Ted’s sixteenth month was very busy, and involved seeing lots of people. Ted’s a people person, though, so he was very happy about it.
Our northerner friends Jay and Erin stopped by our place for a visit. They were traveling down the east coast and stopped by. We were glad to be part of their road trip!
We ate pancakes and visited the J-R store for some southern culture. For those not around here, imagine a store not unlike Spags, but with way more Nascar and armed security guards at the entrance.
Then we drove on up to New England for a 4th of July week visit. Ted got to see lots of family, and had a great time.
And then! Auntie Christine surprised us with a quick visit here at the AfterVictory ranch! Ted was very excited about this.
Ted’s key accomplishments this month:
Looks at Kate, says “Mama.” About freakin’ time. His speaking vocabularly is now car, teeth, shoes, da-da, and sometimes fish.
Can point to his own nose, your nose, his ears, your ears, his teeth, your teeth and finally your chin and then his chin. And he can also point to his toes and his belly. And your belly. But where are Ted’s knees? He’s not really sure just yet.
Can toss up some mean knucks (aka the fist-bump). He also can raise a toast and clink glasses with you, although he says “Dah!” instead of “cheers.”
Signs more than a dozen words now. Eat, yes, more, drink, bird, book, dog, sleep, cat, butterfly, baby, ball, bear, “all done”, bath, cereal, fish, milk, mom, and sometimes dad. Thank goodness he knows how to say “bear.” I mean, you know, it might come up. He could warn us. Save us all from a bear.
He can draw with crayons now.
He runs. Fast. He’s also very much into the water now. Loves the beach, runs right into the water and loves the sand, too.
He now eats at the dinner table with us (in a booster seat) and usually will have what we’re having (with some baby food, too).
Ted is signing fish, milk, more, book, dog, cat, and all done. He seems to be getting a little better at only signing milk when he wants it instead of any time I say it, which wasn’t very helpful. He is still ironing out the details of the cat sign. Sometimes he jabs his cheek and sometimes he kind of grabs his ear, but he is trying. The sign for cat is to draw whiskers on your cheek, pretty tricky.
The other day he said fish a bunch of times- without the f, but with the signing and the pointing to the goldfish container it was pretty clear what he wanted. He still says car to mean pretty much any vehicle with wheels from tractors to trucks.
He says ee-igh ee-igh oh and pretty much uses that term to sum up the whole farmyard scene. He says it when he brings me the plastic farmer and when he brings me books about farms. For a while he was really stumped by the “oh” part and would say ee-igh ee-igh da da da da or some other mumble. Weird because he has no trouble saying uh oh, which he says a lot.
He can make the hee haw sound a donkey makes and the eee eee eee that a monkey makes. He still says baa for most of the other animals, except for the llama of course. He knows what noise the lamma makes. He says Da Da a lot. And yesterday when he heard Pat’s key in the door, he turned and shouted “Dad!” For some reason if you ask him to say mom or dad, he refuses. I suppose he doesn’t understand the question… Perhaps he is trying to think up the noise that a mom or dad makes…
He babbles a lot. It really sounds like he is talking, but in a different language. Frequently if you ask him to repeat something he will respond with the right number of syllables, so it sounds like he is answering. He just doesn’t have the right letters yet.
He does the hand movements for Itsy Bitsy Spider. It is a favorite and he asks for it a lot. He still loves to give high fives too and if he gives one high five he looks around to make sure that everyone gets one.
He loves dancing. If he hears a few seconds of music he will stop what he is doing and dance to it. He is always coming up with new moves and really gets his whole body into it. He waves his arms, stomps his feet, squats down and wiggles his butt, turns in a circle, etc. Sometimes he dances to a song in his head. He will be eating dinner and start swinging his arms to a rhythm or walking towards something and turn and do a spin on the way there.
Lately his favorite books are Happy Baby Animals and the I Spy books. He points to the pictures and I tell him what they are and what noises they make. Reading to him these days feels more like we are cramming for a test than actual story time. Other favorites are At the Construction Site, Big Red Barn and of course, Old MacDonald Had a Farm.
