7 Quick Takes (volume 13)

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Christmas vacation has begun!  Jon was supposed to work this morning, but decided yesterday that he had finished what needed to be done before his break and took all of today off. So we are officially relaxing :)  Well, we will be relaxing once I get all my packing done. Plus I still have gifts to buy/make/wrap. Whatever--Jon is done with work, so we are officially on holiday!

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Also, cannot believe that Christmas is already here. The fact that it was 50 degrees F today certainly didn't help that. And all my high hopes for making this a spiritual Advent season came to nothing. I didn't even try to plan too much: just Advent candles on the table for meals and a Jesse tree with a Bible story for Gus every morning. The Jesse tree didn't get made, the Bible stories lasted less than a week, and the Advent candles fizzled out around the third / Gaudete Sunday. I know Gus is young, but I wanted to start some traditions. But I seem to be physically incapable of doing the same thing day after day. Even my novenas--which are sent to me every day by email!--get patchy around day 4 or 5. New Year's resolution?

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I did, however, have a lovely Christmas treats swap party this weeks with some mom and baby friends. I invited a load of people, assuming that most would be unable to attend, but in the end we had 10 mother/baby (really I should say toddler probably!) pairs. In my little house! It was busy, but I was able to clear some things away in the living room and there ended up being plenty of room for them to run/crawl around. I had a really good time, and I think everyone else did too. But, man alive, just watching all those kiddos play is exhausting!

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As I was getting things ready for the party, I felt like I should organise some sort of activity for the children. In the end, I did not, as I wasn't sure what to put on for them. But at what age do you start planning activities for playdates? When we go around to friends' houses, Gus seems happy enough to just have the opportunity to play with new toys. But surely at some point we should be more proactive in their activities?

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I have been spending way too much time on Foodgawker recently. I just have an urge to bake cookies at Christmastime, but there aren't really enough people around when we're at Jon's family's to eat all the cookies I want to bake. So I am just living vicariously through food blogs instead. 

Also, this is why I have resisted signing up to Pinterest (so far!). This is my fear if I were to sign up:

(amount of time I spend on Foodgawker) x (all the other things, besides food, that are available on Pinterest) = completely abandoning my real life for a beautiful life on the internet

Well, it probably wouldn't be as bad as that, but I need me some limits.

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I mentioned last week that Gus now makes a sign for where. It has quickly turned into a new favourite game. He will hide something (e.g. put a rubber duck in a basket) then look at me at make the sign. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It really is very sweet, though.

He has also started making his first attempts at putting words/signs together. Once he made the where sign while saying Pa when we were upstairs and Jon was downstairs. A second time he was looking at a peekaboo book with a duck under the flap, and he signed duck then where. It's like you can see those little brains working right in front of you!

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Merry Christmas! Especially wishing safe travels to everyone. And if I had actually taken a photo for a Christmas card, I would leave you with that. But that is another pre-Christmas activity that did not happen, so you'll just have to imagine my little family smiling out at you :)

 Be sure to head over to Jen's for more Quick Takes!

What's New with Gus this Week?

I've never really spent much time with a toddler before (well, besides my sisters, but I was still just a kid myself then), so I didn't realise how neat it is to watch their understanding of the world just blossom. Gus has learned to do all sorts of new things just in the past week or two.

One thing he is doing all of a sudden is expanding his use of tools. He knows what various items are used for and wants to try them out for himself.

• He got out his little brush and was brushing the hair of his stuffed animals the other day; he was just toddling around, brush in one hand, teddy in the other. 
• We've removed the tray from his high chair and pulled the chair up to the table with us for meals. I think this has made him feel very big, and coincided with his insistence on using a spoon for every meal, even if we're just eating sandwiches! Although he still prefers to eat his yogurt with his fingers :)  
• Today he was insistent that I give him a fork to use and then spent 10 minutes stabbing at his food. And making a huge mess while not actually putting anything in his mouth, but that's par for the course (although I do think being at the table has reduced the mess a bit). Luckily for Gus, I finally ordered his Christmas present yesterday--a ridiculously overpriced set of children's flatware that matches our silverware exactly. Too cute!  
• We had some friends over yesterday, and after they left, I noticed Gus was trying out some more tool-using skills. Our Advent candles had been on the dining table, and I knew that one of the other babies had knocked them onto the floor. No big deal. What I didn't realise was that the matched had also fallen off the table. I waved goodbye to my friends, walked the five feet from the door to the table, and saw Gus underneath. He had gotten one of the matches out of the box and was holding it to the candle, trying to get the candle to light! Luckily, he hadn't learned about striking the match yet, so there was no fire. But let me tell you, after I put the candles back on the table and lit them (so that he could see but not reach), I definitely put those matches on a high shelf out of sight! 

