23 Months

You have had a beautiful month here in Australia. You recognised my parents, brother and grandparents immediately from seeing them on Skype, and you have felt at home here from the moment you stepped off the plane. You are talking so much now it amazes me, and you come out with new phrases every day.

This months has been filled with playgrounds,

family,

cake,

sun,

beaches, friends, and babycinos.

You’re so impressed with the babycinos that you sometimes talk about them immediately upon waking. You’ve grazed your poor knees over and over but like to point at them and reassure us that they are ‘all better now’. You like to talk about how Grandma goes to work to make ‘other people better’. You are obsessed with water, doors, cars and all your favourite people.

When we get out of the car you say – ‘careful! lots of cars. hold mama’s hand!’ You chatter away to yourself and us nearly constantly and make me laugh and laugh. You’ve also recently suddenly got interested in giving us huge cuddles and it is quite adorable.

Everyone here is going to miss you terribly, but I can’t wait to see what you come up with next.

 

The deep dark wood (21 months)

A Felix took a stroll through a deep dark wood, he saw some mud and the mud looked good.

These days Felix loves the forest. He often asks for ‘more forest’, or tries to run off into the forest behind the barnehage carpark. But the other day we were reading The Gruffalo, and we got to the page where the little mouse in the deep dark wood finally meets the gruffalo, ‘with terrible tusks and terrible claws and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws’. ‘Do you think he’s going to eat the mouse?’ I said. The little body in my lap went very still. ‘No – o…’ he said quietly. He looked at the mouse. ‘No – o. Oh no. No – o.’ It’s the first time something in a book has frightened him. He still wants to read about it, but every time he sees the mouse, he says ‘oh no…’

Also, he has learnt all his colours. I am absurdly proud of him.

 

20 months

20 months sounds very close to two years old – how did that happen? I don’t have time to write much this month, but you are gorgeous, sweet, gentle, funny, cheeky, chatty little thing, and I love you to bits. (That’s the jumper I knitted, btw – you wear it most days!)

You really love drawing and riding your bobby car, preferably at the same time.

You have strong opinions and prefer your shoes and socks to have stars on them. Whenever someone leaves the room (or hangs up on skype), you say: ‘more Grandma/Poppa/Garry/Linda/Robert/Nea/Charlie?’ Every Wednesday and Saturday morning you ask to see ‘Dama’ and ‘Poppa’ on the computer, and you squeal with delight when they appear.

You talk a lot and your memory is amazing. It’s so funny to hear about what’s going on in your head. You’re getting proficient at doing simple puzzles and putting duplo blocks together. As always, you love water, which is lucky because there’s a lot of it around at the moment.

You love to make a mess (inside and out), and then declare with concern: ‘messy!’ Last week the first thing you said when you woke up was: ‘Clean the floor! Clean the bath! Clean the bed!’ I can hardly keep up with you, but you certainly make me laugh.

 

19 months

I wrote the bulk of this post several weeks ago when you actually turned 19 months, but it is only now I’ve managed to slot in the photos, courtesy of my Dad.

This month has been all about talking. And buns from the local cafe. You love your buns. You’ve taken to parroting what we say, and you have really a lot of words now: ‘blue bus’, ‘big tractor’, ‘dinner’, ‘warm milk’, ‘Mama more cheese’. And when my Mum was supervising you climbing the stairs yesterday, you pointed to a little crack: ‘It’s a hole! Bit dirt… bit dirty.’ (!!!)  You’ve started saying people’s names: Dama (Grandma), Poppa (what you decided to call my Dad – we were saying Grenville and Granddad but Poppa it is), you say the names of all your carers at the barnehage and insist on saying goodbye to them when we pick you up. You’ve also half toilet trained yourself this month and do most of your poos (at least when you’re at home) on the potty now.

You have reveled in having my parents around and were pretty excited to visit your Oma and Opa in Kassel again, too. Unfortunately this time we didn’t get many photos.

A couple of weeks ago an old friend of mine from Australia visited with her husband and two year old son and you had a fabulous time playing with him. On Saturday afternoon your friend Linnea came over, and the three of you bounced and flopped and scampered over the trampoline while we stood in a ring around it to make sure you didn’t tumble off. It was just about the sweetest thing ever, but we couldn’t get a photo of it because we had to keep catching you!

You spent the first few days of being 19 months in a hospital in Kassel. You were terrified of the doctors and nurses but liked the cleaning lady. ‘Floor’, you said, ‘clean floor’. It was a bit scary but you coped really well and now even remind me to give you your ‘special air’ (ventolin puffer). I so loved having my parents around to share in your antics and your language explosion. You’ve also been pretty obsessed with slides this month. There were some rather huge slides in Kassel which you flew down fearlessly on your own, over and over, but here you are in Halden before we left, warming up.

