waiting for words

I am stealing this blog title from my sister. She write this as her son Noah turns six months and begins his "ohs" and "ahs." I write this as the mom of the 17 month old boy who still just utters nothingness. Well, not complete nothingness, but I am beginning to get a tad anxious and a bit concerned that he may need speech therapy.

Here are his utterances:
"da da" = daddy, obviously, but also indicates anything that reminds him of daddy; like today I whispered the word "snack" into his ear because if I say it out loud Marty will start to bark, and when I whispered he giggled and said "da da." I realized that he did this because his da da whispers nursery rhymes into his ear.
"ma ma" and sometimes a "mom" = yours truly
"daw" = dog; sometimes he will utter a delayed "ggg" sound too
"kk" = car and/or truck
"na na" = no

But he understands soooo much. One of his favorite books right now is this "Organic Baby First Words" book which just has pictures of objects and words. He knows banana, apple, duck, plane, keys, ball...and many more. He knows his body parts. He can follow/respond to most commands, like "go get your boots" or "put your fireman in the driver seat of the fire truck." He has babbling conversations too. He seems to say "all done" a lot, like when done eating or done with a diaper change. And he also seems to say "yeah" or "nah" when I ask him questions. On a daily basis I am not frustrated at all by his communication skills. But I so look forward to being able to have a conversation, even if it is broken down into simple phrases like "me want" and "go outside" and "green tree." And so I still feel a tad concerned that he is not forming more intelligible words. We will see what the doctor says next month.

water, hockey, climbing, na-na

These are Eddie's most favorite things right now. I swear he would play with/in water all day if he could. Of course he still loves bath time - earlier this month he gave his grandparents a show while he laid down horizontally in the water and splashed around as if swimming. These days he is a bit more calm in the bath and enjoys his new bath books. But his new water obsession is the kitchen facuet, well really any facuet. He loves to wash his hands, which I guess is a good thing. And I made the mistake of allowing him onto the kitchen island one afternoon and he quickly discovered how to turn the kitchen sick facuets on and off, splashing around with such intensity. He is part mad scientist, part amphibian.

He has a genuine love for hockey. Numerous times throughout the day, I would say at least three times, he will run to the basement down and whine to go downstairs so that he can grab his sticks and hit pucks into the net. If you utter the word "hockey" he will run to the basement door. Once I made the mistake of saying to him while he was eating, "you have to eat so you can grow up big and strong and play hockey" and he literally leapt out of his high chair to run downstairs. He also knows the words for "stick" and "puck" and "score." I bet your average 17 month old doesn't have those in their vocabulary.

Climbing. If he wasn't playing with water or playing hockey Eddie would be climbing something. He climbs onto every chair with ease. He scales up chairs and onto tables. He cascades over cushions on the couch and aims high for pictures and mirrors hanging on the wall. He just wants to be higher and higher these days.

Dr. Barry Brazelton talks about the increasing "negativism" at this age - the struggle between supporting your toddlers self-assertion and disciplining them to define limits to protect them. And so one of the most popular words of toddlers is "no." Eddie's version of no is "na na." He says it to acknowledge that he knows something is a no-no. He says it while pointing to the oven, while pointing to glass bottles, while attempting to bite his dad and even sometimes amidst one of his climbing attempts. Although discipline does not come naturally to me, I have had to step up and set some limits. Sometimes I am shocked by now much I am saying "no" these days, Like, no Eddie, "we don't play in the garbage," or "Eddie, remember, no going by Marty while she's eating, we can't bother her while she's eating," or "no, the toliet is not for playing, it's for making poopies and potties." Sometimes it's like he doesn't listen or rather, doesn't care to obey. I can pull him away from Marty's dish while she's eating, and then he just runs right back to it. But I am noticing some progress the more we repeat these lessons. Actually, I can't even recall the last time I had to pull him away from Marty while she was eating as it hasn't seemed to occur at all this week.

