Seventeen Months

Just when it looked like you'd be crawling your way into another month, you finally began to test your walking skills! In the days before this post, you have gotten the courage and interest to take more and more steps. You now can toddle your way between the upstairs rooms or from the kitchen to your high chair before you go "boom!" on your fluffy bum. You look like a little drunk man wavering with each step, but you are quickly learning to recover well. Buddy, I know you've done a number of new things in the last month that are worthy of recording, but they all pale in comparison. (If I'm honest, they are hard to remember now.) You still prefer to crawl if you're in a hurry, and I have been surprised that you will crawl on the asphalt and pebbles outside rather than risking an unsteady walk. It's shorts weather now, so I thought bare knees would be a deterrent. Instead you are getting your first scrapes and scratches that I know will mark your legs so often over the next ten (or twenty?) years. Soon your soft baby skin will be gone, along with your sweet baby looks. Sigh....

I have read that your personality is becoming more apparent now. While I have no doubt that I will be able to see it in retrospect, your Dad and I have a hard time picking it out now. Will the caution with which you've approached walking make you reluctant to try new things later? Will it make you a safer teenager, less likely to take dangerous risks? On the contrary does your willingness to let your fist go in a giraffe's mouth mean you're more of a risk-taker than we realize? Here are a few things your Dad and I think we know for certain:

• You don't like us to hold or place your hands. This made teaching you to clap a real challenge. It also makes hand washing and nail filing a bit stressful.
• You love doors. You love to open them, close them, slide your fingers under them. Knock on them. Peak through them.
• You like to turn things over. It seems that you are checking them out, maybe to see how they work? That seems pretty advanced to me, but I don't know how else to describe it. You turn over your push toy almost every time you play with it. You also prefer your drum upside down. You will turn almost any new toy over before you play with it the way its is intended.
• I think your favorite color might be orange.
• You love orange (and lately red) foods. Dad says sweet potatoes are your favorite, but I think tomatoes are giving them a run for their money! Last week I had to bribe you with tomato wedges from my salad to get you to eat your pasta. You go nuts over our salad bowls. I LOVE this about you!
• You might have the "only child/first born I-don't-want-to-risk-being-wrong" syndrome. Oh, I so hope that I'm wrong about this. I had/have this terribly. Your Dad and I know you know the answer to our questions (like "What does the rooster say?"), but you just smile at us sometimes and won't say it. If we really encourage you, you will whisper it eventually.
• Your favorite animal is the rooster...of course!
• Your favorite toys right now are the big green ball, your dump truck, your new blocks (which I also love), any bottle with a lid and the wooden clothes pins to put in them an dump out.

• You love your books. You bring them to us all day to read. You are doing a good job with being gentle with the library books' paper pages. We may have to buy the "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" book since you ask for it first thing every morning and all day long by pointing to your head.
• New words this month (I think) are "bah" (ball), "cack-cack" (quack), snorting sounds(for pigs), "teet-teet" (tweet), bzzzz (bee sound), "goo" (goose), holding your nose and "uhh-oo" (pee-you for skunk), "may-men" (amen), "bear", "Pooh", "poo-poo", "k" (old sound, but now seems to refer to Aunt Cat or nanny K) and probably more.

Now that you are walking, I'm sure you'll be keeping me on my toes too! I hope I'll have time to record all of our fun over the next month.