April Videos

(It has been a very long time since I faithfully blogged about most of Smiley's videos for a certain month, to provide commentary about why the video was taken. Was he doing something for the first time? Was he doing something a relative would care about? Was he simply cute? Here are the older links for videos from July, August, September of 2008. I also wrote about four during February 2009. I'm starting now to write posts for missing months, going backwards chronologically.)

So far I have only blogged about a few of Smiley's April videos. I mentioned when he identified a nose and eyes on a stuffed animal and rehearsed getting ready for bed, wrote about a playground slide mishap, and posted a comparison of scooter prowess.

At the beginning of April my wife's parents visited for two weeks, to be with us for Smiley's first birthday. I did not get a good video of grandpa, but here is one of grandma.

Smiley fell asleep swaddled for more than a year; we weaned him of that part of his bedtime routine on April 11th. Swaddling kept him warm during the cold months and helped him fall asleep more easily, but did limit his experience drinking from a bottle or cup by himself. So it was not until April 2nd that he used a cup regularly and easily.

We celebrated his birthday a day early, on Sunday, since friends could be with him more easily on the weekend. He was in a good mood in the morning and spent time outside. When his friends arrived we went to his favorite playground and he went on the slide and swing.

We saved his presents from family for the next day. He had forgotten about wrapping paper since Chanukah and Christmas, but enjoyed the toys. He became quite attached to his hammer, which was as fun to rub on the cobblestones as to use with the pegboard. He also was given a wagon with MegaBlocks.

During the next few days he decided it was much easier and more fun to simply push on the pegboard pegs, but we did not get a video of this until a few days later.

Three days later we found, lost in the Styrofoam peanuts of the box in which the wagon was shipped, a second toy: a xylophone. That day was also the first time Smiley wanted to be read a story simply as part of playing, rather than as part of his bedtime routine. A week later he found the xylophone's keys.

In early April he also caught a mild cold. The main problem was post-nasal drip: since Smiley could not blow his nose he got a lot of mucus in his stomach and would often throw up. Not until a few days after his cold was gone did he decide to practice blowing his nose.

On April 14th he began to use his two counting boards. He does not care about sorting the beads by color or shape, but now has the small motor coordination to put them on the pegs and enjoys this. The next day had another minor milestone: at the playground he used a large wood chip as a tool for quite a while; he had previously dug in his sandbox with an ice cream scoop or plastic shovel, and dug in the dirt with a handy stick, but had never categorized a stick as a tool enough to carry it with him to multiple digging places.

Smiley spends a lot of time climbing on me. Here is a video, not because it was a special event, but just because we realized that climbing on me was so normal that we never filmed it.

All during the second half of April he was teething, working on the four molars adjacent to where his eye teeth will some day come through. (So far three of these molars have broken through.) When he is teething he sometimes gets Tylenol. He occasionally finds comfort in chewing on cold food or a cold toy, but not typically. This video of him chewing on a cold toy frog was taken not because of his teething but because he now plays so much as a toddler that it was touching to see that he still sometimes plays on his back like an infant.

On April 17th he visited friends, and ate his first frozen dessert and stayed up very late playing in their tubes. On the 19th he got a bigger sandbox and first enjoyed kicking things. (Previously he thought running into a playground ball during assisted walking was funny, but did no kicking on his own.)

By April 19th he was adept at pushing his wagon, and the next day invented pushing it with his scooter.

During the final week of April he became a maniac for pressing buttons. He had enjoyed this before, but now really wanted to press every button and light switch in sight. We brought out an old Basis 108 keyboard for him to play with and gave him the bicycle light again.

April 25th was rainy, so I brought inside a plastic slide that we had purchased using Craigslist a few days prior. He also played with Duplos, the elliptical strider, and on his own learned to click his tongue. I also gave him his first successful horsey ride, but we did not get a video of this until a few days later when my wife was home.

On April 27th Smiley invented a way to crawl and take his stuffed animal rabbit with him. He also invented two-handed xylophone playing. Both happened when he was tired, but got a second wind.

The next day he ate peanut butter for the first time.

The next day we went to the playground again and he decided it was fun to beep noses while on the highest platform (which is tricky to simultaneously film).

On the last day of April we moved his plastic slide upstairs and he learned to climb up the slide. He also got a new toy: a toddler swing for our big oak tree. That evening he invented a new game of putting toys (especially his stuffed animal rabbit) up and down in the back of the plastic slide.