Bigger and better adventures

When Talia started cruising the furniture back in June, I had no idea it would take quite so long before she was really ready to walk by herself.

She took her first hesitant little steps two months ago, and could often be persuaded to walk while holding on to our hands. It was clear there was nothing physical holding her back, but she seemed to lack either the confidence or the incentive to get up and just go, preferring to either crawl (quite speedily, especially if trying to get away from someone who wanted to change her nappy or put her to bed) or wait for her “staff” to come and carry her to wherever she wanted to go.

When we saw the physiotherapist at the State Child Development Centre in mid September, she told us that she regarded a child to be walking properly when they were also able to stand up by themselves in the middle of the room. We passed that milestone on Wednesday last week.  I was so excited I clapped and cheered.  Talia gave me a big smile, took three steps forward and fell splat on her bottom.

However, the the big day has finally come - drumroll please - as of Sunday 16 November 2008, we have a toddler.  Something clicked and she realised it was safe, easy, fun…  whatever it was, she’s up and walking and it’s a wonderful achievement.  Our only regret is that Talia’s Grandpa, who asked us so many times if she was walking yet, passed away just a few months too soon to see her in motion.  He would have been so happy.

Ages ago I read an interesting article about “wonder weeks“. Apparently babies go through predictable stages where they spend a period of time being fussy - unusually clingy and difficult - followed by a period of time when they are much happier after passing through a stage of development.

We’ve definitely had one of those wonder weeks! After several days of extreme crankiness, the last few days have seen Talia

- trying to walk dozens of times a day (whereas beforehand she went for days without trying) and usually managing at least 4 steps per attempt - sometimes up to 8.

- stacking boxes for the first time, including one 4 box tower. Previously she was only interested in destroying any sort of stack.

- standing up in the middle of the room (not pulling herself up on anything) for the first time

- scribbling for the first time (using an etch-a-sketch I bought second hand today)

She has been very pleased with these achievements, with lots of smiles and clapping, and as doting parents we are also very proud of her.

Talia’s vocab has gone from no real words at 12 months corrected to 2 words at 14 months corrected and now in the past 2 months she’s suddenly jumped to over 10 words (although she understands more). Yesterday we had a very special day, TWO new words.

I was putting away crayons and saying “bye bye red crayon, bye bye blue crayon” etc and Talia started saying “ba ba” each time I said bye bye. She repeated this later, so that’s a word as far as I’m concerned!

Then in the late afternoon I heard my husband arrive home (he cycles, and always whistles when he gets into to the back yard) and before I said anything Talia said “Daddeh!” I said “Did you hear Daddy Talia?” and she said “Okay” (her word for yes). She repeated that word too so yay, that’s daddy sorted, just got to keep working on mummy!

Well another month has gone by and my tiny baby is suddenly 18 months old!

After taking a few tiny steps 10 days ago, she’s decided not to bother any more with that walking business for the time being. But she’s spending more time standing without holding on to anything, and has recently taken up walking like a crab with her bottom high in the air, which is very funny to watch. She can climb up a gently sloping slide and at least 3 stairs, and can come down 3 stairs backwards too. She’s pretty good about turning around and coming down backwards from any sort of step or higher level (such as our bed). She does a lot of reasonably accurate pointing, and will occasionally wave bye bye (but usually not when someone is actually leaving!)

We’ve started baby swimming (synchronised splashing) classes and after 3 classes she’s just starting to relax a little and not cling to me like a limpet for the duration. I hope she’ll start enjoying it soon, as I love being in the water myself. At the moment she uses a little rubber ball as a security toy.

Her favourite activities are going on the swing and reading books. She is particularly fond of books with flaps. She also loves balls, balloons and bubbles, and taking a bath (not to mention her bath toys). I can see a bit of a B theme emerging here! She has also grasped the concept of putting pieces into a simple jigsaw (no interlocking pieces) but doesn’t have the dexterity to complete it by herself. She enjoys posting items into a home-made shape sorter, and playing with pegs. She starts and responds to games of peekaboo - it’s the easiest way to put a smile on her face.

Her spoken language is really minimal - lots and lots of fantastic babble but probably only 3 actual words; “boo” which means both ball and balloon, “woo woo” which means dog (woof woof), and “gat” or “tat” which means cat, cow, bird, elephant, giraffe or any other random passing object which is not a woo woo. Nothing to indicate mum or dad!! She can also indicate milk via sign language. STOP PRESS! Two days after I drafted this post she started using a new word: “dut” for duck.

