Linnaeus 2.2

Still sleeping in a crib, but now with a pillow & under an actual duvet.

This month, I decided to switch Sprout to sleeping with a pillow under an actual blanket. We'd just sort of stuck with the newborn protocol all this time: sleep sack, laid on his back in a bare pillowless crib. Well, not entirely bare, as we started letting him have a few stuffies in there a few months ago. Pretty sure by this point he won't suffocate under a plush guinea pig.

Also new--also from Ikea, come to think of it--was metal cutlery. Sprout has loved using spoons & forks since the get go. We did baby led weaning, so I never really spoon fed him puree. When we did have something mushy, like pea soup or applesauce, I'd hand him preloaded spoons & he'd feed himself. These days if we are eating with cutlery & forget to give him some, he demands it right away. A year & a half of practise has made him pretty good at it, but his hands are actually a bit big for the tiny baby spoons we'd been using before. When I handed him a 'big boy fork', he noticed right away that it was metal like ours & has been thrilled to use them since.

First ice cream cone: he ate most of the cone, little of the ice cream

Speaking of eating... Other than that brief stint of low appetite for a week or so just after his birthday, he's eating with gusto.Current faves include little yellow pear tomatoes straight off the plants in the garden, tok-ate miwk*, bananas he peels himself, plums, cheese (I think this must also be genetic), kee-weet*, grapes & bey-goo*. Oh! Also: exciting news on the food front: Sprout willingly ate several raw spinach leaves! Perhaps he's past his leaf aversion now?

One lastthing from Ikea--sorry this is sounding like a sponsored post--Sprout got this month was a train set. He started showing interest in trains at his friend's house & in the children's area of Chapters, where there's a train table set up. I've really enjoyed the spatial puzzle of setting up the tracks in different configurations, trying to use as many of the track pieces as possible on his play table.

Occasionally he'll decide to remodel it & take half of it apart, so I'll reconfigure then. But what's more fun is to change the layout when he's sleeping so he comes back to something new every day or two. I've already started fantasizing about the add-on sets I can get with suspension bridges, buildings & a turntable. Heh. Thing is, he's pretty happy just driving the little train around the tracks again & again. I don't think he'd necessarily be interested in all that other stuff yet. Maybe for Christmas...

Sprout's language development is chugging along. He's turned out to be very talkative. Wonder who he gets that from? ;) He seems to really like polysyllabic words these days & revels in prounouncing them carefully: am-bee-lance*, coo-cum-bew*, he-li-cop-tew*. I hear a lot less babble & a lot more intelligible dialogue when he's playing. Sometime recently, he's started telling short stories of a few phrases, either making things up or talking about events that happened in the past. Two of note: the big tree branch that cracked & fell down in the school playground while we were there one evening; biking to the outdoor movies we went to over the summer.


Pop quiz!

Can you translate the toddlerese? Leave your answers in the comments below...

1. AM-bee-lance
2. COO-cum-bew
3. HEH-le-cop-tew
4. TOK-ate miwk
5. KEE-weet
6. BEY-goo
7. goo-WAHGE (rhymes with collage)
8. mo-DIH-bike
9. BY-kih-sul

Psst... The Circle of Moms Top 25 Canadian Bloggers Contest ends tomorrow at 40m PST. I'm still (barely) hanging onto a spot. Could you send a vote or two my way before then? Thanks!