8 (no pattern, just coincidence). 9 about half the time. He seems to be able to identify the number 3 from his foam puzzle mat, but hasn't done it in any books yet. 1 is a lost cause- you'd think that would be the easiest!

Something strange he has been doing lately is asking for 'other one' boob. He'll have one, then the other one, then sit up and say 'uh-wun'. I'll point out that he's had both, then say he can have the 'other one' or 'same one', and he will reply 'dih-din' (different), and then get upset when I point out that I only have 2 boobs! Furthermore, he has started asking Gam for boob, and even once asked my mum for boob!

In addition to pretending to give his toys food and drink (and boob), Setri has started adding sound effects, doing a beaut slurping noise when he is pretending that one of his toys is having a drink.

According to my mum, his social skills are getting noticeably better, and for the first time he seems interested in playing with other children, approaching and playing with/near them where he used to seem to move away to play by himself at the park or library (though apparently he has a weakness for little blonde girls). Gam and I saw him trying to show off and copy a 3yo boy he knows from Playgroup when we saw the boy and his mother at the park a few days ago. He is still painfully shy, but warms up to pretty much everyone within a couple of minutes. He held his first conversation with a girl who works at the bakery a couple of days ago (making good eye contact and answering 'yeah' to a few questions and saying 'thank you' for the pie). I hope he grows out of the shyness.


15mo

Yesterday evening he was at his toybox, which is up off the floor and a bit out of reach, pointing at his bag of blocks and saying 'Back. Back'. He says 'bock' for 'blocks', so I wondered what he was talking about. When I got closer, it appeared that he was pointing at the large black block at the top of the bag. As far as I was aware, Setri didn't know 'black' yet, but I asked him if that was what he wanted. 'Yeah', he said. I pulled down the bag and unzipped it for him, and he reached in and pulled out the black block. He held it up. 'Back', he said. Then for good measure he held up a green one. 'Gee', he informed me, before putting it aside. 'Yellow', he announced, reaching into the bag, ignoring the yellow block at the top. 'Uh-wun' (other one), pulling out the large block beneath it of a slightly different lemon hue. So there we go. Today he pointed at a dark coloured car and said 'back', and it did look like it was, but as we walked past it it became apparent that it was in fact a dark metallic blue. Talk about making things complicated!

Instead of saying 'ay' when pointing at wobbily at random bits of text, Setri has taken to sometimes saying 'ohhh'. I have only once seen him point at an actual letter O on request, and he has no interest lately in pointing to any letters at all when I ask him to. He is still reeeeaally keen on books, however.

Something embarrassing he has done since 11 months of age. I've somehow forgotten (read: been a bit too embarrassed) to post it until now: When I'm getting changed or going to the toilet he loves to point at my pubic hair, shout 'Lair! Laaaaaaaairrrr!!!' in a mock-horror tone, and then scoff at me. I have never been prudish around Setri, the hair is nothing new, but somehow he instinctively recognises its potential for humour and embarrassment compared with the hair on my head (which receives a matter-of-fact ruffling and the simple pronouncement 'lair' from time to time). I keep thinking if I don't react to the 'LAIR!!!' thing he will get tired of it and another phase will start, but no such luck yet. It doesn't help that after he'd done it a couple of times he did it in front of Gam, who thought it was absolutely hilarious.

Knows colours blue, yellow, green, red, orange and white (which I hadn't bothered with until he pointed to the lid of the toilet and pronounced it yellow, which I felt a little defensive about, in spite of its pristine whiteness). Maybe purple too.

15 and a half months. Knows difference between 'now', 'later' and 'soon', and uses 'now' and 'soon' spontaneously in conversation. Uses 'now' a *lot*. Can choose between 'same' and 'different' ('lame' and 'dih-din'), has used 'different' spontaneously in conversation. Most interactions still consist of one word even though he's capable of two a lot of the time (and occasionally 3). His enormous vocabulary can't keep up with his consonant deficit, something that keeps getting worse the more words he learns. There's no excuse for some of them either. He can say 'cat', 'kitchi' (kitchen), 'chicki' (chickens), 'cukukuk' (cluck cluck), but still says 'lar' for car. He did come out with a perfectly enunciated 'tea' the other day but immediately reverted to 'dee'.

Today he saw a large number eight on a 'save 8 cents' flyer at the Woolies checkout and pointed at it and said 'eight'.