I took him in the community pool last week. It was the first time he had been in a full size pool. He seemed pretty nervous about it and just kind of clung to me. So I sang to him and slow danced him around the shallow end. And then he fell asleep. In the pool.
I am way behind in my posting! I decided not to keep up with the weekiversary posts after he turned one and here it has been 7 weeks without an official update. Guess I need structure, huh? Ted on the other hand, not so into structure and schedules. He is a go with the flow kind of kid. Well, go with his own flow, I guess, not necessarily mine.
His first word is car. He was also very good at saying, “baa,” when I asked what a sheep said, but now he says, “da.” Which is what he says all the animals say. Except for the llama. I taught him something silly for the llama because I didn’t know what noise llamas make. Of course that is the only one he has picked up so far.
When family was here this past weekend they taught him “uh oh.” He has been saying it a lot the past couple days, not just when something goes wrong. To Ted it is an all occasion phrase. He also says “uh oh da da da da,” which is from his Auntie Christine trying to teach him “uh oh spaghettios.”
He does say “da da” and “ma ma” and seem to mean Pat and me. But he also uses “da” constantly in his babbling. And when he says “ma ma” its usually a whine of “ma ma ma ma ma ma ma.” He says “ga dong, ga dong, ga dong” a lot. Not sure what that means.
He is really good at walking and has no problem standing up on his own and walking wherever he wants. He is a champion squatter. He can just crouch right down and hold it forever. My knees hurt just watching him. His latest accomplishment is dancing. So cute! He will turn on some music and start waving his arms or walking in a circle. It is really adorable.
Auntie Christine also showed him how to do the hokey pokey. And this morning he sat down in his old bouncy seat, turned on the music and did the hokey pokey arms with his fingers pointing up.
He plays with Mega Bloks and has gotten good at getting them to stay together. He likes to add onto what other people are building and can sit and play with them for a long time. It was nice to see him and Gramps AKA Bill building and demolishing towers together.
He loves sitting down and looking through his books. He will pull out one at a time flip through a few pages and pull out another, making a huge pile. He also loves it when we read to him, but most of the time he still turns the pages really fast, so there isn’t much time to discuss what we are seeing. He does seem to know his animals though. I made him pick them out of a line up and he did really well. It was only the chicken that seemed to confuse him.
He is eating a wide variety of food. He eats both what we are eating and baby food. He usually only eats a few bites of what we are having and then we feed him a pack or two of baby food. His favorites are fresh strawberries, ham, yogurt, and baby food green beans. He prefers cups with built-in straws over sippy cups. And he had his first bites of ice cream on my birthday.
Also he has the top left molar coming in. AndI am afraid to mention it out loud, but he has been sleeping through the night for the last few weeks, though not last night. I think he is trying to cut back to one nap a day. And that is all I can think of for current Ted facts!
Lots of green traffic lights on my way into work today, which is great, except that I'm 20 minutes early. So random. 2010/07/29
@DaraDemiLevine Time to start injecting secret messages into your speeches? Or maybe start each one with "Four score and seven years ago..." 2010/07/29
Glad skype video chat is free.The 98 minute video call between Ted and his Grammie tonight would've been pricey on a long distance land line 2010/07/28
Happy that mowing the lawn was pleasantly interrupted by the rain. 2010/07/28
Cooled off a bit this morning. Nice to step out of the house and not hear every central air unit in the neighborhood running at full speed. 2010/07/27
@DaraDemiLevine It was a good time. We went to Fort Macon, the beach, and then the aquarium. 2010/07/25
Whoa that last tweet was timed all wrong - we were at the beach at like 10am. We just got home. Good times. 2010/07/25
At the NC Aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores. 2010/07/25
Off to the beach. 2010/07/25
Watching toilet tank valve repair videos on youtube. Please, don't be jealous. 2010/07/24
Door to door political people -.calling me by my name without me introducing myself to you isn't heartwarming, it's creepy. 2010/07/24
Watching Ted dance to punk rock makes me a happy dad.Although he'll probably rebel in his teens and listen to adult contemporary soft rock:) 2010/07/23
Learning a lesson about user passwords.Turns out 64 character generated pw's w/lots of extended characters are hard to type in mobile phones 2010/07/23