 

18 months

Today, my darling, you are 18 months old, which is a pretty adorable age, and you are a pretty adorable boy. (These photos are from a trip to the park with Michael and your Opa during our recent trip to Germany.) You’re sleeping very well now, but more often than not you end up in our bed at some point over night, which means we wake around 6 with a little monkey bouncing up and down between us, saying ‘ogur?’ (yoghurt), ‘bow?’ (bowl). Luckily you’re content to bounce around a little while before we acquiesce and take you downstairs. The other day you were so excited on the way down the stairs that you said ‘ogur?’ ‘bow?’ ‘chair?’ ‘moo?’ (spoon). It’s very funny getting these insights into what’s going on in your head.

You’re really into sitting on things at the moment (unfortunately, including the cat) and have worked out how to climb up onto your little plastic deck chair. You come out with new words all the time. Recent acquisitions include scissors, shampoo, floor, food, knee, shop, walk, poopoo, away. You can say blue and yellow and green and you love it when I talk about the colours but I don’t think you can distinguish them yet. When we ask you ‘how many’ you try to count things. (You say two and four but not one.) It’s very cute when a bee or a fly flies close to you, and you say ‘bee! away!’, while waving your arms around enthusiastically. You are quite good at little two word phrases now, like ‘more nana’ and ‘dadda shoes’. When we were driving up the hill to the barnehage this morning (which is the same road we take to the swedish shopping centre, you said imploringly: ‘shop! more shop!’ You were very disappointed when I didn’t change our plans to suit you. I wish I could have.

Your favourite activity is to sit in the driver’s seat of the car with the car keys, playing with the steering wheel and all the buttons. Pretty much every time you see the car you want to do this. You also love busses, and point them out whenever you see one, saying ‘busss!’ Sometimes you say it when there isn’t a bus. ‘Can you see a bus, Felix’, I ask. ‘No!’ you shake your head and grin at me.

You are a sweet and cuddly little thing and love reading books with me. You are happiest when both Michael and I are around. Ah… It’s so hard to capture exactly what you’re like right now. I love when you smile and nod and meet our eyes, and when you trot around naked in our lounge room after your bath.

 

Seventeen months

We are in Austria right now with your Oma and Opa. When we arrived, on a rainy afternoon, we went straight to the supermarket for supplies. While Michael was putting our shopping bags into the car, I noticed some horses walking through a nearby playground, and I showed them to you. ‘Neigh neigh!’ you said. Up till now you’d only ever seen them in books and in the ‘Old Macdonald had a Farm’ song on youtube. When you woke up the next morning, before we even got you out of your crib, the very first thing you said was ‘neigh neigh!’, and pointed desperately at the window. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there are some horses around, we’ll visit them later’. Requests to visit the ‘neigh neighs’ haven’t let up yet. Every time we take you to see them you want to see them again immediately.

Your favourite word right now is ‘more’. You want more yoghurt, more songs, more peas, more spins in the air, more horses, more cows, more tunnels, more raspberries in your bath water, more tickles, more little trecks around whatever strange thing has caught your interest. It’s not always a request, sometimes it’s just a statement that you’re going to do something again, or even checking with us if you should do something again. When we were stuck in traffic on the way down here, you were trying on my sunglasses, peeping out of them, saying ‘daaaa!’, and then, when we laughed at you, ‘more?’ And you would do it again.

It’s very cute to hear you say ‘peas!’ The word always seems to be exclaimed. Some of your new words, apart from ‘more’, are ‘bubble’, ‘turtle’, ‘key’, ‘moon’, ‘star’, and ‘yoghurt’. You’re favourite song right now is ‘Tiny Tim’ (a song about turtles and bubbles), and you are getting very good at the actions.

You’ve got very good at bossing us around. You like to sit on a step, and point to the spot next to you to indicate that I should sit down too. Or you stand up, point at the floor until I stand up too, take my hand and lead me to where you want to go.

You had your last breastfeed the day before you turned 17 months. It was more my idea than yours, I’m afraid, but you took it in your stride, which I’m pretty sure you would not have done a month earlier. I miss it a little but you are sleeping so much better now, and we still have lots and lots of snuggles.

When we were staying in the B&B in Denmark we had to wait until 7.30 for breakfast. Given that you woke up at 4.30, you were none too impressed with this. For the last ten minutes before we went in, you clutched your bib and your spoon, saying ‘yoghurt? Mama? Yoghurt?’ Again and again and again. And when we finally got in there and poured you a bowl of yoghurt, you burst into inconsolable tears, because it wasn’t in a little pot like you were used to. I had to take you outside and calm you down, and stop talking about yoghurt and offer you some cheese, before you were happy to sit in your chair again, at which point you contentedly put away about three bowls worth of yoghurt, after all.

