Thursday 30 August 2012

I start to feel a little less needed

We've had some more firsts this week.
On Tuesday evening, when I was feeling rather tired and a little lazy, I presented Joseph with a bowl of curried rice and a spoon. I popped back into the kitchen to get something, expecting to find a puzzled little boy and a bit of mess when I got back.
No indeed. He was sat in his booster seat, which I now put straight on the floor on top of a piece of plastic table-cloth. He was watching Chuggington.
He was also feeding himself. The spoon was picking up big lumps of the sticky spicy rice and they were making it into his mouth. He did not stop feeding himself until the bowl was empty. Now here I must add a few more details to the story to make it even more impressive. There was only a small amount adhering to the side of his mouth and only a little dropped in the bib. There was none on the tray in front of him and none scattered about on the floor. He had eaten pretty much the whole bowl himself, using the spoon. A little shocked, I then gave him his yoghurt and a spoon and he did the same thing.
That's a first. He's been showing signs of wanting to self feed with cutlery for a while now, but has generally got bored and given up half way through or hasn't managed to master keeping the food on the spoon for long enough to get it to his mouth. Of course, later in the week he hasn't been as good, but I'm still pleased. He's shown he can do it and we can work on consistency. It wont be long before he doesn't need me at all at meal times, my role will simply be to provide the food.
On Wednesday he was sat on his small push along car in the living room. Up until now he's only ever been able to make it go backwards, unless he gets off and then pushes it along. I looked at him sat on it and then I pointed further down the room and asked if he could go to where I was pointing.
He looked over and then began to slowly and bumpily scoot the car along the floor in a forwards direction! I gave him a lot of praise, he looked surprised and he hasn't done it since. No matter, at least I know he can do it. It was starting to worry me a bit, considering he's ahead of the curve in other areas. He's starting to put words together and he can do jigsaws on the tablet, but to not be able to make a sit-on car go forwards seemed.... perverse.
Perhaps it was just laziness. He knew that if he sat there and made noise at me then I'd eventually get up and push him along anyway. Also, it's not the only locomotive oddity he's had, when most children start crawling, he was getting about by doing a sideways roly-poly and he got quite quick at it too, he could roll all the way across the living room in a matter of seconds. He didn't crawl for all that long in the end, deciding that at one week past his first birthday - he'd rather walk.
We've had two new almost words - flower and "wowsers" which we think was him trying to say "trousers". We've not heard either of them since, adding to my idea that Joseph doesn't like to say a word out loud to us until he could say it properly. He never really said "Mama" or "Dada" it was pretty much straight to "Mummy" and "Daddy". There seem to be hardly any words that he does not understand, he can even work out the difference between "Where's Joseph's nose?" and "Where's Daddy's nose?" when you ask and give the corresponding correct hooter a good tweak. You have to say "Honk!" when he does, he finds that very funny.
Andy and I have concluded that when we put him down for the night and we hear him chattering away to himself in his cot, he's practising. He doesn't like anyone to hear, so he does it when he's alone. I'm imagining him up there right now going "Wowers - no. T... t... tousers - no. T... t... tr... tousers. Oh bother. T... t..."
It really wouldn't surprise me if he was, he's showing signs of being such a little perfectionist.

No comments:

Post a Comment