12 Months

My little muffin is a year old.  It’s hard to believe that he once used to be completely immobile, staring at us dubiously as he lay on our laps.  These days, you can’t get Fuzzy to sit or lay still for very long.  Though he still falls quite frequently, I’m comfortable saying he’s more or less mastered walking.  The final building block for this milestone was his newfound ability to stand up without assistance right around the week of his birthday.  On occasion, he now even appreciates the concept of obstacles – for example, taking an extra large step to clear the hose laying in his path as he toddles across the backyard.

At the beginning of May, he started copying some of our most common activities – if we stuck a cloth in front of him and asked him to help clean his highchair, he dutifully clutched it in his fists and smeared it around the tray.  And the broom is one of his favorite new toys.  When he sees Maya sweeping, he tries to grab it away from her, and will only be placated when I hand him his own little sweeper.

Also around the first week of May, Fuzzy surprised me with his mastery of a the sign for “more.”  I had been futily sticking my fingers together for weeks with no appreciable comprehension from him.  Then, just as I was starting to give up, he made the sign in the correct context, and complete unprompted.  The two of us were sitting in the backseat of the car, waiting for Daddy to run into the store and grab something.  To keep Fuzz placated, I had given him a fistful of Cheerios.  When he ran out, he looked at me and made the more sign as if he had been doing it all his life.

On May 4th, Fuzzy took another leap forward with his first recognizable word.  I took out a banana to feed to him, and he joyfully pointed at it and shouted “NANA!”  There is some debate in our household as to whether nana is in fact his first word, as he has been using “da” to indicate duck for quite some time.  But since da was also the first syllable he could say clearly, it is also his fallback word for everything else in the world too, especially if the object in question began with a D sound.  Much to The Pit’s consternation, daddy and doggy are both dada to Fuzz.

All month, The Pit endeavored to teach Fuzzy the difference between his two favorite bath toys, the duck and the fish.  Although he still can’t say “fish,” Fuzz does know the difference between them, and when asked, will hand over the correct toy.  As previously mentioned, he does quite firmly refer to ducks as “da,” whether they be in the bath with him, pictured on TV, or in a book.  Based on his limited experience, Big Bird is also a da, what with being all yellow, vaguly duck-shaped, and coming equipped with a beak.

Once he mastered the whole fish/duck difference, I started pointing out the fact that both his fish toy and duck toy have eyes.  It took about a week for Fuzzy to go from pointing to the eyes when asked to saying “ayyyy,” the closest approximation of the word to date.  Along with a drawn out "haaaaa" noise for hot, this is now the sum total of Fuzzy's vocabulary - nana, da, dada, ayyyy, and haaaa.  Oh, and he makes a little motor noise with his lips to indicate cars - The Pit is not altogether sure if this counts as a word, but I say if a tribe in Africa can communicate with clicks, Fuzzy pushing along a toy car and "brrrring" to himself is indeed communication.

11 Months

1)  Right after I wrote my last post for Fuzzy's 10 month birthday, he figured out pointing.  And once he figured it out, he did it all the time.  Which only makes sense - if pointing was the only way I had of communicating, I suppose I would point nonstop too.  So now as we move through the house, the baby constantly points at things he wants to touch and/or eat.  In practice, he mostly wants to touch things with buttons - the phone, the light switches, and the controllers for our ceiling fans.   Everything else, he wants to eat.  As he points, he also deploys his one word/question, "ade?", which can apparently mean anything from "look at that bus" to "I demand to grab this filthy sponge and suck on it."

2)  When I bathe Fuzzy, I sit right on the floor by the tub, and spend some time playing with him.   During this time, he will often stand up and start grabbing my shirt or my hair, so to minimize the hair-pulling, I started putting my hair back with clips.  Well, one day the baby fixated on said clips.  From his excitement, you would think I had gold hidden in there - he grabbed the clips, pulled them out, hooted, shoved them in his mouth, and then took them out and attempted to affix them to my hair again.  Then we repeated the cycle about five times.

3)  Fuzzy also began trying to wash himself.  And when I say himself, I mean his...err, undercarriage.  He will pull himself to a standing position on edge of the tub, bend over, and then start splashing water on his junk - you know, just washing up the important bits, all nonchalant-like.

4)  He is incredibly sweet when I come home.  He sees me, starts grinning and pointing, then crawls over and pulls on my pants to be picked up.  When I hold him, he throws his little arms around my shoulders, nuzzles his face in my neck, and hugs me.  It's really the best part of the day.

