Happy Halloween!

Talkin', Walkin' and Wavin'

Oliver and family enjoyed another weekend on the Cape, where Olie showed off his new and improved walking techniques to adoring aunties and grandparents. He can now easily amble from one room to the next, pausing when the mood strikes him to grab a piece of furniture or check something out. His “controlled fall” is also much more, well, under control, allowing him to change direction and walk around certain objects without crouching down on all fours.

Yesterday we took a walk with Gramma Birds who, living up to her nick-name, spotted several raptors. With an eye more towards the ground, Oliver found a little yellow dandelion, which he insisted on carrying along with him. Sometimes he would trip and drop his flower, but he was always quick to retrieve it.

Oliver has also mastered the adoring skill of lifting his hands way over his head when you inquire, “How big is Oliver?” “This BIG!” He is also quite social, waving at everyone and everything he encounters. This past Friday, Oliver officially graduated from his “pre-mobile” dance class, and we joined other “mobile” toddlers. Oliver spent the whole class walking around waving at the other babies who also spent more time roaming than dancing. But Olie’s biggest waves are reserved for trucks. Almost everything good is “DAH!” in O’s vocabulary, but if you listen carefully there is a slight “T” sound in front of the truck “dah”. He holds his hands in the air and lets out a big “TrAH!”

Oliver’s vocabulary is certainly expanding. Chad and I are pretty sure that “Ah Da,” is “What’s that”? He can also respond to a number of commands such as: “Give it to…” “Where’s the….”? He’ll point. “Can you feed it to Bella.” He drops the food. “Can you throw/kick the ball”? He will. “Who’s here?” He looks at the door. “Show me….” He’ll point. Objects he knows include: ball, airplane, truck, car, bus, Bella, Mom, Dad, Anita, pig, lion, seal, duck, turtle, elephant, star, fire truck, baby, wheel, light, boat, dog, flower, and many others I’m forgetting.

Finally (for today at least) Oliver has mastered the classic crawl. He had been performing this operation from time to time when wearing only a diaper (He frequently tries to escape mid-change) and encountering a rough surface that was displeasing to his naked tummy. But whenever fully clothed he resorted to the belly crawl. Now he seems to prefer just hands and knees at least when on carpet, though the slippery floors in our apt are still best treated snake-style.

Oh yeh, and Oliver can also drink from is sippy cup now, but he prefers not to. He also understands “no,” but he prefers not to.

Duck, Duck, Duck

When I was in Sweden last October, I bought the yet-to-be-born Oliver an orange and yellow wooden duck with red wheels and a long green string. I liked it in particular because the wheels were more oblong than round so when you walk the duck wobbles like the real McCoy. Leave it to the Swedes to combine design esthetic and real world effect.

Until recently, this toy has mainly sat on the shelf as colorful decoration. But now that Olie is walking, he's really taken to pulling his duck around the apartment at breakneck speeds. He'll do 10 or 12 laps of the apartment before veering off to some other object of interest, which is a long time to hold an almost 1-year old's attention. He likes the toy so much he's even mustered up the gumption to say "duck," so add that to his small but growing list of words. So far, this list may include: light, mama, dada, that, and duck, though some are definitely open to debate and/or interpretation.

Also, I've another fine father-son moment to report from last evening. Each night we read to Oliver before he goes to bed. He is fond of books with texture, so I had picked out a book about puppies where each puppy is coated in a different velveteen texture. The textures in this book are subtle and Olie hadn't noticed, so I grabbed his finger and held it against each puppy's "fur." After a pause, Oliver then grabbed my finger, brought it to the picture, and moved my finger across the surface so that I could also feel the soft puppy fur. Before last night, he hadn't thought to share the experience with others. It was, if you'll pardon the painful pun, quite literally touching (sorry, author's privilege).

Mom weighs in

These days whenever Oliver does something new, Chad and I fight our who gets to write about it for the blog. Since I’m now writing for babygadget.net (a children’s design blog) as well as keeping my personal journal, I usually let Chad take on Olieland updates. He’s so good at it anyways. But some of Olie’s advances have been so amazing that I feel compelled to tell my side of the story too. And fortunately there are enough milestones to go around.

