February Videos

In March, Smiley transitioned from baby to toddler. By April it was touching when he did very baby-like play. So it is cute to review these February videos, when he is still very much a baby, but not for much longer.

On the first day of February we gave Smiley a no-spill sippy cup at breakfast, to practice drinking on his own when not in his high chair. He never became very fond of it.

Also on February 1st we helped some friends move. Smiley played nicely with boxes and with his two- and four-year-old friends, but eventually it was too much.

In February he became even more fond of dancing.

For over a month his mylar wrapping paper squares had been among his favorite toys, but in early February we had to take them away because he became able to bite through them.

Back in December his increased gnawing had also meant he had to take away all of the boxes he previously had to climb on. We tried to use his Boppy arches as a jungle gym but that failed since he could not get up on top of them: he wanted to be on top of things, not just clambering over them. On January 10th we had finally let him try the stairs, which he could do well the first time after so much practice on boxes. In early February he was proficient on the stairs; by the end of February he was notably faster.

A big developmental change during February was becoming much more interested in how objects interact with each other than their individual properties. When playing with a new item his first questions switched to "what happens when I clap it against other objects?", "does it push well?", and "what does it go with?" (instead of the infant "what does it taste and feel like?").

The most obvious example of this change was his becoming so very fond of putting items in containers, which actually started the last week of January. Oddly, first associations would stick. Certain toys went into bowls, and bowls went into other bowls. Wooden beads went in my slippers. Food packages lived in the cracker cupboard. He learned his first word, "in" (aside from the "mamamama..." to refer to either parent, which does not really count).

He also developed a game, when I lay on the floor, of moving objects back and forth from one side of my legs to the other.

Another example of enjoying making objects interact was pushing things, especially his cooler, which is just the right size and slides well on any surface. He also finally learned to pull his wind-up hamster's cord by himself, with his teeth since his pincer grip is too weak.

As a last example, the question "What happens when I sit on it?" became important. One of the best things to sit on is the foot rests of the elliptical strider.

Here is a long play time on his ten month birthday. Here is a shorter play time a few days later. As a birthday present we put together an mp3 player for him, which I blogged about.

In early February he picked his stuffed animal rabbit as his favorite toy. Before this he did not have a clearly favorite toy.

He invented a trick of sucking food off his tray when he could not pick it up, and tried to practice what Terry Pratchett calls retrophrenology.

On February 11th he got his scooter. Combined with his interest in objects interacting, this led to a great change to his play routines compared to a few weeks prior. Now he was mobile! I blogged about the scooter here and here. His earliest scooter videos are here: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.

In mid-Feburary he tried macaroni and cheese, but was not fond of it. He tried playing with a bike light, which was somewhat entertaining but also something he was not quite ready to fully enjoy.

When visited by a slightly younger friend he shared nicely.

The weather was nicer for a few days. He tried eating oak leaves, but learned that they made him throw up. In this video he looks cute, but a moment after I stopped recording he threw up all over the sweater his grandmother knit for him and his scooter.

Towards the end of February he became briefly obsessed with the back door key, and with chuckling and cackling. He continues to be entertained by all three, but no longer obsessively.

He became trainable, which I recorded and blogged about.

He learned to carry toys while crawling, and to pivot while sitting.

His aunt visited, and he played hard to get.

He also tried taking a bath alone in the big bath tub for the first time, which worked great.