… and boy, his mouth is literally exploding with new teeth.  In the last 2 weeks he’s got 3 new teeth, so that make a total of 7! 

Yip, it’s that time again… time for an update on Connor My baby boy isn’t that much of a baby anymore. He’s a toddler now.
He’s been walking for about a month, and in the last week or so his confidence levels have just soared!

He’s starting to communicate more. If you call for Bradley or anyone he copies you. Bradley gets “bababababa” yelled at him. My mom gets a mangled kind of “Ganana”. Lance gets “dadadadadad”. And I get called “mamamama”. The sounds are definitely different so he’s beginning to try and talk.
When my mom arrives at the house to pick him up, he calls (yells) for Beauty as soon as the doorbell rings, and apparently this week he was going to the table and picking the keys up and giving them to Beauty.

He hardly crawls anymore. It’s such a pleasure when I get home now. I get him out the car, and he toddles off on his own to the house, leaving me to carry the bags! Yay!! Only one trip into the house now, instead of two! It’s amazing how much easier that makes everything.
When we’re going out, he’s just as clever. He toddles straight to his side of the car, and bangs on the door shouting at the top of his voice for you to open it and let him in. The only thing he can’t do yet, is climb into the car… but he’s trying, so I’m sure that’s coming soon.

He knows different animal noises and can mimic some of them. He can moo like a cow, whinny like a horse, make dove and ibis sounds, and he’s starting to mimic the dogs too.

He loves his walking toys now, as you can see in the photo above. He’s also loving the ride-ons too. Oooh, and he loves playing on Bradley’s old rocking horse (that Bradley barely used).

As for eating… he’s started eating proper food that isn’t mushed. He far prefers feeding himself than being fed himself.

And the clothes, well he’s between 12-18mths and 18-24mth clothes. He’s using both sizes at the moment.

I can’t think of more, but I’m sure there is more.

Since Bradley started talking he’s been calling a roly-poly move – you know where you go head over heels - a “kiesie-ma-bollie”, instead of the Afrikaans bollamakiesie.  So tonight after his bath, he wwas showing off and doing them on my bed, when all of a sudden he pipes up “You know what Mom, a kiesie-ma-bollie is actually a forward roll”.

I was amazed. “Yes, you’re right”, I replied. 

Then he pipes up “Do you want to see a side roll?” Silly question, of course I did.  And you know what?  He did it perfectly, and then he said “… and then you run to the wall and sit down”. 

Aaah, the penny dropped… he’s learnt this at Karate!  How cool is that?!  He’s just started!  My clever child.

Oooh, and I almost forgot the most exciting part of the evening!  While we were in the bath, he told me that he put his eyes under the water at swimming today!  Wow!  He’s been so scared of going under water since he nearly drowned 18 months ago.  And then he showed me how he did it!!  I am so proud of him.  OK, he’s not going completely underwater yet, but it’s more than he’s been prepared to do in ages.

And Connor wasn’t about to be left out either!  He started clapping tonight!  Wow! 3 months later than he’s supposed to, but hey!

So I’m a very proud mom tonight

I took Connor to the baby clinic this morning to get weighed and jabbed.  He was very unimpressed with me, because he had to have 2 injections – one for chickenpox and the other was the Prevenar (for pneumonia amongst other things). Anyhoo, I can now do a comparison post .

Bradley weighed 10.8kg, his height was 81cm and his head circumference was 47cm.

Connor weighs 12.85kg, his height is 81 cm and his head circumference is 51.5cm.

I often get people asking me whether Bradley looked similar at the same age… so here’s a comparison.  A pic taken of Bradley on his first birthday riding the seesaw he’d just got.  And then Connor, taken this morning, on the same seesaw.  I know it’s not a very clear photo of Connor, but you’ve seen so many lately. You decide…
  

He decided on thursday last week that crawling is for weaklings.  So now he walks everywhere (unless he wants to get somewhere very fast).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68baZkMITgQ]

It’s amazing how all of a sudden things click into place in their heads. Before that he was quite content to walk from person to person only, or between pieces of furniture.

Connor turned one in the last week.  Here are 13 things that he is up to (because he’s just sooo clever).

1.  Walk.  He walks very well on his own now, but still resorts to crawling when he wants to get somewhere fast. 

2.  As soon as there’s an aeroplane in the sky he points to it and imitates the sound. 

3.  If you ask him what sound a lion makes, he roars.

4.  If you ask him what sound a cow makes, he goes “mmmmoo”.  

5.  If you ask him what sound a horse makes, he goes “pphhhhft” and spits everywhere.  He also does this if he sees a toy horse, a picture of a horse or even a toy zebra!  He’s obviously paying attention at the riding school.  Hee hee.

6.  If you sing to him or he hears music he starts dancing.  He’s almost stopped shaking his head (I posted about that a few days ago); his newest thing is to jive with his whole body.

7.   He is figuring out his shape sorters.

8.  He loves riding on his ride-on, especially when Bradley is riding his bike too.

9.  His favourite trick is climbing the staircase, and his latest is to try and climb it standing (not crawling).

10.  His favourite food other than homemade food, is the Woolies ready-made fresh babies mush.

11.  He loves eating fruit, of any type, as long as he can feed himself.

12.  He has 4 teeth now.

13.  He loves playing with cars and balls, especially if they’re his brothers toys. Typical boy

Connor turned one today.  And boy, what a day.  It was hectic!  The party was a resounding success, even though the cleanup was a nightmare! 

