Monday, November 26, 2007

A Wobbler at Last

For a while there, I thought I could try to follow a particular theme for each blog entry (like describing of the back of a baby’s head). But recently, we've let a little more time elapse between postings and I suddenly find that I just need to dump our anecdotes, discoveries, and the contents of our photo files into this blog.

Thanksgiving was at Jenny’s sister, Karri’s house. The food was terrific. Oliver got to spend time with the grandma and grandpa who live furthest away. His little digestive system was introduced to pumpkin pie and whipped cream and seemed to like them just fine. After stuffing myself, I fell asleep on the sofa (which is my habit). Because I try to reflect every day on all the things I’m thankful for and for which I feel very fortunate, I won’t go into details here. But life is good.

For the rest of the long weekend, we took care of some projects around the house. Jenny sewed some curtains for Oliver’s room. I did some stuff in the garage in preparation for the new foundation this coming spring. I also installed a little twanging door-stop in Oliver’s room. He can’t leave it alone. Finally, I lost myself in a snappy horror thriller by Scott Smith called “The Ruins.” Right now I’m 2/3 through it and calculating how much time I can shave off tonight’s sleep to finish it.

With Oliver now spending a majority of his time on two feet, it seems there are a dozen little breakthroughs to report. Since this time last month, he seemed to add a few steps every week to his walking distance. Just in the last week, he’s learned to go from a crawl to a squat, to standing, to walking. He now covers any distance between our walls and furniture with a bow-legged stumble, his arms up in the air so that when he falls, he can keep the momentum going in his furious crawl.

He loves to dance. He pushes buttons on one of his electronic toys and when “Old McDonald” or “The Saints Go Marching In” starts playing, he bops in place to the music, waving his arm and smiling. He’ll dance for a long time if someone keeps hitting the button.

He has a thing with placing hats and other objects on his and others’ heads. Here’s a plastic blue ring that he wears sometimes, or sticks on someone else’s head. It’s pretty funny.

He’s learned he can get a finger up his nose. I’ll spare you a picture of that.

His vocabulary is still shaping around a few crude words (dada, mama, nana, duck). We’re encouraged by the long periods of babble, where he talks at length in sounds we don’t understand. Sometimes there are questions, or exclamations (“Yeeaaagh!!!!” = “kitty/doggy, I’m coming for you!”), and also frustrations punctuated by thrown objects. Yes, the tantrums have started, revealing the classic toddler struggle between independence (put me down!) and complete dependence (pick me up!), along the way discovering subtle cues that certain behavior leads to consequences. Yesterday we took him shopping for groceries and when Oliver saw the box of graham crackers, he started reaching and pleading. We hid them under other stuff in the cart, but it was too late. He’d seen them, and in the interest of getting through the trip as quietly as possible, we opened up the box and gave him a graham cracker. Naturally, we ask ourselves – what are we starting here?

Despite all that, we just love every minute with him. He loves to wobble up to us and give us big hugs. What more could we ask for?

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