I don’t think I’ve mentioned to the internets that I discovered the secret to Robin and walking.
See, the pediatrician at his last appointment suggested we stop helping him walk and stop making a big deal out of it– presumably so he’d start doing it on his own and stop being so cautious. Well, we couldn’t stop playing the walking game, not when he would start it and loved it so much. But we stopped encouraging him to walk otherwise.
As far as I can tell, this was the problem. Because a month or so ago, I decided on a family change in policy: we would remind him to walk on his feet anytime he was kneewalking, and we’d hold his hand if that helped him walk. Almost overnight, he started initiating proper walking more and more. Sometimes he wants to hold our hand, sometimes not. He still crawls when he wanted to go somewhere really fast, or he’s moving from one ground attraction to another. And his walk is still the wide-stance toddle I see more often in kids half his age rather than the adult-like running of most of his gymboree classmates. But he’s progressing. Yesterday afternoon I watched him practice squatting down, and yesterday evening I watched him walk up and then down the single step between great room and kitchen that he previously always dropped to all fours to descend/climb.
Between that and his now-common use of certain two-word phrases (usually in the form of ‘one ball, two balls, three balls’ or ‘a D! two Ds’— but hey, pretty sure it, ahahahhaah, counts) I’m much less neurotic about his milestone situations. It also helped that I realized his letter fixation was probably no different than another child’s train or truck fixation, except that letters are even more common than trucks. He can point out (and find in a jumble) every letter in the alphabet, and some numbers, and recently he’s started trying to order them properly when he sings to himself (while stubborning skipping the letters he can’t say: A C D E F…). He’s also started associating groups of letters with images or words(like his name), and he’s excellent at seeing letter-shapes in random designs, even sideways. He recently brought a book to me to read after, I think, going through it extensively on his own: ‘A Good Day For Up’. On every page, he pointed out the sun, and often the word ‘UP’ as well. Oh! And he’s learning lowercase letters by himself, presumably because his alphabet blocks have both lowercase and uppercase. I was impressed by that. I’ve worried about teaching him that different things have the same name (even though he seems to have no problem with ‘Eye’ and ‘I’).
He still loves to color and draw. He has some used books downstairs with his coloring supplies, and he’s chosen to color in all of the letters on every page. When he draws, he likes to draw Es and Ds and Hs and circles. He hasn’t yet drawn a star he’s satisfied with although I think he’s done triangles. And he attaches sunbeams (or petals or hair…) to almost any curved surface, eventually. He prefers to color shapes in; he can’t stay inside the lines very well but he’s really trying. He may or may not be left-handed; he switches back and forth a lot. I’m trying to do some of my coloring with my left hand because it seems like the thing to do.
He doesn’t seem very interested in color itself. He can identify the basics shown in his legos when asked, but he just doesn’t seem to care most of the time. He’s much more interested in shapes and his absolute favorite game is making letters out of his legos and other toys. He creates shapes through assembly with much more facility than he does through drawing. In both drawing and assembly, he can see unfinished shapes and add the stroke necessary to transform it; Raymond plays that game a lot with him.
He seems to understand a lot of language, though we occasionally realize he has toys we’ve never taught him the name of. He still doesn’t talk much, except about letters and balls. His pronunciation of ‘ball’, ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘three’ is atrocious and only comprehensible through context. His pronuciation of the letters he’ll say is perfect except for S (which sounds just like F– he knows the difference between the two visually when we say them but also likes to point out that they’re similar. It doesn’t help that there’s a 5 on his F block. Idiots.) For reference, at the last check, those letters are A, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, M, N, O, S and maybe T? Can’t quite recall.
He’ll be two in twelve days.
When he was a newborn, he invaded all my dreams. Every sleeping adventure included a newborn baby I was responsible for. That eventually faded away, until now. Suddenly, there’s toddler-Robin in all my dreams, and they’re stress dreams, where he’s taken away from me or I’ve forgotten about him and can’t find himwhen I remember. I think my subconscious is having trouble with the idea that my baby isn’t a baby anymore…
Anyhow, I could talk about him a lot more. Because he’s awesome. But I won’t. This was just supposed to be a post on his walking and my dreams…
Chrysoula, 
Dan Snyder are discussing. 
melinda, and 
Cat, 
Lucian Smith, 
I wonder if we can manage to grow some sunflowers.
Dan Snyder 1:25 pm on July 31, 2009 Permalink
I’m glad to see you’re over the milestone anxiety.
The counting thing actually sounds pretty advanced for his age (or definitely within the huge range doctors call “normal”). Ian (who is almost 2 and a half) learned a curious little song from his parents long (to him) ago. It goes, “one two three four five six seven eight nine ten.” It’s all in a monotone – boring song, actually, but being a verbal child he would say it to himself or sing along with us from time to time.
Much later, he learned the concepts of “one” and “two” as they relate to a quantity of objects. He’s recently generalized to “three.” It’s hard to tell if he understands “more than” and “fewer than” as it realtes to numbers higher than three.
I guess my point is that the ability to sing that little song is divorced from understanding what those words mean. If Robin knows when he has two cars versus one, he’s doing fine
.
Colors as well sounds right on schedule, if not ahead. Cat was worried that Ian might be color blind until a few months ago. He knew how to pronounce the words for many colors, and he knew that it was appropriate to use these words to describe objects. And there his understanding ended. It was actually kind of amusing to see which color word he’d use on an object (but only because he’s our second child so we weren’t really stressing over it). We figured he was trying out the words and that it was our job to correct him.
Recognizing and attempting to write letters at that age is amazing. You can definitely stop fretting
.
Kevin 1:52 pm on July 31, 2009 Permalink
Yesterday he set down a ball and then chalked the sunbeams/petals/hair around the ball. It was cute, but it also made it clear that he’s drawing SOMETHING. I’m pretty sure it’s petals at this point.
Although describing his drawings as ‘hairy balls’ will never get old.
Chrysoula 4:16 pm on July 31, 2009 Permalink
It really does seem like he’s been spending his character points on a lot of invisible internal stuff, opposed to the external things other children choose. I’m really happy I’m finally seeing signs of his growth though!