2nd week in. He just gets sweeter and sweeter. Several times a day he will say 'Mumma', and toddle over to give me a cuddle, or 'Mumma, kissh'... After which comes 'Daddy, kissh', and he will give each of us several kisses in turn.

He has also started being affected by stories. If someone is lost, or has lost something, he gets quite worried and upset and we have to reassure him. He gets even more whiney and distressed by stories that involve people going to bed or to sleep. One day after he asked to see Facebook photos of Bec's little boy Xander ('Lanna'), he had a whinge because one of the photos featured Xander sleeping.

6th day of 15m. For a few days now, Setri has been saying 'thank you' unprompted. Actually it sounds more like someone saying 'thank you' with their mouth full: 'ahng-oo'. Anyway, the context he uses it in, in many cases, is not quite appropriate. What Setri means when he says 'thank you' unbidden is better translated as "I'll have that, thanks very much", i.e. that a particular object in someone's possession should be handed over wholesale. Whether it's saying 'thank you' and taking the whole piece of toast when I've offered him a bite, or attempting to take some other object that we are holding, Setri seems to think it's very unfair when someone says in fact no, he can't have that despite his polite 'thank you'! Hypocritically, we have probably plucked forbidden objects from his grasp from time to time and said 'thank you' without paying regard to whether he wanted to hand it over or not! He also sobs/wails 'Leeeeez' in the most heart-wrenching tones when he doesn't get something he really wants (usually me not getting a boob out quickly enough), or not giving him something he regularly covets but is not allowed to play with.

4th day of 15m. Brought Setri out from the bedroom this morning. While I was in the kitchen getting stuff ready to make coffee, Setri went to his bag of blocks and picked up a red block and walked towards me waving the block in the air. "Led, led", he said earnestly. A few days earlier he had pointed to a red car and said the same thing, but I dismissed it because he can't reliably produce the right answer to 'red' questions when asked.

He put the red block on the floor, and reached for a blue one. 'Booo!', he said, holding it in the air before placing it on the floor and reaching for another red block. He then held that in the air and said "led". Later on though, I asked him what colour his cob of corn was. "Geee", he told me. "Try again", I said. "Booo", he offered, before trying 'green' again when I asked him what other colour it might be!

Also this morning he pretended to change Hello Kitty's nappy, and asked to go to the park. "We'll go to the park later", I told him. "*Now*", he insisted.


3rd day of 15m. I have noticed over the past couple of days that Setri is pointing to large bodies of text and saying 'ay' a lot. Mostly there are a lot of 'ays' and the text too small to reliably see what he's really pointing to. Maybe we over-praised him the other day and he's just doing it for the attention. Lol.

2nd day of 15m. Gam asked "Who has boobs, Setri?". Answer: "Mumma". Last night Setri retrieved a number 3 from his foam play mat and ran around showing it to everyone. "Ree!". Tonight I heard him coming again while In the Night Garden was on, this time chanting "doo". And clutching a foam number 2, waving it at Mum and I in turn before trotting off to the study to show Gam. WTF. Oh and tonight he tried to share one of my boobs with his Big Bear. He stopped feeding and reached out to tug the ear of Big Bear, who I was using as a cushion. "Boooo", said Setri. "Boooo". I was a bit confused. "Are you saying you want the other boob, Setri?", I asked. "Boooo", he insisted. It sure did sound like he was just saying 'boob'. But I flailed around for alternatives. "Do you want me to read you a book?". Finally I let him haul Big Bear out from behind my back. "Booo", said Setri, pushing Big Bear's head towards my boob. I explained that it was very thoughtful of him, but bears don't need boob!

Oh another thing he did today was point at the (very large) light in the coffee shop and say 'bih-light'.
First day of 15m and I asked Setri to put something in the bin for me. He walked to the bin, held the rubbish over it and then withdrew his hand. "Bih-bin", he stated. "Go on, put it in the bin", I prompted, puzzled. "Bih-bin", Setri repeated, sounding insistent, this time pointing to the back door. "Oh, you want to put it in the BIG bin", I said. "Yeah", replied Setri. So we did. Dunno if I've mentioned before that he's obsessed w the bins?

That night he also informed Gam that he had a big nose.

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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Nick Minchin exits politics

And his proudest achievement in 18 years of drawing a fat salary from the public purse is...

defeating the 'Yes' camp in the referendum on a republic.

FFS. I think we deserve our money back.