Being Sara

I try very hard not to be one of those parents who brags about their kid all the time. I don’t think I’ve ever said “Xander said/did the cutest thing…” Zach and I of course agree that our son is the cutest, most adorable, smartest kid in the universe, but we don’t ever push this theory onto others.

That being said, I’ve been so impressed with his speech lately! At our last doctor visit, he said that as long as Xander could string 2 words together by the time he is two, then they won’t be worried about his speech. Well Xander is already stringing 3 or 4 words together. Granted, it is in Xander-ese, so for people who don’t live with the little native, it sometimes takes a little interpretation. For example, “a squirrel go?” really means “where did the squirrel go?” or “a Grandpa no working” really means “Grandpa, no more working!” He has the two word commands down though - “Dada, sit!” “Momma, eat!” “Ready, go!” For the most part, the words that he does say are pretty intelligible. Though there are times when we just have no clue what he’s trying to tell us, and we can see that it frustrates him.

He’s also quite good at identifying animals (and the noises each animal makes) - not with any detail, he couldn’t tell you the difference between a Sperm Whale and a Killer Whale, but he can tell you that they are both whales. What impressed my mother-in-law (the third grade teacher in the family) the most is that he is starting to identify emotions in books. When he sees a character looking sad, he gets upset, says uh oh, and seems to want us to “fix” the sad person. I’m not sure when that empathy thing is supposed to start, but Xander is well on his way.

The only drawback at this point is that he sometimes still uses a pacifier. Mostly when he sleeps, and sometimes if we’re watching a cartoon (he’s only got three available to him - Curious George, Little Einsteins or Phineas and Ferb). However, once the new baby arrives, if he or she also uses a pacifier, I can imagine that Xander might regress a bit with his pacifier use, which would bother me a little bit, as at that point it may actually start to interfere with his speech development. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it goes… So that’s it for bragging, but every parent has to brag once in a while, right?

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I ran out of time to write a blog post about Xander last week, and I felt bad about it. Luckily, I have lots of great stories from our mini-vacation, so I’ll make up for it with a few posts this week For several years Zach and I have been spending July 4th weekend at my family’s cottage on a small pond. We visit with friends and family while we are there, and just generally relax. This year we got 5 days there - Friday through Thursday. Xander was old enough to appreciate the outdoors and the water this year, and we spent most of our time chasing him around, but we had lots of fun.

One of the days Zach’s family came by to visit. His brother’s kids always have a great time playing in the water, and Xander just loves them. We had lots of fun with all of them. Zach’s mother often brings treats for the kids (she does a great job in that “grandmother” role). This time it was tiny tubs of snacks - Oreos for one kid, Vienna Fingers for another, etc. She got Xander Teddy Grahams. Xander didn’t end up eating them that day. However, a few days later he discovered them just before dinner. He of course asked Zach “Dada, have more?” Zach told him he could have as many as he wanted if he ate enough for dinner. So once we had finished up dinner (Xander actually ate pretty well), Xander pulled down the Teddy Grahams and asked for some. While I cleaned the kitchen, Xander snacked on 6 or 7 Teddy Grahams. We didn’t think much of it - continued with our bedtime routine, reading books, settling down, etc. About 7:45, the Teddy Grahams kicked in. Xander dragged us to bed and made us lay down. I thought “ok, if this is how we get him to sleep tonight, that’s fine.” Boy, was I mistaken! Xander spent the next half hour running - not walking, not pausing, running around the cabin. His route was generally to jump on the bed with us, roll around for a few seconds, roll down, run into the living room, grab something (my water bottle, a book, a pamphlet on a life jacket, pretty much anything he could find) then run back to the bedroom to give it to us, jump on the bed for a second, and start over again.

This may not seem like unusual behavior, but let me stress that Xander COULD NOT sit still, not even for a second. When I say he was running, he was running, not walking everywhere. Since dinner was macaroni and cheese with a side of tomato and cucumber, and the only other thing he ate was Teddy Grahams, we’re blaming the Teddy Grahams. Xander has had sugar before - he doesn’t really like much sweet stuff, but he enjoys an occasional chocolate or sweetie candy. We’d never seen this type of reaction out of him before. It baffled us, and we decided that we will wait a loooong time before giving him Teddy Grahams again. However, since Zach’s mother bought the Teddy Grahams, and Xander is staying with her for a few days while day care is closed (annual vacation week for them), we made sure to send the Teddy Grahams to her house - hopefully she doesn’t give him too many

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Our first year together started at 6:39 pm on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006. It was an exhausting meeting for all parties involved - mostly because it took us 36 hours to get there! But the first meeting was wonderful, and the newest addition to our family was absolutely adorable.

The first 3 months had some ups and downs - it took us a while to get a good sleeping schedule figured out (about 6 months…) and a while to get a good feeding schedule figured out (about 4 months, and then a month later, Xander weaned himself…) But all-in-all, we were quite pleased and surprised at how lucky we had gotten with our son. He didn’t cry excessively, he loved to stand, he hated tummy time, but he loved to cuddle. He had crazy, unmanageable hair, and the cutest face we’d ever seen.

At 4 months Xander started day care. They whipped him into shape in a hurry. In no time, he had a great schedule, slept well during the day, and was easier to predict when he would eat both day and night. His hair was still a little crazy, but we were starting to figure it out. The holidays were fast approaching, and we spent lots of quality time with family for a few weeks. Xander still hated tummy time, but he started to sit up on his own. Almost immediately after figuring out how to sit up, he started to bounce - especially when he heard music - this is still one of my favorite Xander quirks. About this time Xander really started to develop his personality. He began to drool like crazy, and teeth started to poke through shortly after. Toys became fun, and he slowly started to entertain himself. Bath time in the sink without the baby tub was also fun (until he started splashing everything and every one in a 5 foot radius…). We left him with family for the first significant amount of time at the end of his 5th month. A week away - he did well, but boy were we happy to be reunited!

Months 6-9 brought all kinds of exciting developmental milestones. Xander finally figured out how to roll over, and in what seemed like no time at all, he was crawling! Mobility made a huge difference for the little guy, and he began to enjoy having some control over where he was going. Food was also an adventure. Rice cereal was never a big hit in our house, but with a little trial and error we found plenty of exciting foods that Xander would eat.

9-12 months has been a perfection of some old skills, and addition of a few new ones. Now that Xander is getting better with textured food we’ve begun a game - what won’t Xander eat? So far, we haven’t found anything (that is in the approved list of baby foods of course) that he won’t eat - we’ve tried lemons, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, celery, pasta, garlic flavored pasta, rice, hamburg, oranges, bananas, apples, and lots of other foods that I can’t think of at the moment. So far, he’ll eat anything! As Xander got faster and more experienced with crawling, he soon discovered that stairs are lots of fun If you’ve read my blog much, then you might have heard that last month Xander started walking - very exciting. Now we are shifting from having a baby to having a toddler. Xander is bathing in the bath tub now. He’s eating adult food and drinking milk instead of formula. We’re still adjusting to having a little boy in the house instead of a baby, but we’re learning and loving it! It’s been a heck of a year, quite an education, and I consider myself incredibly lucky that everything has gone so smoothly!

baby, babies, infant, infants, toddler, toddlers, baby’s first birthday, first birthday, 12 months, parent, parents, parenting, mother, mothers, motherhood, first year

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