I guess this is his 17 month update. It has been a rough month of sickness - first Eddie with a 10 day cold and then me with a 3 day stomach flu. But it has also been a good start to a new year with our new music class and new play group. Eddie is truly a good, social kid and I am assured of this the more I see him interact with others, and the more I observe the others and some of their undesirable behaviors. Eddie is gentle, focused, kind, curteous, passionate, independent and downright fun.

a regression

Lately I feel like there has been a regression in, how can I say it accurately/appropriately, some of Eddie's habits/behavior. In particular sleeping and nursing. And in many ways the two go hand in hand. See I created this ritual of nursing Eddie to sleep when he was an infant - it is only natural, especially for a high-needs, colicky baby like he was. This ritual continued well beyond the colic stage and throughout various stages of development Eddie continued to fall asleep at the breast. I just got really good at waiting for the perfect moment to de-latch him, sliding my nipple from his dropped jaw, and ever so gingerly laying him in his crib where he would most often just roll onto his belly and continue to drift into deeper sleep. There have been pockets of time where he has not needed the boob to fall asleep, sometimes even refusing it outright, or mostly just nursing for a tad and then de-latching himself and I put him down and he falls asleep on his own. These are the good moments, success in our sleep trials and tribulations. But the last month or so has been bad. Between sleeping more away from home over the holidays and being sick, the system has resorted back to the newborn-like habit of falling asleep on mom. Even worse now is that he consistently awakens when I go to de-latch him and then he gets really upset when I transfer him to his crib, often never falling back asleep and thereby avoiding a nap altogether, unless you count the 20-30 minutes he spent on the boob. And when we're away from home I do whatever I can to mitigate his crying altogether so as not to wake others in the house, which means spending even more time with him, sometimes up to 1.5 hours, to get him to fall asleep and transfer into the pack in play successfully. Argh. It's exhausting just writing about it.

During the day, he suddenly wants to nurse all the time, like a newborn. I swear it is like every 3 hours or so. He whines to be picked up or held and then tugs at my shirt. I know that a lot of it was because he was sick, and I always think that it is good for him to breastfeed when sick to ensure good fluid intake. But it also concerns me because it seems like then he doesn't eat as much real food. For the first time since last summer, I had to pump the other night because I got engorged - he is drinking so much that my body must think that I have a 3 month old, not a 16 month old!

Breastfeeding is a beautiful thing. The older Eddie gets, the better it gets, in a way. It is hard to explain. A toddler seems to go through constant shifts of emotion and energy. One moment ferociously chasing a ball, one moment whining for help in a task, one moment giggling in pleasure at his own conquests. And in the breakdown moments, when exhausted and frustrated, the most natural thing for me to do is scoop him up into my arms and sit down with him to see if he needs comforting. Nine times out of ten he will tug at my shirt and we will share an intimate moment together that helps calm our nerves, lower our blood pressure and heart rate and releases endorphins, making us both feel so relaxed, so at ease, and ready to take on the next task whether it be naptime or playtime. How could anyone, mom or child, not want this? And yet I have to start to modify the ritual, in particular pre-bedtime/naptime, because it is starting to take its toll on our sleep quality. I have to start to, gulp, wean him. This will be one of the hardest things I ever have to do, dare I say.

sick again

After the grandparents left on Tuesday Eddie came down with a cold. What started off as the occasional exclamatory cough turned into a full blown mucous-filled hack by Tuesday night. And by Wednesday the nose was running too. On Thursday he looked the worst - cheeks reddened from sleep-smeared snot and eyes all glossy. But overall his mood and energy was pretty normal, and he never had a fever. Finally today, Sunday, he seems to be on the road to recovery. After not leaving the house for almost a week we finally bundled him up and took him outside to play in the mounds of snow. It's a tough time of year, and now that Eddie is a toddler, I have accepted the fact that he is going to get sick. Yet that didn't prevent me from starting to feel bad about the fact that this is the third cold he has had this cold/flu season...yet last year he never got sick, and I feel incredibly grateful for that. But then I read that the average baby get 8 colds in the first two years of life...so he is still way below average for sickness. I try to think that getting sick now is good because it will help build his immune system. But it is still hard to see your child not well. Here's to hoping that this week is a better one.

christmas, part two

Grandma Bonnie and Grandpa Rick came for the annual post-Christmas visit and showered E4 with more gifts, including a Radio Flyer tricycle which we have yet to put together. Highlights of the visit included a big turkey dinner, a brunch out at John's Place in Roscoe Village, a trip to Navy Pier for Winter Wonderland and we checked out a new play space called Family Grounds Cafe where Eddie frolicked with other toddlers.



Eddie sports his new Boston Red Sox windbreaker


His favorite gift, by far, a Cabbage Patch Kid named Pierre Albert!


Wearing his gift from Uncle Charlie


Dad and son in matching flannels


Checking out the ice rink...gearing up for hockey


Watching a train go by