My gorgeous clever boy :)

I thought I'd make a post to do with my gorgeous son. He is now 18 months old (and 2 days!) and I just adore him. I love his chatting (which mostly is still babbling, although it's more "complex" babbling now!), and his mannerisms, and his spark and energy! His understanding of us and things we ask him are amazing, it seems so strange to think how he went from a tiny boy so unable to do anything for himself to one that now can follow instructions, and asert his wants and needs to us!

His communication is still mainly non verbal, the main word he uses is "again", which he sometimes uses to mean "yes". This caused some concern to the doctor who saw him for his 18 month review on Friday, who again questioned his hearing, and mentioned speech therapy. We said we weren't concerned about his hearing at all, and he HAS made huge progress with his verbal and non verbal communication since we saw the same doctor 6 months ago. So we will wait til he's 2, and if the doctor is still concerned then we will allow them to run hearing tests and anything else they deem necessary, as if it comes back all clear, and that he is simply a slow speaker, then we will be proved right, and 2 is still an ok age to pick up any more serious problems, so we are ok in waiting until then.

But he IS getting his wants across more and more. He signs "more" very frequently, we are trying to introduce more specific signs so that he knows there is a difference between "more" and wanting specific things, so we have a clearer idea. We are teaching him "drink", "food/eat" and "sleep" on a daily basis, as well as "milk". We sign "nappy" to him regularly too. He still needs prompting to sign for a few things, the only signs he does unprompted is "more", and "milk". He also understands what nodding and shaking the head means and how to use it approptiately, which is very useful!

If he signs "more" while looking at the table on which there is his food, and a drink, we ask him "do you want a drink?" and if it's what he wants, he nods his head and makes an affirmative noise. Then we ask him to sign "drink" and show him ourselves and he will sign back to us, and we give it to him. After his 18 month review I did worry if encouraging signing over talking was helping, or delaying things, but I figure (with some comments from people at a forum) that any form of communication is good, and it will help him be less frustrated while he is still coming to grips with talking.

Something that I think will help him immensely is that over the past couple of days he has rediscovered his love of books and will pull out book after book after book for me to read to him. As well as just reading the story to him I now on most pages point out various things on the illustrations, or ask him to point them out, and I am sometimes amazed at how he knows what something is! I asked him yesterday where the horns were on a picture of a cow, and he pointed them out right away, I wasn't expecting him to get them, and I spent ages wondering "how on earth does he know what horns are?" and then I realised in a few of his "that's not my..." books they have horns on them :)

He is also copying animal noises of varying creatures very well! He will do cow, dog, monkey, elephant, bee, wolf, snake, cat (sometimes), duck, lion (he loves this one!), and possibly a few others!

He has mastered so many physical skills now, he runs, walks along on tiptoes, steers his pushalong toys around obstacles, climbs up onto chairs turns around and sits on them, gets down from chairs slowly still facing out and letting himself drop to the floor, he can step up shallow steps properly, deeper ones he still either turns himself round to go down or he crawls up. If he stumbles while running he can correct himself a lot of the time and can avoid falling. He hasn't figured out jumping yet but that's only a matter of time I'm sure! He even had a good go yesterday on a balance beam at a toddler group (for their physical skills), first holding onto Janice's hands as he walked along, but then he got on all by himself and tried to take a step on it!

He is also working out humour! He has learnt that doing certain things will make us laugh, and so he deliberately does them in order to make us laugh! Certain facial expressions are his favourite way at the moment, but also noises he makes, some of his laughs will often provoke us to laugh too!

He also LOVES us to sing! I have learnt that singing a song will stop a boy from wriggling while changing him, or getting him dressed, or will let us brush his teeth with little resistance! Which has made bedtime SO much less stressful I can't believe! There is now NO stress with bedtime at all, there was little before but now with no wriggles it's lovely! He doesn't really have a favourite song yet, he likes any song I sing really! But I tend to sing "if you're happy and you know it" while he's getting dressed as he then joins in the actions and it gives him something to do as well while I'm popping up his sleepsuit! He starts clapping as soon as I start that song, it's so cute! His face when I ask him "shall I sing you a song, Robert?" is lovely! His face lights up and he nods eagerly saying "Geh, geh" (again, again) hehe! So I sing him a song, and when I get to the end and stop, he'll squeal "a-GEH!" and I sing it again hehe.

Jonathan has been concentrating on the video backlog from Robert's birthday party onwards, so the photos we've taken recently aren't up there yet, which is a shame!

But here's a video he has put together which I can't help but feel teary about, a montage from birth to 1 year old. From a tiny, sleepy baby to a big boy, running around, with little pearly teeth... awwww :) I'm so happy I'll get to see another baby growing up, and also I can't WAIT to see how good a big brother Robert will be. I love him to bits and I can't believe there was ever a time he wasn't in my life!