Cedar is 23 months old today
Cedar is 23 months old today, next month, he’ll be two.
Thankfully teething is in abeyance at the moment. Since he's not teething, he's been less cranky/bitey.
He's getting better at using a spoon these days. He’s never been that interested in using utensils or even feeding himself, but he’s finally starting to want to do it himself. Using his hands is still more efficient though.
He still likes his stackable cups, jar lids, and coffee cans. He spends a lot of time building things. He’s also taken more of an interest in his colored blocks and duplos, and sometimes can put them together on his own. Other toys he likes are balls. The other day I had a flashlight out and he was chasing the light like a cat would.
He's as passionate about reading as ever—I’ve noticed he’s starting to recognize individual letters. He’s been pointing at them for a month or two, but it didn’t appear that they had any specific importance to him—just another object in the environment. Now it’s clear that he recognizes them as having a distinct print function, and he appears to remember a few (o, b, t, y, c). He's still interested in and getting good at recognizing colors. Now I definitely wish I had access to DT cards! I need to get some flash cards pronto.
He still takes the huge afternoon nap that lasts a couple of hours, but it’s definitely getting harder to get him to settle down for naps/bedtime. He plays by himself in the room for awhile before he falls asleep. He also seems to do a lot of babbling to himself, so we assume he’s practicing talking in there.
He still thinks everything's funny. The sound of his laugh is changing a little bit and he sounds less like a baby all the time. Now it’s starting to sound like a little boy laugh.
He's still very easy to take places. His behavior is good in public, and even when he’s down out of the shopping cart, he stays with you.
He’s getting more affectionate all the time. He has always let you know when he wants a little emotional refueling—drive by snuggles; for example, he runs over to you because he wants to be picked up and held (then he snuggles into you for a minute, then off he goes again). Then he started doing what I call “forehead kiss” where he comes up to you and rubs his forehead on your forehead. Now he’s decided he likes kisses too (merely tolerated them before), so he’ll come over and collect kisses several times a day. It’s cute. He also constantly climbs in and out of your lap. I still love how he comes running up to the door when he hears my keys in the lock when I come home from work. We have this ritual where he shows me his toy, and then off he goes, but then a minute later (once I’ve put all my teaching crud down), he wants me to pick him up and hold him.
Lately I get home after dark, so we can’t do beach walks like we had been. Between the shorter days, and return of winter weather on the coast, outdoor activities on weekdays are pretty much done for awhile. So we hang out in the living room and play until it's time for bath and bedtime. He still goes to bed around 8pm, and although he doesn’t necessarily fall asleep until 9pm, that seems to work well.
He's usually a happy mellow kid, but when he doesn't get something he wants, he cries like all get out. Preview of the terrible twos??? He does NOT enjoy the word “No”.
He's still not talking. He makes some random noises, but other than dada and mama isn't talking, just babbling a bit. The other day, he said “hi” but that was an isolated incident. His repertoire of sounds is getting bigger, but he’s still not producing much in terms of actual words. He definitely doesn’t have 20 words, or produce phrases/sentences. When he “pretends” to read his books, he just makes a random sound for each picture/word. In other words, he might have a speech delay. I waffle between being overly concerned (a relic of my time in SPED), and not (we both had speech delays), and since he does do a lot of the communication things that kids normally do otherwise that show signs of receptive language acquisition (points at things of interest, makes a variety of sounds, responds to directions, imitates your behavior, points at the correct pictures in a book, etc. I’ve decided that whatever the cause is, it can only be but so bad.)
He was slow to sit up, slow to crawl, and slow to walk, but he did all of those eventually. I guess speaking is going to continue along the same lines. He does not show any signs of intellectual impairment, and isn’t oblivious to people/situations in a way that suggests autism. So most of the time, I don’t worry about it.
It’s been an interesting journey so far. And it gets a little easier all the time as we leave infancy and the needs become less intense/more predictable.
Labels: baby, toddlers