I remember this day last year, like it was yesterday.  Getting told that I wasn’t going home, and that if I didn’t have Connor soon I would risk heart failure.  So, I had a caesar later that day.  Poor Lance had to run around packing my bags, because they weren’t ready yet.  Anyhow, if you’re interested the full story is here.  I don’t think of his birth with much happiness, even though the caesar was a breeze; because the time he spent in NICU was so hard (if you follow the NICU tags you can read more about it).

We’ve come a long way.  Connor is BIG and strong and healthy .   Today was a happy day.
It was a perfect day in fact. The party was just big enough. There weren’t that many kids, but there were enough. It was lovely having it at home, rather than a venue.
Here are some pics from today…

Hey, this is my cake!

Elaine and Connor about to open presents (she’s my sister and Connor’s godmother)

Having fun in the splash pool with mom (the older kids were in the big pool)

He was exhausted by the end of the party (partly because he refused to sleep and miss out on anything).

I can’t think of a topic tonight. I’m too tired. 

In fact, I’m sure I thought of a riveting topic while I was stuck in the most god-awful traffic today.  Oh well, that thought has disappeared.  Some days I wish I had a PDA so that I could blog in the traffic. 

Talking about traffic, it’s the pits at the moment.  This afternoon we again didn’t have power, so Sandton was completely gridlocked at 4pm already!  And this morning, I left home at 6:30 and got to work at 8!  I can’t possibly get up earlier than 5am, I just give up.   It’s so frustrating.  I hate this commute!  And it’s not even a long distance, it take 20 minutes if there’s no traffic. Arrrggghhh! 

OK, on to nicer subjects now.  A lot of the bloggers, whose blogs I follow avidly are having the most amazing snow.  I say amazing because we don’t get snow here.  Well, we did get snow this last winter for one day and that was unusual.  It’s completely foreign to me.  I can’t imagine being that cold. How do you get to work in that weather?  Do you seriously have to shovel snow every day, or is that just in the movies?

Just to make you all jealous, the temperature here was 30degC today (86degF).  The only crap part about it was that I didn’t even realise until I drove home. 

 Oooh, I almost forgot to mention!  Connor got another tooth today, his third one!  No wonder he’s been a bit miserable.  Maybe he’ll start walking now.  Have you heard the theory that babies either develop teeth or a gross motor skill at any given time, and they never happen together?  In other words, they won’t get a tooth at the same time that they start crawling or sitting etc.  Anyway, I’m trying to test it out, so far it’s been true.

Climbing to the top of the baby slide isn’t a challenge anymore.  Today, he started climbing the big slide (Lance’s hand is not pushing him at all, just steadying him).

He was so proud of himself when he got to the top.  He’s going to give us grey more grey hairs, of that I’m sure.

And then we showed him how to go through the tunnel.

I just had to show you those photos because he’s so cute, but the whole reason for this post is this photo….  I finally got a shot of him standing on his own!!  He’s so close to walking.  He stands at every opportunity, and eventually tries to take a step but then he loses his confidence.

Isn’t he just so clever?  ***beaming mom here***

How cool is that?  But…. I didn’t get a photo!!  Can you believe it?  And that’s not all that has happened today!

He’s been standing on his own for about a week now without realising it (if he has 2 toys in his hands).  And today, he twigged that he can stand, so now he’s doing it on purpose.

This evening, I really wanted to get a photo of him using the walker, so I let go for the first time. And he had no problem walking with it on his own!!  How cool is that?  At least I got a photo of that (excuse the quality, it’s very dark in our passage)! You can see Lance’s hand in the photo because he doesn’t trust that Connor can actually do it on his own (silly man!).

A second after the photo was taken, Connor turned towards Lance and let go and then took a step to his daddy!!  Awww!

I’m such a proud mommy tonight

Well, I say he’s starting to talk, and I’m the mom, so what I say goes .

I wrote this on a forum in January 2004 about Bradley starting to communicate. At the time he was 8 months old…

Bradley is trying to communicate – but wait – not with humans – he has started growling!

He started making growling sounds just before Xmas – we just thought it was a new sound and thought nothing of it. But while I was at home with him, I noticed he got very excited when he was near small dogs and ‘growled’ even louder. Then we thought he was trying to growl and bark like the dogs and laughed it off.

Yesterday my mom confirmed it. She was in Fourways at a book shop, and he started making the noise in his pushchair – she turned around to see what he was looking at – it was a few calendars with the pictures of dogs on the cover!!!
He is also trying to copy the horses. My mom takes him horse riding twice a week (my sister is still at school), and on Wednesday he started copying them!!

Connor never growled. LOL! But he is starting to communicate with us.
He calls me “Mmmmmmaaaaa”. He calls Lance (and most other people) “dadadadad”.
I’m sure he said “Mmmba” when he wanted to get to the bell today, and he says the same with a ball.
If he sees birds he goes “hmmmm” or “ho” and points to them.

OK, reading this now, it seems a bit silly, but I swear it sounds like talking!!

I wish I had this blog when Bradley was a baby actually, my only record of his milestones are on a forum and it’s very difficult to search for items there.