5)  However, I am not the only object of his affection.  His grandmother got him an enormous teddy bear for Easter.  And when I say enormous, I mean approximately my height, and at least double my width.  We all wondered what his reaction would be when it came out of the box, but I don't think anyone quite anticipated how much he would love this thing.  He immediately hurled himself at the bear, hugged as much of it as possible, and started to give it kisses.  In the following days, he also began taking more of an interest in his other, regular-sized stuffed animals, nuzzling them to his cheeks and occasionally bestowing kisses.

6) About halfway through the month, he was comfortable cruising from one piece of furniture to another.  When we could distract him sufficiently, he could also stand up unsupported - however, as soon as he noticed he wasn't actually holding on to somebody or something, he would lose his balance and plop back to the ground.  Then, one day while Skying with my mom and grandparents, Fuzz was standing up, leaning against his walker, and holding a toy in each plump little fist.  I scooted two feet away and asked for one of his toys, and in his confusion about which toy to hand me, he actually took three unassisted steps in my direction.  The cheering he received over the computer completely mystified him.

7) Right on his 11 month birthday, something clicked and our boy figured out clapping.  Now when he's very happy or pleased with himself, he gives a round of applause.  This is especially cute when it is combined with his pointing.   Sometimes he'll point, and I'm not sure of what he wants, so I pick up objects one by one and offer them to him.  When I get to the correct thing, he starts applauding with joy.

10 Months

Two weeks ago, when Fuzz was 9.5 months, I wrote the following two paragraphs and forgot to post them:

The last two weeks have brought the greatest of triumphs - multiple consecutive nights of sleep.  Prior to his 9 month birthday, Fuzzy would wake anywhere from one to three times a night.  Usually because he was hungry, sometimes because he needed to burp, sometimes because his diaper had leaked, and often, for no discernible reason whatsoever.  In his first 8 months, Fuzzy slept through the night a grand total of two times.  Then, on the night of January 24th, he went to bed and didn't wake up until morning.  Then he repeated this beautiful, beautiful trick for 5 more nights.  One the seventh night, he woke briefly at 12:30 am, and went back to sleep after 20 minutes of rocking.  Now, fingers crossed, we are working on another consecutive week.

In other less exciting but nevertheless reportable developments, Fuzz has also sort-of learned to point and wave.  I say sort-of because while he has the movements down, he doesn't realize the correct context for said movements yet.  Thus, I will sometimes find him sitting on the floor by himself, one finger pointed up in a "We're number one!" gesture, quizzically looking at his own hand.  Similarly, no force on earth can compel Fuzz to wave back at someone who is waving at him - but he will randomly start waving his chubby food-covered hands in the middle of dinner at nothing in particular.

1) Now, at 10 months, I can provide a little bit of an update.  Sadly, shortly after I wrote the paragraph about sleeping through the night, Fuzzy started working on another tooth, and sleeping was suddenly the last thing on his mind.  For several nights before the tooth poked through, he woke up every 2-3 hours.  Now that there's a visible nubbin on his top gum, his sleep has improved somewhat, but he's still up at least once a night.  Gah.

2) He still hasn't figured out pointing at something specific, but waving we have down.  We were Skyping with my grandparents, and as always, they spent approximately 95% of the chat randomly waving at him.  Except this time, instead of staring at them blankly and drooling, the kid actually raised up his little hand and waved back.  I thought they were both going to have heart attacks then and there from joy.

3) In other news, we have further proof of Fuzzy's memory skills.  Maya reported the following story to me at the end of February: She was changing his diaper several hours after his last snack of Cheerios, when Fuzzy sat up, shoved his arm down her shirt, and started to grope about purposefully.  Maya tried to pull him away, but he wasn't having any of it, and after a minute or two, he triumphantly pulled a Cheerio from her bra.  Apparently he had thrown one down there earlier when she wasn't paying attention, and now he wished to retrieve and eat his cleverly hidden snack.

4) Fuzzy is quite taken with animals, especially the two highly unfriendly cats that occasionally visit our backyard.  Whenever he gets a glimpse of these guys, he pulls himself into a standing position by our backdoor, bangs on the glass with excitement, and hoots.  The cats glance at him with disinterest bordering on disgust, as cats are wont to do.  This has no effect at all on his enthusiasm, and in fact, he gets even more excited whenever he catches one of them staring back at him with disdain.

