Well, it's officially Fall and I'm so excited that it's October already! It came fast, but I'm ok with that since this is Kurtis' and my birthday month, and there's now less than 3 months until we meet our baby boy! Which reminds me, I haven't explained baby's heart condition on here yet...but I'll save that for a separate post as that could get lengthy. Plus, right now, I need to show Daren some love and talk about him this time!
 |
| That face! He melts me. |
With the excitement of and yet careful attention to his brother's development, I sometimes wonder if Daren is already being pushed out of the spotlight and I'm not focusing on him enough. It's been a while since I've recorded Daren's milestones, which I've felt quite guilty about lately. I've been rationalizing it away, thinking, "I don't have a record of my own milestones and it doesn't make a difference to me" and "Every one of our children is going to be about the same when they reach various milestones, they each happen and we'll enjoy them in the moment" or, "I'll totally remember when he started doing this." Then I worry about all the other stuff I need to do as a homemaker/mother/wife (I won't even attempt to list everything). We've all thought and heard it time and time again, it's all so hard to balance! But that's life, and we do the best we can. So while all these concerns may be valid, I still can't rest easy knowing I'm not doing anything besides simply taking photos and relying on the dates on them as my "records"--though they do help significantly. Anyway, without further ado...
Daren is 20 months old!
 |
| Yep, that's marker--don't worry, they're washable and came right off, woo hoo! That was a happy mama moment to let my boy make a mess and not have to worry about it. :) |
Can you believe it?! I hardly can. My baby is already 20 months, WHAAT?! As you can see, he's turned into quite the troublemaker--though what kid at this age isn't? Nevertheless, I do think he is about 20% more crazy than other kids his age. If you think I'm biased then you probably haven't been around to witness what I'm talking about in person! Though I will admit, I have seen/heard of crazier kids so I'm grateful that he's not that bad.
Well, probably the biggest milestones lately have been related to Daren's communication skills. He still jabbers a lot, but he now says things like: "yeah" (which he says in response to almost any question we ask him), "no", "where did I go?" (while hiding or playing peekaboo), "I don't know", "thank you" (which sounds more like "dan-da"), "baby" (followed by kisses on my belly), "hi", "bye bye", "dog", "light", and "wow/whoa". He's learning his body parts right now, and can say, "eye" and "nose", but simply points to everything else he knows, which are his ears, hair, mouth and belly. Other things he communicates without actually saying the words, things like, "please" and "milk", which he does the sign language for instead, or he'll just point and grunt at things to let us know what he wants. His pediatrician was actually worried that he wasn't saying more words, and had me get in contact with our local school district to get him evaluated for speech therapy. After the evaluator observed Daren, she said he was the cutest and smartest kid she had observed in months! He does understand a lot and gets his points across somehow, whether vocally or by gestures (...or screaming lol). We're so happy that he's developing as he should and it's exciting to be with him every day as he continues to show us how smart he is.
My favorite things he's learning now are animals/animal sounds. He loves learning about them so much that he'll just play the Fisher Price animals app on the iPod for a good half hour at least throughout the day. It's so much fun practicing animal sounds with him, he's become very good at mimicking. He knows the sounds for cow, bear, pig (yes, he even snorts and it's the cutest thing EVER), duck, horse, sheep, elephant, monkey and lion. I'll have to record him making the noises and post it STAT, because it is way too stinking cute!
Daren is also really getting into singing (surprised?), whether he's mimicking or humming his own tune. What amazes me the most about this new talent is he's pretty good at matching pitch! In the car when we listen to the radio, he'll sing the "ohhh"s in "Royals" by Lorde, and the "ho hey"s in "Ho Hey" by The Lumineers and is usually right on. He loves dancing too, which is one of our favorite pastimes to do together. That kid has got serious rhythm, I'm not kidding, he'll be dancing and clapping almost perfectly in time to a song and then if the beat stops (like if a drum stops keeping the beat or something), he'll stop dancing and get a little frustrated because he just loves the beat! We have no doubt he's going to be very musical throughout his life.
 |
| Daren the Explorer, and climbing all by himself! |
And then there's my not-so-favorite milestones, like climbing. Oh can this boy climb--and he is LOVING it, much to my dismay! BUT he still hasn't even attempted to climb out of his crib yet, weird huh? Ok, not weird, how about GLORIOUS!?! The climbing can be nice sometimes though, especially now that I'm not as capable of picking him up since he's 26 lbs and I'm 27 weeks pregnant! Half the time he still wants me to hold him though, or else he just goes limp when I try holding his hand to have him walk alongside me. Luckily (for him) my hips are still sit-able, so I technically can carry him and do at times, but I probably shouldn't even be doing that anyway.
So those are the great and exciting things Daren has been up to lately. I will do my best at keeping the blog updated (and appreciate your help in keeping me on my toes), so until next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment