fourteen.five

Jude is 14.5 months old.

He continues to be intrigued by most things and notices ridiculously small details. A few times he has found a Mona hair in the carpet, picked it up delicately with two fingers and given it to me. Today he discovered that an empty toilet-paper roll spins on the dispenser. Once he had unrolled the whole thing, he peeled off the tiny pieces of leftover residue from the roll and placed each one carefully on the toilet seat.

Lately he's been into trying out his verbal skills. He says "woof" now when he sees a dog. It started as "ffff" and then he eventually added the "woo". He says "moo" and "rawr" for a lion or bear. He disdains both "meow" and "oink" though, and won't even attempt them - giving us this look that says "Are you serious?". "Uh-oh" and "boom" are still favorites, and he's also added "wow", "whoa" and "ball". He's been saying "ma ma" and "da da" for awhile, but didn't really direct them at us until recently. Jono walks into the room and gets a big "da da" and smile. I walk in and get a slightly whinier version with "ma ma", or a heartbreaking-ly cute one as I leave for work in the morning.

Physically he is climbing stairs, pulling up on things and cruising, turning on the television (we keep it set to "video" so he gets a blank screen), trying to get inside of the dishwasher when it's being emptied and "walking" rapidly with the assistance of our fingers or a kiddie chair he slides across our wood floors. With the stairs we have to be careful because he'll crawl off quickly, diaper-bum wagging back and forth, with the intention of getting to the stairs and beginning his ascent before we can catch him.

He still doesn't feel comfortable walking on his own. Apparently he would rather have a contest with himself on how many blocks he can stack on top of each other, or if a bread crumb will balance on the nozzle of his sippy cup. He enjoys figuring out how things work; he isn't in any big hurry to run across the room. Oh well. Seasoned parents tell me I shouldn't be too hasty in looking forward to his future ability to get into everything.

Last week was the debut of mini-tantrums, something I had heard about toddlers doing but hadn't yet seen. He lets out a mad yell, arches his back and twists his torso from side to side until whatever is offending him stops happening.

One of the more amusing things we've experienced lately: Jude moving into a regular toddler car seat. He is now facing forward where he sits regally in the middle of the backseat gazing out the windows and at us. He looks very "mini" in that seat, and let me tell you, it is TOO MUCH. I can actually see his little head bobbing back there from outside of the car. When I'm in the front seat I constantly look back at him, where I usually get a Scrunchy Face Smile if I peek through the hole in the headrest in a sneaky way. TOO MUCH.

So there's a rather lengthy update for you (and by "you" I mean relatives). A tad belated. The blog has been hibernating. I hope this makes up for the dry spell.