It's hard for me to believe that our little baby boy is 18 months old today! What a crazy and fun 18 months it has been. Here's a little snapshot of what our Daniel D is like at this moment. OK, maybe it won't be so little....I've got a lot to catch up on, since I am so delinquent both with blogging, and with keeping up the baby book. :(
Daniel is the sweetest, happiest baby! He is so rarely cranky, that I find myself at a total loss for what to do when he is! He smiles at everyone he meets, doesn't mind his sisters' suffocating "hugs" (Rachel!), and has never really exhibited much stranger anxiety, going easily to just about anyone who wants to hold him, at least for a bit. He is, however, definitely a mama's boy, and I hope he stays that way forever :). He loves to cuddle when he first wakes up from a nap, resting his head on my shoulder, little chubby hands resting on my back. Sometimes he even gives me pats. And he will often crawl up to me when I'm playing with him on the floor, climb into my lap, pull himself up, and hug me, just because. I love those sweet hugs and cuddling moments more than anything. Lately he has become a little more impatient with the post-sleep cuddling, often straining to bend over the edge of the rocker to look for a book or toy, but I'll take what I can get for as long as I can get it!
One frustrating thing for this book-loving, cuddle-loving mama is that Daniel doesn't usually want to sit still and look at books together. He loves to look at books if HE can hold them and turn the pages, but has no desire for me to do so, or to hear the story most of the time. He loves to rip books, and any books with paper pages have had to be quarantined out of his reach, because he has gleefully ripped a few! He's usually pretty willing to read with me before naps or bed, but that's mostly it. He's an expert at turning himself around and wriggling off my lap when he doesn't want to be there, which is often how our story times end. I hope he'll develop more tolerance for reading with me as time goes on.
Daniel is really only quiet when he's asleep (and that is often how I can tell if he has fallen asleep in the car). He babbles like crazy, and boy, does he love to sing! His current repertoire of recognizable songs includes: Twinkle Twinkle/ABCs, Are You Sleeping, Mary Had a Little Lamb, Baby Beluga, and part of a preschool song Rachel sings..."If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, oh what a rain that would be! I'd stand outside with my mouth open wide...(and here's Daniel's part:) Ah, ah ah ah, ah ah ah, ah ah ahhhh!" Mind you, his "singing" consists usually of "baaa baaa baaaa"s, but I'm sure in no time, he'll be singing the words! We often joke that he's going to be a musician, because not only does he have impeccable ability to carry a tune already, but he also loves to dance and has great rhythm. He's right in sync with the rhythm of whatever song he is rocking back and forth to. It is so cute to watch.
Words...it is amazing how quickly his speech is (finally) developing! His list of words has grown just within the last week or two. He has been saying uh oh and no for a while now, but has just recently added baaaall, baby, book, dada, gaga, seeee, and to my great delight, an occasional mama. Yesterday the girls got him to say sissy. This is great progress and we are so excited!
Also within the last week or so, Daniel has started taking independent steps! He has been cruising the furniture and walls and walking behind push toys for awhile now, and has even been walking holding our hands (or just one hand), but last week he started taking some very halting, unbalanced steps toward us when we stand him up and move a little bit away. This usually ends with him crashing into us, but just yesterday he was able to walk the distance of about 4-5 feet before crashing. He has also since last week been able to stay standing (without holding anything) for up to a minute. Still not standing up on his own without pulling up on something, but he'll get there. I am really hopeful that he will be walking well soon, because it will make playing outside this summer much easier (and more fun for him). He's got about 4-6 weeks to go to be the age his sisters were when they started walking, so we'll see if he comes in ahead of them. His preferred methods of getting around these days are cruising between objects, or crawling full speed ahead on his hands and knees. He'll still occasionally army crawl, but we see it less and less.
Thankfully, Daniel's a pretty good eater, and will eat almost anything put in front of him. Well, anything but scrambled eggs, or spaghetti (unless he can pick it up himself). He's got a really good appetite most days, a welcome change from the continuing daily battles we have with picky big sister Rachel. And boy, when he's done, he's done! He'll usually start flinging pieces of the food, one by one, off his tray, or will just get it over with quickly by sweeping both hands rapidly back and forth. Lots of fun in the morning when he's decided he's done with his Kix cereal (picture little ball like cereal pieces rolling EVERYWHERE in the kitchen).