Below are some recent excerpts from my journal:

9/28/06
HE WALKS!!!!!!!! Oliver and I went to Walnut Hill’s Board of Visitors Day today. I couldn’t find a sitter so Oliver accompanied me to all the master classes and other functions. Before the musical theater demo, Oliver treated the other Visitors to an original composition on piano. Most couldn’t see who was playing behind the upright as they filed in, but all clapped when he walked out from behind holding my hand. Oliver then enjoyed the music class with Ethel, jammin’ with mama in the back row (although I’m not sure that the lights in the theatre didn’t hold more interest). After all the scheduled activities, as Oliver and I were walking alone back up to Stephanie’s, we heard drums coming from the dance studio. Diane Noya was teaching one of her fabulous modern classes that I used to take. In we went. Oliver started “dancing” (bouncing up and down) with the dancers. Then Diane handed Oliver one of the drummer’s shakers – the same as Oliver uses in his dance and music classes. So there’s Oliver sitting on the floor, accompanying the dancers with his shaker as they moved across the floor. They could barely dance they were laughing so hard.

I guess all this movement and art was a great inspiration to Oliver, who decided he better get started on at least the basics so he could move on to more advanced forms of expression. That evening, as Oliver and I settled in at SBP’s (Stephanie had a dinner), he pulled himself up, holding on to the end of the bed. I don’t even remember how it happened, but I noticed that he had to take a step before he got to me, so I decided to force the issue by backing up a little farther. To my astonishment, he stood! And then he took a few steps! I kind of thought that he would start standing on his own before he took steps, but he did both on the same night. Over and over again! He laughed with delight at his accomplishment, as did I. Chad was at an Eric Clapton concert so I left him a message then called Mom, to share the news. Big, big day.

9/29/06
HE TALKS!!!! No seriously. The firsts just keep a comin’.

From Walnut Hill, Olie and I went to Randal and Erik’s who have this fabulous hanging light that looks like a pumpkin. Oliver reached up towards it and said, “Igh.” As in “LIGHT” without the “L” and the “T”. Now Oliver says things that could be words like “da, da, da, da,” “ba, ba, ba, ba,” but I never anything like, “Igh.” It came out of nowhere. He said it a few times that day and the next, confirming that we weren’t just hearing things.

9/30/06
And he has 8 teeth! I just can’t keep up. Moving on from R&E’s to Grams’, I was showing Oliver her light, hoping to coax him into saying it for the Grams and Aunties. As he arched back to grab the chain, I noticed 2 more teeth on either side of his upper chompers.

10/3/06
Pretty sure Oliver said, “Mama” today. Hard to tell cause it’s more like, “mahmahmahmahmah,” same as when he repeats “dadadadada,” but this really seems directed at me.

10/4/06
Oliver tried to feed himself with a spoon today. I didn’t even try to teach him this. While eating dinner, he simply grabbed the spoon from me and insisted on guiding it to his mouth. He couldn’t quite get the hang of scraping the food off with his lips, but rather, he kind of sucked it off. This left a lot on the spoon which he then flailed around in triumph. Unfortunately I happened to be feeding him blueberries. Olie, Bella and I were covered in blue blobs afterwards.

After a bold start, Olie seems much more timid about walking. He often just falls into my arms if I prop him up (a really fun game, apparently) or he just sits down. He continues to prefer walking while holding one of our hands and practically runs along. Doesn’t seem very interested in practicing going solo for some reason. Maybe it’s still too scary. He is quite adept at “cruising” now though and sometimes doesn’t even realize he’s standing with no support. One of his new favorite games is playing tag around the coffee table with Dad.

10/06/06
Oliver definitely says, “mama,” except it’s more of a distress call than a term of endearment. He doesn’t spontaneously look up from his toys or a book and look lovingly into my face and say, “mama.” It’s more like when he wants me because he’s been left alone in his crib or is simply too far away across the room. “Mamamamamam!”

End of excerpt…..
AND
Further update….

This week Oliver overcame his brief fear of walking and now ambles along quite happily for at least 6 steps, often more. He’s also so good at standing that he can do it while holding objects in his hand and will frequently bounce up and down while maintaining his balance.

He’s also gotten better at feeding himself. While at dinner in Maine, I gave him Cheerios and a spoon to keep him entertained. I looked over at one point to find him trying to put his Cheerios on the back of his spoon. I turned it over for him and he proceeded to put Cheerios in the spoon and bring them to his mouth. About half went on the floor. He’s now much better at scraping the food off with his lips leaving less on the spoon to splatter admiring spectators. Although yesterday when Lance was visiting we got into a discussion on politics which distracted Mom. Before I knew it O had grabbed his peas and dumped a fare amount on his tray. I decide to leave it giving Olie the opportunity to “paint” with his food, something I’d read was good for them developmentally. Of course Olie slapped his hands down and peas made it all the way across the room to where Lance was sitting on the couch. Oops.

