The Fiendling is seventeen months old today.
He’s getting more and more verbal at home but less and less verbal around other people. Newish words include ball, bird, pop, bubble, apple, baby, tired( ti ti), rabbit, boat, hop, boom,dog,banana (nana), pee pee and stomp. I’m sure I’m forgetting many of them, but these are the ones we hear pretty regularly. He also says diaper time (di ti) when it’s time for a change.
He lies on his back and lifts his legs so you can change his diaper which is a pleasant change from the poopy dashes across the room. He’s also gotten more agreeable with other daily tasks, like lifting his arms to take off his shirt and stepping into his pant legs. He likes to smear sunscreen around on us, while we apply it to him.
He scratches our backs when he’s asked and does a pretty good job, though he’s not quite able to move left or right or up and down. I’ll take what I can get.
He’s taken to wearing a hat, even indoors. I did the same thing when I was a toddler. But I took it a step further and refused to leave the house without a hat.
He loves babies, especially looking at the babies in books and pictures and identifying them as babies. He also recognizes the mama and dada in books and pictures. He loves looking at photo albums and pictures in flickr. He points to people he knows and says their names. He looks at pictures of himself and other babies and says “baby!” and sometimes leans in to give a kiss or says “mwah,” and moves his hand to blow a kiss. Looking at flickr pictures is the only time he’s content just to just sit and look instead of assaulting the laptop.
He no longer screams when he wakes up in the morning. Instead he calls for mama and dada and smiles when we get him. Nighttime wakeups are a different story. We’re in a nasty rough patch sleepwise. Every few days he wakes in the night crying and screaming. He doesn’t want to be held but doesn’t want to be put down. He clutches his water cup and insists he’s thirsty but won’t drink any and cries when it drops or we take it away. When I try to rock him to sleep, which he’s just too big for, he scratches and claws at me and pushes me away. When he finally gets comfortable and stops crying, the slightest noise or movement will bring on a fresh round of ear-shattering wails. He has trouble falling asleep as well, but it’s not nearly as painful as the night waking.
He prefers eating with a fork to a spoon, and lets us feed him more now than he ever did before. He’s surprised me by eating beets, chicken, a few bites of steak, balsamic glazed carrots and Frosted Mini Wheats. He still loves to feed us.
He likes to roughhouse, pushing us over and pulling us up. He laughs like crazy when we let him pull us around by our toes. He loves being chased and caught.
He proudly claps once when he completes a task like putting a toy away, a book on a shelf, or throwing something in a hole. He really enjoys throwing things, like rocks, shells and sticks.
He’s really begun following the movements in books and songs. He always sort of participated before, but now he’s more coordinated and gets the movements at the right time. He pats his head when the monkeys bump theirs, he opens and shuts the doors on the bus, and he plays pattycake pretty well.
Ring around the rosy is a favorite game right now, but he tends to jump the gun and fall down too soon. The next part, “The cows are in the meadow, eating buttercups. (rhythmically, bang the floor) Thunder and lightening (bang harder, like thunder) we all jump up!” is his favorite and he loves to pull me up to start the game again.
He sings Joshua Giraffe and it’s quite clear what he’s singing. He hums a few other tunes, but they’re unrecognizable. On our long ride home from the Outer Banks (Pigs- we stayed in Salvo) we put on the Kids Stuff station on Sirius and he clapped and sang for hours. Boyfiend and I weren’t quite as fond of the music, but whatever keeps him happy.
The Fiendling is definitely a toddler now. He has full on temper tantrums for no reason and wants to do things himself and gets frustrated when he can’t. But he’s so much fun I don’t care. I love the games and the roughhousing and I love the sweet kisses and the big, exuberant toddler hugs, even when he practically knocks me over. I enjoy spending time with him, which adds a whole new dimension to our relationship.

Smashing a castle at the beach