Nine months later...

I do believe it's been nine months since my last post... The reason? Pregnancy equals illness for me and while this time round it has not been as bad, I had no energy to do anything but the bare minimum. I am not one of those ladies who glows!

So our gorgeous little boy number 2 (aka Sailor Boy) was born on the 8th of Feb 2011 in a fantastic speedy delivery of 30 minutes. No time even to get to the gas! Two days later I was struck down with Bell's Palsy and rushed off to hospital after dinner with a numb left side of face and an uneasy feeling that I had suffered a stroke.

More on all this another day, but suffice to say that after three weeks of looking creepily like I'd had a botox job gone wrong, with a permanently open left eye, I slowly began to get some movement back, Thank God my face is now back to normal.

Our little bubba is now four months old and despite being a very refluxy baby is starting to settle down

Now, I can start to think about blogging and crafting and reading!

Hurrah!

How high is your voice when speaking to toddlers?

... because my voice goes REALLY HIGH when I'm speaking to our Little Man...

But I just read this at http://www.dailymontessori.com/

Speaking in high pitched tones as when they were babies "can impede in their language development in learning how to really talk. Toddlers need to be spoken to like a real person and not ‘like a dog’ anymore. They are smarter than we give them credit for and absorb everything that is said to them. This is a sensitive period for language in children so take advantage of it and model it properly.".

I'm not sure if they mean simply the high-pitched tone or also speaking in 'motherese' to de widdle wums.

I definitely never spoke in fractured English, but my voice at times can reach decibels only heard by dogs ... I think I'll start using more of a normal tone with our Little Man now, except when I greet him in the morning. If you can't go high then, well there's no hope for the world.

communication development

Since our Little Man turned one this May, his language has started to develop into more meaningful groups of sounds. For months now, he's said 'Ma' and 'Da' - Ma when he's crying, and Da when he's happy or hears his dad coming home from work.

He has now started saying "Ber" for bird. He loves watching the pigeons on the roof of the apartment block next door while he eats his breakfast. He is getting better at repeating sounds like 'ber' after us.

He also picks up anything that resembles a mobile phone and says "hurrow", and he's got "bye bye" down pat.

He has started pointing more (especially at lights), and trying to make sounds to express what he's pointing to.

I love how he compensates for his lack of verbal language through other means. If he wants me to do something like making a scratching noise on the table, he'll guide my hand to initiate the action. If he wants his toy dog, he makes little barking noises. If he wants to go to bed, he gets his dummy and doggy and goes into his bedroom. So cute!

baby development

It's amazing to think that our little one was not too long ago a little helpless baby in our arms.

Now, at 1 year old it's astounding to see him walk all over our flat, pick up and put down things that he's interested in, and babble to himself.

He is at the moment very keen on putting things into other things - something that I hope he has been learning from me as I am constantly putting his toys back into various boxes so that he can pull them out.

He now throws bath toys into the water, moves objects from one bowl to another, puts toys into their appropriate boxes, and less appropriately, puts his drinking cup into his bowl of food.

What I was most thrilled to see him to this week was to place a red straw into a red cup, and a green straw into a green cup. I've been modelling this for a few weeks now and he seems to have caught on!