5) At the beginning of the month, Fuzzy figured out a little bit about sharing.  We always try to brush his teeth in the bathtub with this rubber thingie that fits on one of our fingers.  Unfortunately, we are always thwarted, because although Fuzz is completely uninterested in pacifiers, he loves to suck on this rubber "toothbrush."  So after a few seconds of brushing, he always pulls it off my finger and shoves it all the way into his mouth, then hangs out like that for the remainder of bath time.   Anyway, one day, he randomly pulled it out of his mouth and tried to shove it into mine.  He patiently waited a couple of minutes while I pretended to suck on it, and then shoved it back into his own mouth with an air of satisfaction.  For a few weeks, this was the only item he wished to share with me, but he did it consistently ever night in the tub.  Now, he's mastered the concept in other areas of his life, and periodically offers us his toys, food, and random bits of dirt he's picked off the floor.

9 Months

Our nine month picture didn't turn out quite as planned, because Fuzzy wouldn't cooperate no matter what we tried.  However, I think the collage nicely captures the process.

This month had a lot of language-related milestones.  Not that Fuzzy's talking, per se, but we've had some interesting noises being made.

1) At the beginning of February, he started waggling his tongue in in his mouth, and making an adorable burbling noise - "blableablealala."  Mostly this was happening when we changed his diaper, but occasionally he would let loose with it when running around in his walker or while playing down in the basement.  I wish this phase had lasted longer, because I could listen to him burble like that all day.

2) Then, about five days after the the burbling started, I noticed that he would crawl around, and whisper something very very softly to himself.  If I listened in close, it sounded like "da da da."  He wouldn't say it at anything approaching normal volume, but eventually we figured out that it was indeed a "da" sound.  After a few days, it morphed into a "die die die" noise, which was particularly amusing as he muttered it to himself while crawling toward one of us.  Eventually he started saying it somewhat louder, both as "da" and as "die," but almost a month later, his preferred method is still the whisper.

3) At nine months, he now makes three distinct noises - "da," "na," and "arggggh."  If we say these things to him, we can usually get him to say them back.  The Pit is convinced he's taught Fuzzy how to make a "la" noise too, but as I've never been able to get him to say it, I'm dubious.  Despite multiple entreaties, "ma" is still not on the menu.

4) This isn't strictly speaking a language milestone, but it is mouth-related.  About a week ago, he started getting obsessed with his tongue.  He sticks it out, then grabs at it with his fingers and folds it up.  I'm hoping this will lead to him making some new noises eventually, but so far, it's strictly tactile experimentation.

4)  In other non-talking related milestones, Maya and I amused ourselves my testing the baby's memory in an evil way.  I had given him the buzzer out of of the Taboo game one evening in desperation, thinking he might enjoy it while I folded laundry.

Of course he pressed the button, got the noise, and immediately started crying because it scared him.  I told Maya about the incident the next day, and she wanted to know if he remembered the event.  We laid the buzzer in the middle of the floor, and he started crawling toward it excitedly.  When he got close enough to see it well though, he immediately pulled up short, and started studying it uncertainly from about two feet away.

Maya moved it closer to him, and he scuttled over to my legs to get away from it.  So, lesson learned - my kid is at least as smart as your typical lab rat.

5) In a similar vein, we figured out he's also very good at remembering positive stimuli.  Every night I feed him a baby cereal mixed with milk and a little bit of mushed fruity baby food.  One evening, he was being particularly difficult about eating it, and I decided to try for a different texture to distract him. The Pit had bought some tasty-looking strawberries, so I cut one of up teeny tiny and added a piece to each spoonful of cereal.  Fuzzy loved it, and we got dinner done in record time.

The only issue was that the next day, he absolutely refused to eat the cereal until I cut up more strawberry.  There was a great deal of squirming away from the spoon, firmly closed and pursed lips, and arms thrown up to block his face.  Then I got the strawberry out, and he was suddenly all cooperative again.  Now I have to make sure we always have berries in the house.  I suppose it could be worse, at least we're moving into strawberry season.

8.5 Months

To properly appreciate this story, you have to understand the layout of our house - it's split-level, so each of the levels are separated by 5-8 steps. The basement is the only carpeted area, so that's where we spend a lot of playtime with Fuzzy - there's basically no furniture, just all of his toys scattered around. The nearest bathroom is up the first half-flight of carpeted stairs.

Anyway, Maya was playing with Fuzzy in the basement while The Pit and I were at work, and, being human, she felt the call of nature.  She stuck Fuzz into a giant pile of toys in the corner, and ran upstairs to the bathroom.  Suddenly, she heard a noise at the bathroom door, and nearly had a heart attack, thinking that there was an intruder trying to break in.  She opened the door, only to find Fuzzy sitting there smiling at her, and curiously peering into the bathroom to find out why he was excluded.

