16 months Old
Big accomplishment for this month: animal sounds. It all started with our randomly picking up this children’s book that puts all the animal sounds to the song, “If You’re Happy and You Know It.” All of a sudden, Sam plugged in “baa baa” for the sheep and quickly added “bzzzz” for the bee. After that, there was no stopping him! John gets most of the credit, though, as he taught him elephant, fish (how many kids know fish? J) and most of the others (snake, lion, duck, cat, cow). Check out the video as I captured many of them on DV :-).
Another funny story was how Sam learned a horse says “neigh.” We were standing in the kitchen and the barnyard toy randomly called out “Neigh” (it is known to be possessed sometimes but usually it’s the cow sound that we hear J). Sam didn’t miss a beat – “Neigh,” he said from the kitchen. I looked at him and said, “What does a horse say?” and he repeated it. Done and done.
Sign-language: His work on please and thank you (from last month) paid off – he can now sign both and say “peas”. He even made up his own sign for trash (watch for it in the video).
Mandarin: Sam now exclusively uses the Mandarin word “bee-zuh” when referring to his nose. He also understands eyes, ears, nose, head, mouth, jeans, shirt, jacket, house, car, truck, flower (and I’m sure much more – -this was just what I was able to understand from our babysitter :-). Sam can say “ayi” (which was both his first Mandarin word and his favorite) which means “auntie” and is the word we use for Mary, our babysitter, as well as "sheh sheh" which means thank you.
Cool story: On Monday, when we said goodbye to Mary, I said "sheh sheh" to her and Sam signed "thank you." 🙂
Obsession of the month: Trash!
Every Tuesday night ends with much anticipation of Wednesday morning: our trash day. I tried my best to get his excitement on video as it’s fun to watch, but it happens so fast, I wasn’t able to grab the camera in time. Trash is so important that Sam even made up his own sign for it (watch for it in the video montage). And when we are in the car, he always notices the different trash cans, even if they’re significantly different in shape or appearance. Watch out Oscar, this kid rivals you in his love of trash!
In a distant 2nd place for “obsession of the month” was pumpkins or “bump(s).” After I pointed them out to him, he noticed them everywhere we went – from actual gourds on porches to flags waving with embroidered pumpkins to windows painted with pumpkins at our Trader Joe’s.
Bruises, Gooseeggs, bumps, scrapes: The big winner this month was Sam’s chin which got a doozey of a scrape the day before Halloween. But it was good timing as it made him look much more fierce in his bear costume.
Most endearing development: Holding hands. Sam started reaching for our hands this month: for help getting down/up a step, to show us what he wants to do/where he wants to go, or just for fun. He also puckers up now when he wants to give you a kiss.
He just started understanding “nose kisses” too which he finds terribly funny.
After his climbing streak of last month, he seems to have taken a break, much to our relief. We no longer allow him to climb on the IKEA toy storage "stairs" – and after a number of grumpy reactions, he now is adapting well 🙂
Just for the record, Sam’s favorite books for this month were Chugga Chugga Choo Choo (thanks Jen, Ryan, Emeline and Brennan), Bees Making Honey (thanks Carolyn, Jacob, and Adam), Curious George First Word collection (I’m sorry I forget who was the wonderful giver of these last 3), Time for Sleep, and Hide and Seek Puppies 🙂
Exploration has focused on turning toys into bridges and steps and trying out their resulting stability (or lack thereof). Mostly this involves the plastic table which he flips over and then uses the frame as well as the table top for experiments (see video).
Other updates: This month we said good bye to nursing. It ended up being Sam’s choice as to when it happened, which, I think, made it much easier on all of us. He was so excited to see his babysitter, Emily, that he decided he wanted to play instead of nurse. And that was the end of that. Nicely done, Sam ;-).
Oh, and I forgot to give the stats from last month’s doctor’s visit: 32.5 inches tall (up 1.25 inches) (90%ile), 24.5 lbs (up 1.5 lbs) (50%ile), and 51.5 cm head circumference (up 1.0 cm) (>100%ile).
16 month photos