going to see the neighbors' chickens

Gus has also learned a few new signs this week. He can now say food and please/thank you. He uses the please sign when he wants something, which is really very useful, except when he doesn't have a word/sign for the thing he actually wants! Then he just signs over and over, with me none the wiser about what he is actually asking for. Poor thing; I do try my best. He has also learned the sign for diaper recently, and sometimes walks over to the diaper mat and does the sign. I usually take this to mean he wants his diaper changed, although he does sometimes just walk away uninterested before I can get the things ready, so I am not sure. One of his favourite words is still hat, and he loves to point them out, whether they are on a shelf, in a picture, or on a stranger walking down the street. He might think that people with white hair are wearing hats, though. Luckily he is not really at the stage where other people readily understand what he is saying!

The cutest new "word" he has learned this week is growling like a bear.We got a new book out of the library last week--Say Hello to the Snowy Animals!--so now (along with Ten Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle) we have two books in the house that have a polar bear growling, so I think that is where he picked it up. Although I have a feeling Pa had a hand in the teaching of this trick as well :)  All the teddy bears have been busy growling at me these past couple of days.

yogurt, please! (I didn't get the sign in the pic, though)

Everything is a game to Gus at the moment. With any action that I do, he is likely to ask me to repeat it over and over again. For instance, today we were sitting with the stuffed animals, and I made the sock monkey give Gus a hug. We then spent the next ten minutes getting hugs from various animals. Saying uh-oh! or where did it go? is a surefire way to start a long, drawn-out game. And he has taken to making a sweet little questioning motion to go along with where? (hands out, palms up sort of shrug) and putting his hands over his mouth as if in surprise for uh-oh!. Simple tasks are great fodder for games as well. On Tuesday our veg box was delivered, and there were 8 or 10 carrots at the bottom of the box. I gave him a paper bag and asked him to put the carrots in it while I made the breakfast. He spent the next 15 minutes putting the carrots in, then taking them out, lining them up in a row, then back in again. It's a great way to spend a morning!

carrot packing

Going on with Gus

Lots of exciting things happening in the Gus front this week!

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Gus has made his first sign--milk. At first, he only did it while he was actually nursing, but within a couple of days figured out how to use it to ask for milk as well. Oh, the cuteness! He walks up to me with a huge grin on his face and does the sign, my heart just melts. He has taken to making the sign with both hands, now, as well. He is just so proud of himself for being able to ask for something and getting a response. Maybe too proud, in fact, as I seem to be nursing him all. the. time. at the moment. That could be related to other things, though, including but not limited to teething, a cold that he has had for a couple of weeks, and the fact that it was unseasonably hot last week, so he needed more fluids. Also, I think that he uses the sign at times when he doesn't necessarily want milk, but is just thinking about milk or thinking of things that he associates with nursing, such as being cozy and secure and well-loved. Um, did I tell you that he is the cutest thing ever? There are times when it is obvious that he is asking for milk, but I think I am getting better at interpreting his use of the sign at other times. (I thought signing was supposed to remove the need for all this guessing and interpreting!?)

He can also do a second sign. Well, does it count if the second sign looks exactly like the first? We often walk to the neighborhood lake and look at the ducks, geese, and swans that live there, and he can now sign duck when he sees them. But you do have to use the context, since it looks exactly like milk. (Milk is signed by opening and closing your fist, as if milking a cow; for duck, you also open and close your hand, but keep the fingers straight like a duck's beak.) Gus has a little book of animals, where there are pictures of about a dozen different animals on each page. Last night we were all sitting in bed reading, and he had the book open to the page with all the different birds, and Jon and I saw him signing duck.  "Look, Jon, he's reading!"

