Happy 15 months, Hunter!

Well HELLO major growth-spurt month! Hunter had really obvious physical and mental developments over the past month, which also brought about a week’s worth of crap sleep (egads). He studies what people do with great interest and just loves to figure things out himself.

A cute trick he does is when we’re out shopping and he’s tired of walking around, he’ll go to his stroller and stand in front of it, say “Up!” to me, and when I put him in, pulls the stroller bar across him so I can snap it down.

He also loves reading, so will proactively go look for his books, choose one, and bring it over and try to climb onto our laps, asking us to read it to him. Love how he can easily understand instructions now, and has his own lil personality. And, boy, with that comes quite the temper too..! He can really tell you off resoundingly when he feels you’ve done him wrong 😉

He’s also learning to swim by himself, holding onto a floaty tube/bar and kicking himself forward. It’s tough, cos they have to learn to grip as well as keep themselves afloat! He’s learning this way, the super-hard way, because he refuses to have those inflatable water-wings on his arms :X

MONTH 14-15 PROGRESS:

• Eating – Hunter is still going well with his eating, and will eat most things we give him. He still has the same (healthy) dietand so far hasn’t yet figured out what desserts/sweets/deep-fried foods are, much to our relief. We will be in Australia for the next 2.5 weeks, which is causing us a major headache, since I won’t have much opportunity to cook, and he doesn’t eat ‘outside’ food (too laden with oil, salt, sugar, etc). I honestly have no idea how we’ll figure out his meals…He has 2 formula milk feeds (1 morning, 1 night) and 1 fresh milk feed (afternoon) daily. Sometimes I’m too busy talking or shopping in the afternoon and forget to give him his milk by 3PM, so he’ll twist around in his stroller, look at me, and go “Nan, nan, nan!” whilst doing his baby-sign for milk. Guess a kid’s gotta do what a kid’s gotta do to get fed 😉

• Sleeping – Perfectly 7:30PM – 7:30AM sleep-through-the-night-without-waking for the first 3 weeks of this month… then in the past week he decided to kill us by fussing madly and insisting someone stands there until he falls asleep, and waking up randomly at night fussing again. ARGH!! I was about to have a mental breakdown, but then he slept fine the past 2 nights again. But, we leave for Australia today (!) and having Hunter sleeping in the same room will destroy my sleep for sure (I’m a super-light sleeper now and can’t sleep properly with him in the room) 🙁 Really worried about this as because I’m pregnant, I really do need my rest..

• Motor control – He walks, he runs, he picks up small objects off the ground when standing, he can kick a ball far, he can pull a wheeled-toy behind him as he walks, he draws with crayons (nonsensical scratches, of course!), he can screw stuff together and unscrew, he can put lids on and take lids off containers, he can fit differently-shaped blocks into their correct holes, he can unlock my iPhone, he can climb on/off toy cars and push off with both legs then lift both legs to let the car roll forward, blah blah blah..He’s also really into pretend play – cooking alongside me in the kitchen, putting Lego man on his horse and galloping it, feeding us and his toys food/water (making appropriate lip-smacking sounds to get his point across), etc.

  He also enjoys putting on his shoes, and will go search for and bring me his shoes when I ask him to, and lift up each leg so I can put them on his feet.

• Talking/listening – His list of words (taken from last month, new words in italics at the bottom):
  • Hunter – but sounds more like ‘haaaahn-tahhh!!’, whilst patting himself on the chest
  • Ma ma – when looking for me
  • Da da – when looking for Chris
  • Kong Kong – what he calls my dad
  • Playground – possibly his favourite word
  • Park – same as above
  • Star – accompanied with hand actions. Will say it whilst singing songs, or point to a picture of one and say it
  • Up – to ask to be picked up, when lifting this up, going up the escalator, etc
  • All – whilst singing songs, possibly his favourite word to sing out
  • Nan – for milk
  • Woau / oohooh / roar / brrmmm – sounds for dog, monkey, lion, motorbike
  • Por Por – what he calls my mum
  • No – one of his favourite words, sadly!
  • Row – part of the song and when he wants us to rock him
  • Hiiii – greeting people or when playing with a phone
    
    So only 4 new words (above) learned in the past month, ‘cos I don’t take into account random babbles or sounds, and a new word to me only counts if he says it with clear understanding and consistently over a period of weeks.

Follows more complex instructions like “Look for the ball, and throw it to Dad”, but now has a cheeky side and sometimes after getting the ball, will look at the person he’s meant to throw it to and go “no no no!” and grin and run away with the ball, thinking himself rather clever. LOL!

He understands too many words to document (babies always understand waaay more words than they can speak) but he can now accurately identify and point to his (or someone else’s) body parts:

• head
• ears
• eyes
• nose
• mouth
• teeth
• tongue
• chest
• shoulders
• belly
• hands
• legs
• toes

I do think Hunter’s ability to point to all the above body parts is pretty good for his age, but I’m not sure why. I think he’s just really fascinated with the human body?! That, and vehicles; he can tell the difference and identify aeroplane, helicopter, boat, train, bus, car, motorbike, etc. Such a BOY 😉

He loves singing along to his nursery rhymes. He can’t get the words out properly, but can hit a few notes accurately and blabber in time to the actual words. In particular, the “abcde….” song, where he’ll rattle away in his own babbles in time with the alphabet 😛 And like all other kids, he loves listening to music, and will ‘conduct’ with his hands and bop his bum and dance whenever he hears music 😉

And so at 15 months old, Hunter goes on his first trip to Australia, today!! He’ll have attention galore and Chris is also really looking forward to spending quality 24/7 time with his son 🙂 And I’m excited to see what kind of baby clothes, toys and supplies Australia has to offer!

PREVIOUS PROGRESS:

• 14 months
• 13 months
• 12 months
• 11 months
• 10 months
• 9 months
• 8 months
• 7 months
• 6 months
• 5 months
• 4 months
• 3 months
• 2 months