March Milestones

I have not written about how Smiley is doing developmentally since December.

Here is a summary, for family and friends who have not been keeping up to date on our photos. (Sadly, I am behind in processing videos, and only at the end of February.)

Linguistic

His sentences now use most parts of speech. For example yesterday as we went to the car he wanted to sit on the front steps and watch me unlock the doors and open his so he could climb in. He said, "Me watch daddy open our car."

He enjoys mimicking words, just to hear the sounds. For example, he will echo when my wife counts (one day as far as 36).

He memorizes more from his books and the songs we sing. The book he has memorized most is Inside, Outside, Upside Down. He counts to six or seven as a sing-song, not knowing what it means.

He has become a Skype maniac. He loves interacting with his relatives on the computer. (This is a big step because for most of his life he would become silent when given the phone even if he had been chattering a moment before.)

Conceptual

He understands the concepts of one and two. Three confuses him. Sometimes he calls three objects "two"; other times he stops and says nothing, realizing he is confused but unsure what to say.

He can nest his set of stacking cups. He cannot stack them yet; learning the size pattern is hindered by his habit when stacking of randomly placing them upside-down or right-side-up.

He can do simple puzzles (one piece per hole), but seldom wants to.

He treats his baby doll even more as a child: not only feeding it or taking it for a stroller walk (as in December) but showing it things, reading to it, etc.

He enjoys when I talk to or for his dolls, and participates in the pretending by replying, but never does such pretending alone. (He does not speak on its behalf, and only speaks to a doll in reply to what I have the doll say).

Physical

He jumps well with two feet, both on a flat floor or off a curb or low step.

He can put his duplo people in the duplo vehicles driver's seats. (These are tricky: the figure does not stick as well as most duplo piece connections. In February he began putting the duplo people in vehicles in other ways.)

He sometimes builds duplo walls, not just a tower of one block size footprint. But mostly, when he builds with blocks, he just makes towers of duplos or wooden blocks.

He hangs from his trapeze really well. (We took down the swing, which was seldom used for more than a moment. But he loves hanging from the trapeze.)

He can take off his pants, coat, and some of his shoes. He can unzip and remove one-piece pajamas. Any shirt with a neck hole is too difficult: he cannot take his arms out of the sleeves, but can take off the shirt once his arms are out.

He has switched how he shows tiredness. Instead of wanting to be upside down, he now uses the more traditional behaviors of rubbing his eyes and lying down while playing with toys.