Gus does love his books. His particular favorites are books with animals in them (as he loves animals), but any book will do. He flips through the books with amazing speed, then will stop on a page that looks interesting and point and chatter about the pictures for a while. He often seems to know which page he is looking for--tonight we were looking at the above-mentioned animal book, and he flipped back and forth through the whole book (going 2 or 3 pages at a time) about three times before he finally landed on the page with the birds, at which point he stopped and showed me the pictures. The only problem with this activity is that he doesn't actually like us to read the stories to him--we obviously don't turn the pages nearly fast enough for our little speed reader!

It is funny how different skills progress. A few months ago, he loved knocking things down, then he learned to build and had no time for destruction. Then he went through a stage where he spent a lot of time taking things off shelves and out of boxes, but in the last week or two, he has started focusing more on the opposite--putting items in other things. (Well, he still loves to take things out, especially when I try to put his toys and books back on their shelves!) Today he helped me load the washing machine with the dirty clothes--although he didn't quite understand that we couldn't take them back out right away! I love watching him wandering around the yard, picking up dirt and rocks from one location and depositing them very methodically in another.

He also learned about squishing things this week. It was sweet watching him sit under the crabapple tree, using all his might to try and squish the rotten apples in his hands. It was not so cute when he found a slug as I was pulling weeds and tried to squeeze it!

I just can't get over how much he understands. I'm sure it has been gradual, but all of a sudden it hit me this week that I can ask him to do something (can I have that? should we do this? do you want to go there?), and he does it a large percentage of the time. Obviously, he still chooses not to do things sometimes, but he understands what I am asking.

At the same time, it is amazing what he doesn't understand. We are truly in the throes of separation anxiety. At the weekend, Jon, Gus, and I would all be chilling out in the living room, and then either Jon or I would go off to the kitchen or bathroom, and Gus would start fussing and following. And I don't think it was a "ooh, I want to go there, too" kind of cry, but more a "what?! don't leave me!" cry. Today at a friend's house (who we see every week, so I think he feels pretty comfortable with the other mamas and babies that were there), he started screaming and crying, with tears running down his face, before I had even left the room. I always have the dilemma of whether I should try and sneak out of a room without him noticing or tell him that I am just nipping to the other room and risk him getting upset as I go. Usually, I think that it would be more disconcerting for him to just turn around and not know where I am, so I tell him unless I will literally only be gone for less than 30 seconds or so. Or I take him with me. That happens a lot.

Goodness, this has turned into a real novel, and I feel like I am still forgetting something really awesome that he is doing!  I guess there is always next week :)

Walking! and other Gus-related news

I promised a video of little Gus walking, but I must warn you, it is not great quality. Our camera doesn't take very good videos, and has no microphone, so there is no sound. (Maybe I have an item to put on my Christmas list, no?) HOWEVER, Gus himself is pretty darn cute in the video, so that should make up for the poor production quality. Just think of it as an artsy, independent movie. That gives it lots of street cred, I think :)

The stats: Gus took his first steps 2 days before he turned 9 months old. Within about 2 weeks, he was able to take 10 or more steps at a time, and now, at 10.5 months, he has mostly done away with crawling. Which is a bit sad (not only because my baby is growing up so fast!) because crawling is actually super cute. He still crawls to climb up things, e.g. the stairs, the furniture, his Pa. It is amazing how quickly they master new skills, though!

In other news--Gus made his first sign yesterday!  Be still my heart, it was pretty much the sweetest thing ever. Of course, his first sign was milk, as he loves him some nursing. He hasn't figured out how to use the sign to actually ask for it yet (still uses the old stand-by of pulling down my shirt. Thanks, kiddo), but he does the sign while he is actually nursing. There have been times before where I thought maybe he was doing some signs, but this one was definite, no ambiguity. Now that he has started to sign, I better get back into signing regularly. After months of signing with no response from Gus, I have gotten a little bit lax and only do a few words regularly. I am trying to remember all the signs I learned again and re-incorporate them into my daily conversation.

Also, Gus's new favourite thing is to watch Jon do push-ups. He thinks it is pretty much the funniest thing ever. I think Jon is now doing them nightly just to get Gus to laugh. Related to that, Gus likes to ride on our backs and shoulders (he tries to climb on Jon's back during the push-ups--making Pa work a bit harder!). And he has started dancing to music. Which isn't related, but is new.