growing baby

As of this weekend, Roan can stand unsupported for a teeny bit (around 5 seconds).  Then he gently goes to the floor either on his bum or on all fours.  He already loved pulling himself to a stand on pretty much everything (the fridge, the mirror, the couch, a pantleg) and walking while pushing things (the toy wagon, other movable toys)–now he can add a very short stand to his blooming repertoire.

…because he wants more.  First he told me he wanted two brothers and then, not a minute later,  he adjusted upwards to wanting five brothers.  When asked why he wants so many brothers, Mateo responded: “for kisses.”

“What’s the Eight doing?”  This is a common refrain around the house as Mateo checks out Roan’s doings (he’s now eight months old, hence the moniker).

So what is Roan doing these days?  Well, he’s perfected his crab-slide crawl–he gets up to impressive speeds these days and his favorite two destinations are the kitty litterbox and Mateo’s bathroom.  He keeps us busy, needless to say.  Roan’s also graduated to eating some finger food–he’s had tiny chunks of avocado, halved corn kernels and cheerios.  Every four days we introduce a new food (still mostly purees); today’s new food is plum.

As of a few days ago, Roan is day-weaned–he’s being entirely bottle-fed during the day, though I still breastfeed him at night.  It was a hard decision to make, but I decided that instead of pumping at work (which takes about an hour and a half out of my day), I’d rather get more stuff done so I can play with Roan and Mateo later.

Roan’s also using his vocal cords.  He has this super high-pitched happy squeal and he’s been practicing his p, f, and v sounds for a few weeks.  He likes to do them one after the other as he smiles.  Roan’s also pulling up on pretty much everything and cruising.  Happily for all of us, he’s very good about falling down on his butt.  Roan’s also walking as he pushes along a wagon–pretty cool!

Mateo loves Roan.  We know it and he says so.  Once he voluntarily interrupted his Cars watching time to tell Ilya, “I want to love Roan.”  When Ilya brought Roan over, Mateo engulfed him in a huge hug.  Other times, he hugs Roan and says “I love love love” (the “you” is missing, but more than implied).

Sometimes this love can take funny forms: Mateo tries to adjust Roan (to help him play with a toy or keep from bumping his head) by grabbing him around the neck and trying to move Roan.  (We’re teaching him to hold Roan under the arms instead–there’ll be no literal loving to death in our household.)  Or he wants to play with Roan a little too vigorously: earlier today Roan was crawling around and Mateo attempted to sit on him to get a piggy-back ride.  But Roan loves every bit of it.  When Mateo bear-hugged Roan from sitting to the floor earlier today, Roan emerged squished but with a huge smile.  Two sweet boys: what’s not to love?

As an update to the counting post from a little bit ago, Mateo has now reached a new high (or a low, depending on how concerned one thinks we should be).

Mateo had “quiet time” today — basically it’s a substitute for a nap when he can’t fall asleep. The parameters for quiet time are that Mateo needs to stay in his room, quietly, preferably in bed, until the agreed-upon time perhaps an hour later or so. So far, generally, it’s been working well.

Mateo’s quiet time activity, today, was counting. He had a book with a few hundred pages, and he counted and re-counted the pages there. I’m not sure if he was technically flipping through all of them as he counted, but we heard him (through the door, or via the baby monitor), count up. From 1, to 1165. Going on at a pretty steady 2 to 3 seconds per number, with relatively few pauses. His approach to hundreds is to call 200 “two zero zero”, and thus 1000 is “ten zero zero”. But, well, damn. When I was a kid I remember counting to fall asleep from 1 and trying to get to a thousand — and never really getting much above 300. Way to go, then, progeny, in outdoing your ancestors!

Mateo is still beautifully average at 37.5 inches tall and 32.5 pounds.  He also had a lot of fun running in and out of the patient room in his underwear and socks.

The topic of bedtime behavior is an ever-present battlefield between kids and parents. In our case, the key story surrounds the mama silla vs. papa silla debate — who gets to sit in a chair next to Mateo’s bed and sing songs. It also deals with the singing, specifically.

Our bedtime ritual recently has been for both of us (if present) to be in the room with him. Mateo will then negotiate songs by count (i.e. “I want mama to sing 3 songs, ok?”) and then proceed to selecting precisely which ones he wants (“I want Baby Beluga, and then Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and then Your Children.”) There are perhaps 10 different songs that we can sing, between the two of us. Eventually one of us leaves and the other will stay for another 5-10 minutes singing more songs before leaving him to fall asleep.

Sometimes he orders the impossible — songs that I don’t know, for example. He’ll verify from time to time (“Do you know all the words?”) but sometimes he’ll be adamant on what he wanted. One of the most challenging situations so far has been when he asked for me to sing the ABC song in Japanese. Normally we offer him a choice between the ABC song in English, Spanish, or Russian. So I had to get creative and find an alphabet song for Japanese.

So you can imagine my (and his) frustration when, the other day, he asked for a Chinese alphabet song. We’d talked about the Chinese language a while ago, and he’d seen Chinese characters, but clearly I didn’t explain very carefully that there’s isn’t exactly an alphabet… I suppose it’s possible to find something like this as an example, but it would be a bit tough to tie that into a any writing he’d be likely to see.

So we had a little meltdown due to the lack of an alphabet in China. I don’t remember precisely, but I’m sure we dealt with it in the end by singing something else…

Today, Mateo counted his highest number so far. It sounded like this:  “…one hundred ninety-eight, one hundred ninety-nine, two-zero-zero!”  From there he went on to two-zero-one etc.   (We did initiate him into the mysteries of two hundred–and even three hundred–eventually.)

Roan is definitely crawling now (though sometimes he has a gimpy three-legged crawl).  His longest trek to date: crawling from Mateo’s room to the bathroom (where Mateo was reigning royal on the toilet).  Roan does love to be near Mateo–and now he can get to him on his own!

Before we could even get a pic of the first tooth, the second tooth’s already here.  Roan’s also pulling up to a stand in the crib–even after we lowered the crib to the bottom level.  He’s also taking steps when we hold his hands, can balance standing for a few seconds, and is starting to crawl.  Things happen so fast!!!

Mateo’s also perfecting his reading.  He can read most words in English, is getting decent at reading in Spanish, and is starting to be able to read Russian.  Pretty cool!