17 months old

We’ve seen quite a bit of development this past month here in toddler-land:

• Says “Daddy” in context! His first real word (“uh-oh” has been around for a couple of months, along with a kissing/smacking sound that indicates Taimi our cat)! He says it like “Daddeeee” and he uses it to refer to both Daddy and Mommy. I go to see him in the morning and he is all excited saying “Daddy! Daddeeee!” Denis gets it all the time of course, and when the phone rings while Denis is at work, Sam immediately perks up and says “Daddy!” because it is usually Daddy and Sam likes to listen to Daddy on speakerphone. Sometimes Denis gets called a nickname version “Dadu” which is supercute too.


• Definitely mimicking our sounds and intonations (we swear he was trying to sing along with us Row Row Row Your Boat one day in the car).


• Learned to climb onto the couch, bed, and adult-size chairs around the house. Loves to climb onto the chair to work the lightswitch, or to sit with us at the kitchen table. He can climb off the couch and bed backwards by himself too.


• Graduated from fully soft-soled baby/new walker shoes to tough little boy sneakers.


• Points to pictures in books and connects them to real life objects. The first was seeing the green door in his book Love is a Handful of Honey (one of my favorites and given to Sam when he turned one by our dear friends T&M). Doors are one of his Very Favorite Things, so it really got him excited to see one in a book. Now he looks for doors in all his books, and points at everything he’s interested in so that we will say what it is and he will give an excited grin like we said exactly what he was thinking.

• Nods yes in answer to questions like, "Would you like to go outside?" or "Are you hungry?" Has also shaken his head no a few times, though this is much more rare (only a matter of time, I realize! also his positivity answering the question has absolutely nothing to do with how cooperative he will be putting on his shoes for going outside, or getting into his highchair to eat!).


• Lots of success feeding himself with a spoon (we still do most of it, but he practices the whole meal and gets plenty of bites accomplished himself).


• Learned to keep his bib on while he is eating and to take it off when he is finished (he went through a phase of not wanting his bib on at all...had to be real parents and enforce some limits here).


• Figured out how to take a bite off of something, like a half banana or sandwich. To be fair, we never encouraged this and only offered him bite-sized pieces until now (which he often stuffs like 10 pieces in at a time anyway, the little squirrel), but he can now be mostly trusted with bigger chunks of food. I see a whole new world of possible meals consisting of sandwiches, yay for that.


• Likes to use a bit of lipbalm, just like Mommy (ok, not really a milestone, but I just love how his little mouth contorts as he gets his tiny dabs of lipbalm).