Much to our delight (and relief at receiving a moments respite), O spends good chunks of time pouring over the pictures in his books now. His favorite is a truck book that the Patterson’s handed down to us. What’s amazing to me is that O will point to objects in books if you ask him to. “Oliver can you show me the wheel?” He’ll point to the wheel. He also waves to trucks and buses now as they go by. The whole way back from the airport, he kept raising his arms in salutation. The NJ Turnpike is excellent for truck viewing.

Okay, Not All Is Endearing...

All rightee, that’s enough! It just ain’t all that cute to be sprayed with baby goo. Olie has recently decided that the best way to signal he’s satiated, is to spit whatever just came into his mouth back out. Not as a slow ooze, mind you, but as a spray. Since blueberries make a regular appearance in his daily fare, you can readily imagine the scene as he rainbirds the saucey mix onto his own bad self and all who sit nearby. Not a pretty portrait and certainly not one of his more endearing phases.

As long as we’re ranting, he’s also taken to pinching as hard as he can, most often your nose or lip or cheek, but any lose skin will do. And there’s hair pulling, though Justine gets the greater share of that nasty business. He's covered himself in bruises and knicks from falling down or crashing, smashing, bashing who knows what. He most definitely prefers mom to dad (for now) and makes that readily apparent all the time. And then there are the night terrors (or does he really just greatly prefer to sleep with mom & dad?). More still, he’s perfecting his whine-cry, so as to let you know when he’s dissatisfied, which as it turns out is a whole lot more often than it used to be. And boy, oh boy does he hate bedtime now.

In sum, as we round out his first year...Welcome to Toddlerdom!

Going Down East

We traveled north to Maine near Acadia National Park to attend the memorial service of a distant cousin of Justine’s. While Oliver has for the most part traveled well in the past, he really struggled with his sleeping schedule this trip. Of course, the all-important sleep schedule is (not surprisingly) lost on others without kids and, consequently, many of the scheduled events conflicted with naptimes and/or his early to bed schedule. While Oliver is not prone to throwing tantrums, come 8:30 or so he needs to go to bed or he's liable to come apart at the seams...very much a dreaded event for parents of young children.

Despite our best efforts, due to many late scheduled events this weekend poor Oliver literally collapsed exhausted into my arms more than once. While not ideal for him, I confess that it is quite moving to have your child fall asleep curled up in your arms. Several nights I carried him as he slept from the car into the cabin we rented, and I fondly recalled my own parents doing the same for me and my brothers when we were young. There are times you feel helpless as a parent, but this wasn't one of them. Right then, with my beautiful sleeping child in my arms, it was hard to imagine what I wouldn’t do to help him on his pathway through the world. It still amazes me to be so moved by his fresh life force, by his wide-eyed openness to the world, and his delight at each new discovery, but moved I still am.

Because of the trip, Oliver got to experience flying once again, but this time he was much more conscience of it. As the plane took off, he pressed his face intently against the glass. He was clearly impressed with the airplanes he saw on the ground and with our plane taking flight, though the purring of the jet engines soon lulled him to sleep. He also got his first boat ride when we motored across Taunton Bay to visit Burying Island, an island laden with history for Justine’s family. The island rises straight from The Mists of Avalon, such a magical place is it. This natural, unsettled and unspoiled outpost hosts a delicious fresh water spring and is covered with vibrant green moss, evergreens and oaks, with lichen, wild raspberries, blueberries, and lingenberries, and is crowned by its very own bald eagle who greeted us as we arrived.

It clearly filled everyone with great joy simply to step foot upon the island’s shores on such a fine October day, the day was further imbued with meaning as we were there to say goodbye to Pat Flagg who had spent so much of her life there. While this small collection of Burying Islanders came together to ponder the passing of one of the island’s great, longstanding loyalists, the group was also moved by young Oliver’s introduction to the island, many reaching back through the years to their own first visits. So, it was a pensive day of beginnings and of endings. Later, back on the mainland Justine, Oliver and I watched from our cabin window as the closest family members spread Pat Flagg's ashes over the bay and a Taunton Bay seal quietly surfaced nearby to pay its own respects and say goodbye.

Feeling a Bit Nostalgic Tonight

Already Hard to Believe He Was Ever That Small Mom & Babe Just Back From the Hospital
And a More Recent Snapshot...