Sleeping....finally, we have a good little sleeper! It was really pretty awful for the first year, so much so that I think I have blocked a lot of the details out, but just after his first birthday, we finally got him to sleep through the night, and he's done great ever since! There is still an occasional cry in the middle of the night, but usually the only intervention required, if any, is to sneak in there and replace his pacifier. He still naps great too, and now that he's only taking one nap per day, he's so tired by 1:00 that he often falls asleep nursing before I even put him in bed.
Daniel continues to adore his sisters, and enjoys watching them as they act like goofballs trying to make him laugh. He likes to give this cute, coy little stare to them (or Daddy, or sometimes perfect strangers) to try and engage them. It's as if he's saying, "Hey there, notice me!" The girls are so proud of him and his new accomplishments, and Megan will say almost daily, "He's so cute!" Rachel, bless her heart, is sweet and careful with Daniel (when she's not strangling him with a hug). Even when he is coming after her to bite her, she never gets forceful with him.
Biting....ahh yes, biting. We have a biter. He's not an aggressive, I'm-mad-at-you-so-I'm-going-to-bite-you biter. For Daniel it's more of a sensory thing. He gets overly excited, or worked up, and needs something to sink his teeth into, preferably of the human flesh variety, to center himself again. His current favorite is my right shoulder and arm. You should see the bruises I'm sporting right now. I'm glad at least that he's moved on from biting faces, which was his previous favorite. If he's feeling particularly cheeky, he'll go at a mad crawl toward one of the girls and sink his teeth into them. His biting---er, love----knows no bounds, and does not discriminate. The girls are very patient with him, but it has brought them both to tears (it really does hurt, trust me!). He's got 13 teeth now, and he knows how to use them! Just one more reason I'm thankful he's not in daycare. He'd surely have been kicked out by now for this.
If there's one thing that defines my little boy at this moment in his life, that makes him so different than his sisters, it's his determined single-mindedness about getting into things. It's like Operation Seek and Destroy. Play with toys? Nahh, he'd rather just dump them! But really, who needs toys anyway? The kitchen's where it's at! Daniel's single most favorite pastime is opening my cabinets and systematically dumping out the contents. Muffin tins, bread pans, measuring cups, cutting boards, colanders....it's all fair game. Glass, metal, plastic.....big or small....all of it. I completely redid my kitchen cabinets to try and keep the smaller stuff out of his reach, but he continues to ransack them daily. I've gotten to the point where, many days, I don't even bother to pick things up off the floor until he's in bed. It's a losing battle, because he will just dump it all out again. In the meantime we just step over (and on) the cooling racks, cutting boards, and bowls that litter the kitchen. I have tried giving him a mixing spoon and bowl to bang together, but he doesn't actually want to functionally PLAY with the stuff. Just wants to scatter it about. Oh yeah....and Daniel also enjoys getting into the kitchen trash can. It's just tall enough for him to stand at and peer into once he flips the lid open. And if I'm not watching carefully enough and the trash can is too full, the contents will soon be pulled out by one busy little boy, one dirty paper towel at a time. Much of my kitchen and living room are a disaster right now, because anything we don't want the boy to get into, we have to put up increasingly higher. He can now reach things within 6 or so inches from the edge of the kitchen counters. So the girls' school papers, forbidden toys, my work files...all fair game, and all get piled on top of each other in increasingly haphazard places. This is one phase I don't think I'll be sorry to see go. In the meantime, I'm trying my hardest to embrace the havoc, and to realize that all this exploration and curiosity must surely be good things for his growing brain. Right?
The final thing I want to mention about my sweet little boy is his adorable hair. How could this blog entry be complete without homage to Daniel's darling curls? Almost daily, everywhere we go, people comment on his hair and how cute it is. We haven't cut it yet, much to Bill's chagrin, but I just can't bear to lob those curls off or even alter them in any way! I can't tell you how many moms of young sons tell me that their son (the one over there with the stick straight hair) had gorgeous curls like that when THEY were a baby, too....and look what happened! I know without a doubt that my angel faced little boy will always be adorable, but these curls are one last trapping of babyhood that I adamantly refuse to give up. I'm going to compromise and let Bill get it trimmed when we are visiting Disneyworld in June (there's a barbershop on Main Street, apparently). TRIMMED! There's nothing more precious than that curly little head nestled into my neck. If I could freeze my sweet baby in time right now, at the cusp of leaving babyhood behind for toddlerhood, I would.
We love you, sweet Daniel! Happy 18 month birthday!
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