Apart from the horses, your favourite thing about Austria were all the cable cars. The first time we took you on one you were amazed every time a carriage went past in the other direction. ‘More?’ You would ask. And sure enough, another one would show up. After that, if we were walking or driving anywhere, as soon as you spotted a cable car you would point and complain urgently, letting us know that you wanted to get on it immediately. As long as you had a banana or a piece of apple strudel to munch on on the way back down, you were pretty much in heaven.

This month has been all about connections, between things, pictures, words and people. It has been such a delight to see you form such a strong bond with your German grandparents, and you’ve also had a wonderful time lately playing with our neighbour’s daughters and some of our friends’ children. When we read your books at bedtime, one of them has a picture of a sippy cup, and you always excitedly point at the picture of the cup and then at your own cup, and at the picture of the bed and at your own bed. When we were out for dinner this evening, you were fingering the buttons on my shirt. ‘Buttons’, I said, at which point you hastily pulled up your top and pointed at your belly button. When Michael returned from America with a t-shirt for you with a picture of a tyrannosaurus on it, the first thing you did was rush to your bookshelf and pull out the book about the Gruffalo, and say ‘argh!’ They did look quite alike. Then you dug around in your duplo box until you found your duplo dinosaur. You are so much fun to be around right now.

 

Sixteen months: brought to you by balls, bubbles, puddles

In a couple of days, my darling, you will turn sixteen months old. You amaze us every day. You make us laugh. A couple of times this week you stretched your normal 6am wakeup to 4.30 am, which we weren’t exactly thrilled about, but as you smiled at us sweetly, your father had to ask ‘could you be any cuter?’ You took your first steps over a month ago but it has only been in the past couple of days that you’ve been comfortable just walking around everywhere without having to think about it too much. I think it’s made you much more relaxed in general. Today you were running in circles around your father in the kitchen, giggling.

Your latest words are ‘shut’, and ‘keys’. You are quite frustrated when doors are shut, but at least you have a word for it now. You are pretty much obsessed by songs with actions, and there are several we watch together on youtube every day, in addition to songs that go with your boardbooks, songs you learn in barnehage, and songs we sing in the car and in the bath. Some of your favourites right now are ‘Down at the station’, ‘Insy Wincy Spider’, and a very silly one on youtube called ‘Uh-huh’ (actually you really like all the youtube clips from Super Simple Songs). You adore your books and have taken to toddling off to pick the one you want to read next and bringing it back to me. Your favourites at the moment are any with flaps to lift, and any about trains. You love pointing out animals and practicing your animal sounds.

This weekend your parents were a bit grumpy and tired, but together we turned it all around. As it was raining today and we couldn’t think of anything else to do, we went across to the big shopping centre in Sweden again. Your father bought you hundreds of balls. When you discovered them after your nap, you couldn’t believe it. ‘Ba! ba!’ you said, tottering over to them and plonking yourself in.

Later I made us a cake. I turned 33 this week and took two of these cakes to work on my birthday, but I decided we needed one all to ourselves. It turns out a family of three can demolish a sponge roll in one sitting, even if one family member is less than a meter tall. (It’s also probably time a sponge roll featured on my blog again. Our new oven is better for baking than our old one. I’m always tempted to try out variations such as chocolate and raspberries, but I will record here for posterity that you cannot beat a sponge roll with strawberries and cream.) You insisted on eating your piece with a spoon. Mermos was also impressed and snuck in through the kitchen window to lick up the cream.

Just before your bedtime, the sun finally came out, so we headed into the garden. You ran around the trampoline for a while and had a poke in the sandpit, but got frustrated trying to walk on the lawn in your gumboots so I took you over to the driveway. Oh my. We have the best puddles. The cats couldn’t quite work out why you wanted to stand in the middle of them.

I remember a card my Mum had sent me half way through my pregnancy, with a photo of a little boy toddling down a lane. And it’s hard to say exactly what I felt, except that it was somehow momentous, seeing you stamp around your very first chain of perfect puddles, and pick yourself up when you fell.

 

Fifteen months

Sometimes I am astonished at how quickly you change, but you are still you. You still calm down when I sing about the animals in the bus while we’re driving, exactly like you did when you were five months old. You have the same delight when you show us a new skill as you did in the beginning. You still want to nurse every couple of hours overnight, a trait that I am not quite so keen on. You learnt to walk this month, but you still prefer to crawl.

This month has been about songs. You have learnt some of the actions to the songs in the barnehage, and you love to clasp your hands and wave them about for the bumble bee song, and point your index fingers together to make a little diamond for twinkle twinkle little star. That’s my favourite one, I think, because it’s so careful and deliberate and quiet – you do it, and wait for us to notice. The other day we were driving and you pressed the button on your little elmo to make the ‘twinkle twinkle’ song, and then made the diamond with your fingers. You also do it when you hear any other music you like. It’s just adorable. You also sing little songs to yourself, and have a good go at saying ‘baby bumble bee’ – it comes out ‘baby bee’, which is pretty close.