Granted, it's only 5 steps, but we still found his feat pretty amazing, considering he's only shown cursory interest in the stairs in the past.  Before he could crawl, if left alone in the basement Fuzzy would just wail until somebody returned to play with him.  Once he got the crawling thing down, he would first move over to the base of the stairs, and then proceed to the customary wailing.  And now, suddenly, in one afternoon, I guess he just up and decided that the mountain could come to Mohammed after all.

8 Months

Much like last month was all about teeth, this month was definitely mobility-oriented.

1)  I put the baby in his crib while Maya and I were putting away laundry in his dresser, and when I glanced around, I saw him grinning at me over the top of the railing, because he had managed to pull himself into a standing position without any assistance.

2) We had felt that Fuzzy was close to crawling ever since our vacation in California a month ago, and shortly after we got back he started doing a sort-of Army crawl: picture grunts in boot camp forced to crawl under barbed wire while bullets are fired over their heads.  That was our Fuzzy, snaking it along the floor without ever pulling his belly off the ground.

Then, a week before his 8 month birthday, he finally sorted out his arms and legs, and started crawling for real...one leg sort of dragged at an odd angle, giving him a slightly crab-like appearance, but nevertheless, it was real crawling, and he was clearly thrilled with himself.

3) In addition to his mobility breakthroughs, this month featured the aforementioned California vacation over the holidays - Fuzzy got to spend his first Christmas and New Years with various grandparents and great-grandparents, being showered with love and presents...oh, so very many presents.

Being close to family gave perks to The Pit and I too - my mom kindly took over Fuzzy's care and feeding for three days while we went to Tahoe for some skiing.  Well, the The Pit went skiing - I spent the weekend gratefully sleeping in, and also calling my mother three times a day to check on the welfare of the child.

4) It was also a busy month for communication - about halfway through the month, I was puttering around in the kitchen, with Fuzzy entertaining himself in the highchair next to me.  Then he looked up, caught my eye and said "arrrrrgggggggghhhh."  So I made the same guttural growling noise back at him, and he got super happy, and made it at me again.  So we went, back and forth, mutually delighted.  The Pit's first reaction upon witnessing this scene was to ask what was wrong with the baby.  He was quite doubtful when I told him that this was a happy noise, and that we were talking to each other.  However, after this had been going on for several days, I caught the two of them chatting back and forth in the same way.

5)  Unfortunately, argh is the extent of the baby's talking so far - although he has figured out that "no" is an interesting word.  I'm not sure that he's fully grasped the meaning, but he's definitely glommed onto the fact that exciting things happen when "no" is shouted at him in panic.  He'll reach for some random inappropriate object - dad's dirty shoe, the sharp and heavy fireplace poker, a dining room table place-mat with a full glass of milk on it - and we will tell him "no, no, no!"  He will pause in his reaching, look around, see if we are still paying attention, and then reach for the object again, but much more slowly, while also staring at us expectantly, waiting to see what happens next.

7ish Months

The baby is nearly 8 months old, but never fear, the 7 month post has existed as a series of notes to myself for weeks.  We shall not miss a single developmental milestone!  So here it is, late but not forgotten:

1)  The single most important happening of the month was Fuzzy's tooth breakthrough.  On December 8th, we attended my boss's holiday party, where the baby charmed all assembled by sucking on any jewelry,  shiny object, or beer bottled that happened to be offered to him...or even those thoughtlessly waved in his general vicinity.  When one of the ladies he was flirting with tried to disengage him from her necklace, she found a hard little nubbin on his lower gum that had gone unnoticed by his stellar parents.  Or I should say, unnoticed by me - apparently The Pit had spotted it several days before, but didn't think it warranted mentioning.

Anyway, two weeks later, when we arrived in California for our winter vacation, that nubbin had expanded to a full one and a half teeth, which the Fuzz promptly utilized to chomp me while nursing.  I was taken rather aback, and in fact screamed quite loudly both times he did it.  Each time I screamed, his expression progressed from surprised to offended to full-on crying in a matter of seconds.  I gathered him up and apologized for scaring him, but apparently as a behavioral therapy it was quite effective - I haven't been bitten since.

2)  In other mouth-related developments, Fuzz also learned to make two new noises - a sort of clicking sound and a lip smacking noise.  I haven't noticed any pattern with the clicking, but he definitely makes the lip smacking sound after eating, which is particularly humorous when he's just finished nursing from the boob.

3) I think I mentioned previously that Fuzzy likes to be lifted high on our shoulders, where he can survey the room from a different angle.  Well, now that he seems sturdy enough, The Pit has also taken to tossing him up in the air and then catching him under the arms - and judging by the squeals of delight, Fuzz loves this activity very very much.  He's actually too heavy now for me to toss him, so the two of them have a fun father-son bonding game.

