Wow, this last month has been such a whirlwind of exciting new milestones. I cannot seem to steal enough time away for myself to update, which is why I'm so late on the last month's happenings.
Beni is now walking at what seems to be light's speed! He took a couple steps here and again before his first birthday, but as of August 24th (the night Beni walked a whopping 5ft across his playpen completely unaided!), he has completely taken off! Over the last couple of weeks it has without a doubt shifted to his primary method of getting around; he seems to only resort to crawling when he's either really exhausted or if we're playing a game that consists of me crawling and he does so only to imitate what I'm doing. He's always been big on imitating us, both physically and vocally, but this month he has also thrived linguistically; his new words are "hello" (as he picks up his toy phone), "bye bye" (sometimes accompanied by a wave), "goobye", "up-down" (he merges them together), "duck" and "quack quack", "Ididit" (he has said this for months now, we just can't place any consistent occurrence, other than the fact that it's always said out of excitement. We get a kick out of the fact that it sounds like he's saying "I did it", and occasionally he'll say it when it completely applies. So funny! The other day he was on a pointing spree in our bedroom and pointed at every individual dresser drawer, and after every drawer I would tell him the contents, like "Daddy's socks", "Mommy's shirts", and when he finally got to my underwear drawer I paused for a second and wondered about being so honest with him about the contents of THAT specific drawer, but then I decided, he's a one year old and it can't possibly hurt, so I said "That's Mommy's underwear drawer", to which he replied "un-drer-ware-dror"! I almost died! It's not to say that I underestimate him at all, but it was just such a shocking and wonderfully strange moment. I'll be the mom with the little boy screaming about the underwear drawer in public, I can just see it now... hahha. Ladies and gentlemen, this is why they say to watch what you say in the presence of tiny ears. :)
Other tricks of the trade consist of dancing (especially when Yo Gabba Gabba is on), trying to mimic the opening tune to Mr. Sandman, "Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh, climbing on top of anything and everything (the futon, the bed, the coffee table, the nursing chair and the ottoman...), as well as climbing back down. He has grown so fond of drinking a smoothie every morning since he began taking a straw, and I've really enjoyed coming up with new delicious AND healthy blends. I've made a habit of adding spinach and pro-biotics to all of them, sneaky me! :)
He's also suddenly become much more adventurous when it comes to food; he gives everything at least a chance (this is very new!) and seems to love just about every fruit (fresh and dried), spinach, avocados, cucumbers, eggs, bread, chicken and pasta, nutrigrains, cheese... the list goes on. I cannot express how fortunate we have been this month as far as food goes, after such a slow start with solids from 7 months on... we were really getting discouraged for awhile there. He's probably still not quite up to par with others his age, but this is such a tremendous step in the right direction and I just pray we continue down this path...
Pointing! He still continues to point at virtually everything in sight! We love it and absolutely encourage it all the time, but I will say it gets exhausting keeping up with him. I feel like if I don't respond to nearly every curiosity point he'll suddenly stop doing it or lose interest in some way, and we can't have that! He has learned so much now that he's actually actively curious about his surroundings. When he's in the mood, he can identify facial features (eyes, nose, mouth, lips, ears), body parts (feet, toes, legs, knees, thighs, belly, belly button, hands), Cookie, Daddy, Mommy, Grandpa, Grandma, nursie (my chest is considered nursie, hahha), smoothie, snack, cheerios, the ceiling, walls, TV, computer, table, light, door, monkey, cup, water bottle, tree, grass, pool, gazebo (hahha), balloon (if there's not one in sight, he searches all over for one... thankfully we still have a few semi-deflated ones from his birthday party)... he also understands the implication behind words like "nursie", "sleepy-sleepy", "dinner", "good-morning", "no", "come here", "outside", "dance"... wow, this could go on for hours... essentially, he understands and recognizes tenfold what he can actually vocalize, and it actually really hit us this month how much that really is. The whole progression of learning just utterly amazes me. What a very exciting and eventful age!
What have I missed? Hm... he finally started clapping this month also! I'm convinced he picked that up from Caelan, as we've worked with him for months on it and suddenly he sees Caelan clapping and voila! What a great influence! He also likes to stand on the welcome mat by the front door and spin around in circles until he gets so dizzy that he eventually just plops his butt onto the floor, laughing in complete hysteria. This is so, so amusing, we finally managed to catch a clip on camera today! What else? A new tooth also sprouted on Wednesday, September 24th (right lateral incisor), this following the left lateral incisor that sprouted sometime around August 22nd... surprisingly enough he handled both really well, no out of the ordinary fussiness to speak of. :)
Beni has also been spending some time with a new friend, Caelan, and this is probably silly to say, but they actually really complement one another well! They both have kind of similar happy-go-lucky, blissfully loving personalities, so watching them interact is double the joy! We are so grateful to have met another family who share some of the same beliefs we do about nurturing children and just about life in general... given that we're so far from mainstream parenting, it's just such a relief and a delight to have finally met others who understand that there is indeed a method to our (co-sleeping, breastfeeding, anti-vaccination, instinctively parenting) madness. ;-)
I think this will have to do for the 13 month update, though I'm sure I'm leaving a great deal out... hey, it happens! Mommy duty calls and there's always next month's recap to add to!
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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