You’re still using all the words I mentioned last month, and have added ‘switch’ (one of your favourite things), ‘cheek’, ‘toe’, and ‘hole’. I sometimes wonder about all the Norwegian whirling around in your head…It’s funny to think about how your erratically expanding vocabulary reflects your interests. We talk about toes a lot at the moment, partly when reading ‘Ten Little Fingers, Ten Little Toes’, but mostly it’s when I want to wrangle you into your pyjamas without the tears. ‘Look’, I say, ‘I wonder if the toes are going to come out the end this time. No, there are no toes there, I can’t see any toes, I don’t think it’s going to work this time. Oh… there they are!’ You laugh and laugh.

You love the bath and never want to get out. One night I let you stay in for ages and ages, and I could tell you were tired of it. ‘Do you want to get out now?’ ‘No!’ ‘Well, do you want to stay in?’ You looked very confused.

You dramatically say ‘fffff’ and hold out your hand as to say ‘stop’, to mean something is hot. You do this to the oven, to lights, to food in bowls. You are very earnest about this and seem quite pleased with yourself. You’re excited when you get to eat hot food. Just the past few days you’ve decided that you are interested in eating a variety of food after all and the anticipation when you’re about to tuck into dinner with your spoon is just priceless. The other week when we were having a picnic in the garden, Whitby came up and tried to eat our falafels. You looked straight at him with great concern and warned: ‘ffff! ffff!’

Whitby is your best friend. It is just delightful to see the two of you together, patting and head-butting each other. I am so grateful we have a cat like that for you to hang out with. He’s very selective and is afraid of strangers, especially other children, but he adores you and always comes to visit if you’re in the sandbox. You look out for him too and tell me if you see him outside, waiting to come in.

 

Fourteen months

This month has all been about ‘Mamma’ and ‘Dadda’. Mostly ‘Mamma’, to be precise, but you are pretty enthralled with your ‘Dadda’ too. When we are out shopping, if Michael disappears for a few moments, you scan the scene and crane your neck until you spot him, and then you point and pronounce enthusiastically: ‘Dadda!’ If I disappear or leave the room even for a moment it is another matter altogether and within seconds you are in tears.

The middle of this month was a little challenging as you were feverish again and seemed to have terrible pains in your gums. Unfortunately there are no new teeth to show for all that suffering – I really hope they make it through next time, if that’s what that was about.

You’ve got quite a few words now:

Mamma
Dadda
Door
Bye bye
Se (look, see – I think this is your first Norwegian word)
No (accompanied by head-shaking)
Nom nom (breastfeed, food, yum)
Baa (sheep)
Ba (ball)
Ba (bath)
Bow (bowl)
Nana (banana)
Nawwww (cat, cuddle)
Aaaah! (sort of screetched. cat, meow)
Rah (lion)
Woof woof (dog)
Broom (car)
Toot toot (train)
Dom (down)
Do (stop)
Daaa (there)
Du (duck)
No (nose)
Mou (mouth)
Ah (eye)
Shoe

You’ve also made some very passable attempts at saying ‘waffle’

You take great pleasure in naming the world. Sometimes I think you point things out merely for the satisfaction of naming them. You say bye bye to everything right now, including toys and computers. You are very nearly walking. You’ve started initiating peekaboo games – hiding things behind your back, or hiding yourself, and jumping out, grinning your head off, saying ‘Aha!’ It’s just about the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.

 

Thirteen months

Well, it’s been a challenging month for all of us, little guy, but you seem to have come through it with your cheeky grin intact. You’ve made great friends with the kitties. Whitby, who was very suspicious of you to begin with, has nominated himself as your special friend, and often comes up for snuggles. For a while there you were being very sweet indeed and saying nawwwwwww as you buried your head in their fur. Now you are a little more confident however, your displays of affection are more animated, and I am not sure how long the cats will put up with you.

The weather has been unseasonably nice for this time of year, and we are spending more and more time outside. You were pretty impressed with the trampoline.

You like zooming around on your walker. You love cars now – both toy and real varieties. In the playground the other day, you pointed at a car going past, and said ‘brrrmm!’ You’ve started holding telephones up to your ear. You love chatting with my parents on skype – you are so excited when I start the call that you clap your hands with anticipation. It is very sweet to see.

You eat grapes, strawberries, bananas, porridge, pasta with tomato sauce, bread with mackerel paste, plenty of breast-milk, and not much else. Sleep at night is still a challenge, and I have been working so hard to clear out the spare room so we can move you in there. Hopefully this weekend. Just today I noticed a new tooth coming through – your seventh, and your first for nearly four months. I was so relieved to see it because I had no idea why you had been screaming for hours.

As far as I’m concerned, you are pretty much the loveliest thing in the whole world.