4) Another recent game Fuzzy enjoys is hiding under a blanket.  We cover up his face, pretend to lose him, and then either uncover him ourselves, or wait for him to sweep the blanket aside.  Each time he is revealed, Fuzzy smiles hugely, clearly incredibly proud of himself for being found.

5)  In less fun milestones, there's definitely been in an uptick in clinginess and separation anxiety.  As Maya likes to say, "his biggest enemy now is loneliness "  And oh, how quickly does his enemy strike.  Fuzz used to be okay playing in his crib unattended for upwards of 20 or 30 minutes - but starting shortly after his six month birthday, he began having trouble being alone.  After 30 seconds we hear crying, and if somebody does not return to the room to pick him up, the crying quickly escalates to heart-breaking wailing, followed by full-on clawing at his face in tantrum within a minute or two.

And after that one great party outing where he took being handed around the room completely in stride, he also began to exhibit stranger anxiety - which was a wonderful development for our vacation, where we had ever so many volunteers willing to hold him, if only he could be induced to let go of mom or dad.

6 Months

So a funny thing happened around the time the baby turned 6 months old - he somehow transformed into a real person, instead of the adorable but decidedly proto-human he had been.

I think a lot this has to do with his mastery of sitting.  About a week before his 6-month birthday, he started balancing himself in an unsupported sitting position.  Previously he would list to and fro before flopping over to one side.  Now he could keep himself seated, and this opened up a whole new world - he could reach a variety of toys arrayed in front of him, see a room instead of just the ceiling, observe the street from his stroller, and sit up in a high-chair during dinner just like an actual member of the family.

The Pit started taking him down to the carpeted basement for playtime, and we figured out that he knew how to play a version of catch.  It's more roll than throwing, but he totally understands the conventions - when handed his ball he flings it in our general direction, grins, and then patiently waits for it to be returned to his grasp via rolling or light bouncing.  Then the cycle repeats.

He also impressed me the other day by decoding the operation of one of his musical toys - this thing is a triangle of plastic, and when hit or shaken, it plays several seconds of music.  I keep it by his diaper changing station, and used to shake it and then hand to him.  He would fling it about, more or less accidently activating the musical function and always looking both surprised and delighted when it played.  Now I don't need to activate it first - when I give it to him, he clenches it tightly in one hand, and then slaps it with the other.  The music plays, he listens, and then when the music stops he slaps the toy again.

The impressive part is that he started generalizing this to other toys - now when handed an object, the first thing he does is test its musical potential by slapping it in exactly the same way.  Since many of his toys have some sort of rattle or music built in, his new-found technique brings him much satisfaction.

Unfortunately, another thing that is currently bringing Fuzzy satisfaction is flinging said toys off of his high chair and then screaming until they are returned to him....I guess as parents, we win some and then we lose some.

Fortunate Son

The 6 month round-up post is coming, but first I need to relay a conversation I had with my grandmother yesterday.  She had just watched a video I sent of Fuzzy trying and subsequently hating bananas, and her opinion was that the soft plastic baby spoon was to blame.  "I will buy him a silver spoon!" she proclaimed.

Now while its true that I'm feeling quite bourgeoisie these days, what with my live-in nanny and twice monthly house-cleaners, I thought that literally buying the kid a silver spoon might be taking things a bit far...after all, I'm still feeling somewhat guilty for paying a nice Asian lady to paint my toenails two months ago.

Anyway, it turns out that the Russians consider silver spoons the healthiest spoons with which to feed children.  I was all set to mock this as yet another old country superstition on my grandmother's part, and then I did a quick Google search - turns out, I shouldn't make fun of old people willy-nilly.*

Quothe Wikipedia: Beyond their value and aesthetics, silver utensils self-sanitize: silver has antimicrobial properties, due to the oligodynamic effect.

* And not just because I used the term willy-nilly in a real sentence.

The Pit Called This Manipulation

Fuzzy was having an off day - he didn't nap well, he wouldn't eat, and he generally spent most of his time whining.  When he wasn't whining, he was either refusing to be put down, or squirming like he wanted to be dropped.  I was working from home, and it took both Maya and I to manage him and get anything done.

So toward the end of the day, Maya was making dinner and I was holding him on my lap on the couch.  He had finally settled down a little, his head resting on my shoulder.

I put my lips by his ear, and whispered tenderly, "You've been such a booger today...but I love you anyway."

And wouldn't you know it, he whipped his head around, planted a wet smooch right on my cheek, and grinned.

Needless to say, all was forgiven.