However her understanding of new words is growing rapidly. I can ask her to find a particular toy (eg ball, balloon, peter rabbit, snugglebunny, etc) and she will go and look around the room and (mostly!) find the thing I ask for. The other day I said “where’s the Maisy book?” and she went to a stack of books and found the Maisy book which hidden underneath another book. (I was so impressed!!!) She has several “that’s not my XXX” books and they all have a mouse on each page. Now all she wants to do is point at the mouse when I read those books. Then today (gotta love this) I was reading a different book which also had a small mouse on one page. I said “Talia, where’s the mouse?” and she looked at the page but she couldn’t see the mouse, so she crawled over to That’s not my Dinosaur” and pointed out the mouse on the cover of that book instead!! She can also point out flowers and other objects she knows the name of when I ask her where they are. Even though I know it’s normal, I find it really quite amazing that she understands so much more than she can say.

Eating is still patchy, with the same problems of “loved it yesterday, hate it today, don’t even bother tomorrow”, but she’s continuing to gain (and grow out of things) despite the fact that she’s almost 100% self fed on finger food and I’m no closer to getting her to eat off a spoon, regardless of whether I’m holding it or she is. On the positive side, we can feed her a little bit of whatever we are having and no longer have to rely on food organised specifically for her (although we still do to some extent).

She will sometimes allow us to brush her teeth but it does take quite a bit of persistence. She sleeps well overnight and has one nap in the middle of the day, usually 1-1.5hours long. I wish she’d sleep longer but no luck so far - her room is probably not dark enough.

We’ve just come back from a short trip to visit family in Sydney, and she was marvellous apart from the flights - she threw up on both of them (eeeewwwwww) and also threw the most ENORMOUS tantrum on the way back - easily the worst behaviour in her entire life. I did feel very sorry for the people sitting around us! Then she did a similar thing before we put her to bed. I know she was tired but this was so over the top… I think the “terrible twos” may have arrived early.

Last but not least, her latest statistics: 9.335kg and 74cm in length. Something above the 10th percentile in both cases. She is now in size 0 clothing, size 1 if it’s an all-in-one including toes.

Both parents are very proud!!

for Talia - one giant leap for the milestone collection!

Yes today was the day when Talia finally found the confidence to lift a foot up and put it back down again while not actively clinging to anything.  She did it twice in the morning while we were at playgroup, and once in the afternoon while we were at signing class.  (Seeing other toddlers walking around without holding on to their mothers is obviously a bit of an incentive!)

I was filled with emotion - happiness, relief, love.  Now to wait and see how long before she travels any distance under her own steam.

In another interesting development today, she tried to feed a piece of biscuit to her best friend Snugglebunny.  I’m sure that’s a big social milestone too.

Talia started swimming classes last week. Today was her second time in the pool and so far she’s not at all convinced that it’s going to be enjoyable.  However when she was given a little ball to hang on to she decided maybe it wasn’t completely awful, maybe just mostly dreadful.  Hopefully she will relax as time goes by and she figures out I am not actually trying to drown her.

Back at home, she has fully grasped the concept of putting a puzzle piece into the puzzle - as long as it’s almost there already.  Otherwise she enjoys waving them around, clapping them together and saying “woof woof” regardless of which farm animal piece she is referring to at the time.

We have also had an interesting new development with our “That’s not my …”books.  Following a suggestion from a friend, I deliberately pointed out the little mouse which is on each page (having never done it before now).  Then as she turned each page I asked “where’s the mouse?”  What a great new game!! She can spot every mouse in all three books of the series that we own, apart from the mice who are wearing goggles, flippers and a snorkel.  Clearly we have a very intelligent baby who knows that mice are hopeless when it comes to scuba diving.

Time flies when you’re having fun, and Talia certainly seems to be enjoying herself!

In the past month her crawling has reached warp speed and her cruising is also very good. She pulls herself up on just about everything and anything and will walk while holding on with one hand (although she prefers it with two).

She finally realised it was quicker to go down the step backwards than to sit at the top and call for help, and as a result is now able to move all around the house. She’s also applied the going down backwards knowledge to new steps in other locations, which is good, but isn’t too sure what to do when there is more than one step, which is all we have at home.

A big achievement for the last month has been the development of pointing and waving. Her pointy finger is not the most accurate, but it’s getting better, and the waving is a bit sporadic too - but it’s still pretty exciting for us!

We’ve just started the transition to cow’s milk, and that has gone very well. When I first tried giving it to her several months ago she didn’t seem to like it at all, but now she’s very happy to drink it straight from the fridge, and I’m only making up formula first thing in the morning and last bottle of the day (so probably less than 200ml in total) to give her the benefit of the various vitamins etc that are part of the formula.

