Monday, November 30, 2009

New Words, New Activities!

At his last pediatrician visit, the doctor said that Xander would start to learn one new word a week. So far, it's been pretty true. Words and his phonetic interpretations follow. They're roughly in the order he's learned them:

daddy (dahdee)
mama (mamamama or muhmuhmuh or general fussiness)
hi daddy (hadahdee - he really treats this like one word)
hi (hah - kind of like a southern gentleman)
ball (baah - sometimes with the l)
wow (wow)

He also understands a lot more than he can say. For example, Micah or I can say, "no, Xander, that's not for babies" when he tries to reach for something bad--say the computer cord--and he stops, checks to see if we mean it, and usually ends up going somewhere else. He looks for the kitty when we say, where's the kitty? He comes over to us if we ask him to. He waves goodbye if someone leaves, or if we ask him to. He understands sign language for "all done" and "milk" and understands the words "bannana" and "bath."

He's also cruising really well, making circuits around the living room, holding on to anything about 18 inches high. He's stood on his own sporadically, no more than a second or two. We've given a lower kitchen cabinet over to him, and he loves pulling out all the pot lids and banging them around for hours. He's figured out how to unlatch the baby gate, so we now need to keep it locked. He also has started "reading" books on his own, flipping the pages. His favorite seems to be Goodnight Moon. Perhaps the cutest thing he's started doing is carrying things around in his mouth while crawling. It's all about efficiency for him, though we think it just makes him look like a puppy.

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