At 17 months

I haven't blogged in a while, but not because Nathan isn't being cute!

He is doing so many new things. I mentioned to Jen recently that he has turned into a little tape recorder, repeating whatever we ask him to say. There are very few sounds he can't repeat now.

But there are other things. He turns pages well, even in magazines. He can be very gentle. I think he is unusually aware of his body. He walks backwards to be silly. He started climbing into and out of the molded toybox he got for Christmas immediately. He goes up and down the stairs pretty securely, and is working on climbing onto the couch himself.

Last week we went for a walk, with him walking along with me. The temperature was in the 40s, and the sidewalk was clear, but there are still piles of snow, especially at the ends of driveways. He took his favorite kitchen spatula with him when we walked, and used it to dig into the snow piles. He loved it. He touched the snow with his fingers when it was stuck on the spatula. Then he started tossing snow into the air, and stepping on it when it plopped onto the sidewalk. One time he tossed it in the wrong direction, and it came down onto him, onto his face and neck, and into the neck of his coat. He squealed, but was laughing!

His language skills are improving daily. Some of that has really been fun. "Ba" meant ball, bat, banana and bus for quite a while. He has been saying "Nana" for months, but every time I tried to get him to say "banana," it would just be "ba." I was determined to get him to say the whole word, so I said, "Say banana."

Nathan said "ba."

I tried again. "No, say banana."

After several rounds of this, he became exasperated with me. Finally, he pointed to the banana, and said, "Ba!" Then he pointed at me, and said, "Nana!"

We still haven't gotten him to say the word banana.

The Zoo at Goebbert's Pumpkin Farm

Today Jen and Ben took Nathan out to Goebberts. Al, Marilyn and Muriel (Al's mom and Nathan's great grandma) met them there. Jen had invited me to join them, which I did.

At first Nathan seemed a bit overwhelmed by the unusual environment. He got excited about the ponies going in a circle with kids riding them, but he was a bit afraid of the large camels that also had kids riding on them. He seemed to get sleepy, and wanted to be held.

Then we went into the petting zoo. The toucan and the lemurs and the foxes didn't thrill him much. But then we got to the llamas. Cups of carrots were available to feed to the animals, so we fed some to the llamas. Nathan definitely got a kick out of that. There were some very tall girrafes that amazed me perhaps more than him. He liked some turkey-looking birds, and the tiger cubs (large cubs, weighing over 100 pounds). He was fascinated with the white-necked ravens, which are larger than crows. His favorite was a baby zebra that came over to where he was standing, and mouthed his fingers! It's lips were like velvet, and he got so excited he was squealing with the fun of it all. It was such a joy to watch.

It was a fun afternoon. Thanks for including me, Jen! I loved it.

Nate's Big Walk

Walking

All night long Nathan was walking around the family room. He started out walking along the couch and then minutes later he was crusing around the family room making his way towards the kitchen. At this rate, we will have a full fledged walker on our hands within a week.

Nathan's First Steps

Nathan has been walking along the couch for weeks but has lacked the confidence to remove his hands for more than a second...that all changed today. This morning he removed his hands and walked about 3 steps. He continued to do this many times throughout the day. He will be walking before we know it!! Take a look, we hope you enjoy!

Changes

In July I went to Bolivia for two weeks. When I left, Nathan was rolling everywhere he wanted to be. He sat for long periods if put down on his butt, and if he wanted something out of is reach, he would flop down onto his stomach and roll to get it. But once he got to his new destination, he couldn't sit himself up. When on his stomach, he would sometimes get up onto his hands and knees, and rock, like he was getting ready to crawl somewhere, and sometimes he would go forward two or three times, but invariable he would push backwards with his arms and end up back where he started.

Two weeks is the longest I had been away from him. I was afraid that he would treat me like a stranger when I returned. He still didn't like strangers before I went, and took his time getting used to new people. But while I was gone, Laura and the girls were up here from Arizona. They got together with Al and Marilyn a lot, and with Denise, Phil and PJ and lots of other relatives. They went to a water park, to the zoo, to the racetrack, and gathered at various houses. Jen and Nathan even spent the night at Marilyn's along with with aunts and cousins. So it was a very social time for the boy.

He gave me a big grin immediately when he first saw me when I got back. I loved it and told my self it was because he knows me and loves me, but I soon realized that he had gotten over his shyness while I was away. He is a bit tentative when he meets someone new, but only for a few minutes. He has realized that being the center of attention can be fun, and he uses it. He performs whenever he has an audience now.

The first Tuesday I was back, on July 21, Nathan had a new trick. During the day, I saw him sit himself onto his butt from the crawling position. Ben had seen him do it once before, but he did it five different times that I saw that day. I wasn't watching him constantly either.

On July 23, Thursday, he all of a sudden seemed to figure out how to go forward when crawling without pushing himself backwards with his arms. His crawling was tentative and cautious, but he was making forward progress. No more need to roll! That really opens up a guy's world!

By the next Tuesday, he had learned that he could pull himself to his feet, especially if someone was sitting on the floor with him and he could use clothing and hands to help him get up. By the end of that week, he was pulling himself up on the coffee table and on the couch.