As far as eating goes, we haven’t really made any great progress. Talia will occasionally eat a small amount of food from a spoon, and sometimes put the spoon in her mouth by herself, but not often. I’ve given her a small amount of food and a spoon and left her to play with it and she hasn’t wanted to actually eat any of it at all. She still loves to eat beef sausage, peas, corn kernels, and beans, plus a bit of pasta and rice. She’s OK with toast for breakfast and will usually eat bread spread with avocado or pate. I had been buying a range of baby snack foods because I was tired of making things she wouldn’t eat, and for a while she was happy with Heinz muesli bars and cheesey breadsticks, but has now abandoned them too. So I’m back to doing a bit of baking and she is currently happy to eat some biscuits and slices I’ve made. Her weight is still around the 10th percentile or just above it, so I’m not at all worried about it, but I wish she would eat a few more “normal baby foods” like fruit or yogurt, neither of which we’ve had success with.

Talia still doesn’t have any real words, but has a fantastic range of babble sounds (used indiscriminately) and will sometimes copy sounds. I took her into a pet shop and showed her some fish in an aquarium, and when I said “fish”, she said “vish”, which was cute. She still makes a noise which could be interpreted as “cat” when she sees our cat, but she uses the same sound at other times when the cat is absent, so I’m not convinced. She hasn’t picked up any more Auslan signs either, and for a while even stopped using the one sign she had started to use (”milk” which she uses to mean “I want it, give it to me”).

In terms of play, she’s discovered the joy of going up and down the slide. She can almost put in a puzzle piece. Of course she still loves her books, especially the ones with flaps. She gets quite excited by new things, or seeing people she hasn’t seen for a bit, and squeals with excitement. She starts a lot of games of peekaboo and can be kept amused for ages if you have the stamina to keep playing!

We have fully transitioned to one sleep per day. Unfortunately it’s not particularly long - an hour or an hour and a half if I’m lucky. But it seems to be enough to get her through the rest of the day, and if she is too tired then we just put her to bed by 7pm instead of the usual 7:30pm. For a while she was getting very upset about going to bed and crying so much she threw up, but now I put her in sitting down and it seems to be better - she can still get upset sometimes but it’s harder to throw up.

She can also be quite difficult when I’m trying to change her nappy or get her dressed/undressed, but I’ve managed to stop it getting out of hand. I have a change table toy which she doesn’t play with elsewhere, and that is often enough to distract her. I also try to change her clothes while she’s standing up, as that seems to be less distressing to her.

And just a few stats: 9.03 kg; 72.0cm long; head circumference of 47cm … and 11 teeth

Less than 2 months since Talia first crawled, she has started to walk and push a little cart along! We loaded the cart up with bricks, phonebooks and a street directory to make it easier to push without running away from her.

This video was taken on July 13, a day after she first pushed the cart herself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zchY3DSIteI

A wonderful thing happened this weekend.

I’ve been clapping to Talia for months, probably about 5 or 6 months, since she started sitting up. Apart from general applause and renditions of Pat-a-cake, I would clap three times and say “clap, clap, clap” as I did it, over and over again. She would smile at me with the sweet but slightly worried expression that says “mother, I love you but you look like a crazy lady hitting your own hands together like that.”

Then suddenly, yesterday while visiting my parents, my father clapped for her and she clapped back again! Then we all joined in - three generations of family clapping. It was very cute, and a lovely moment for us to share.

Then this morning came one of those wonderful “my child is a genius” moments.

Talia was in our bedroom, full of early morning energy, and, without moving my hands myself, I said “clap, clap, clap” and she started clapping!! She knows the word clap!! And it wasn’t a fluke, I’ve been saying it on and off all day to the same reaction (because I’m so excited I just can’t get enough of it!!!)

Woooooooooo hoooooooooooooo!

Now that Talia has teeth next to each other (4 at the top and 2 at the bottom),  I realised I ought to make more of an effort with brushing them, something I had always intended to do but hadn’t quite made part of our daily routine. I had been taking her into the bathroom so she could watch me brush my teeth before I ran one of those little slips-over-your-finger brushes over her gums.  Then this week I actually bought a proper baby toothbrush, gave it to Talia to hold while I gave a demonstration… and she got the message!  She put the brush into her mouth and waggled it around in a convincing imitation.  For a baby who vary rarely mimics anything we do (like waving or sticking tongue out) it was particularly good.  I called Daddyfeatures in to take a commemorative photo.  And here we are: