o frabjous day!

Edward is a couple of days past his first birthday, which we spent up north with his Gran. He had a marvellous time spending a week in a new place and I enjoyed being with him in the place I grew up, watching him gazing up at the rainforest trees that still feel so familiar to me, and sleeping with us in my brother’s childhood bedroom.

Things I’m enjoying at one year:
1. At 10 months he had started saying a few words – now, he says around 15 words, although admittedly some of them fit into the category of “noises that clearly refer to a particular thing”. His clearest words are “up”, “baby” and “dut!” (which is a duck). We all slept in the one room while on holidays, and could hear him muttering about “duts” in his sleep. He also understands a great deal, and I love being able to treat him as a (small, completely irrational) little person, expecting him to listen to me when I tell him for the fiftieth time to sit down in the bath.
2. Watching him click his fingers – actually making a quiet clicking noise, which I find quite astonishing.
3. Seeing his pleasure and enjoyment in books, which was one of the things I was most excited to share with him. He has favourite books (at the moment, “Where is the Green Sheep?” and “Who Sank the Boat?”) and enjoys both being read to, and paging through books himself occasionally loudly pointing out a duck. There are an awful lot of ducks in children’s books.
4. His sheer joyful pleasure in new experiences – most recently, a visit to the beach and crawling around the waves by himself, which had him at a fever pitch of excitement and bursting into occasional hysterical giggles for the whole time.

Things I’m not enjoying at one year:
1. The side effects of greater strength and coordination – biting, hair pulling, and very little responsiveness to my endless repetitions of “gentle! don’t bite/pull hair please”.
2. All the things he can reach with his newly steady standing abilities. Like the drawer with the knives in it.

Once again, the things I enjoy far outweigh those I don’t – this is a very enjoyable age, just one that requires a bit more work in toddler-proofing our house.

The last two months have been one of the biggest periods of change in Edward’s life, or at least that’s the way it feels. Most significantly to me, language has begun – both more obvious understanding of what we say to him (knowing his name, putting his arms up when we ask, looking around as we describe things to him), and his first words.

Things I’m enjoying at 10 months:
1. The beginning of talking – – mama, dada, burr (for bird), eeee (for three), and apparently “fish” as well, although I’m yet to hear that one. He also clearly understands much more of what we say to him, and he stares at us with such utter concentration when we speak to him. More than ever, I am conscious of this new little person hanging around my feet, focussing intently on everything I say.
2. Watching him quietly look at himself in the mirror behind his toy shelves – gently moving his fingers and watching his reflection do the same.
3. Starting to play “catch” with him – rolling a little ball back and forth, and the way he claps happily after he throws it, sometimes towards us, sometimes off in a random direction.
4. The way he dances (bops around while seated) to any music, or singing, or someone drumming or clapping a rhythm to him. He really seems to take great pleasure in music, which delights us.

Things I’m not enjoying at 10 months:
1. A slight sleep regression. Again. I have almost given up feeling concerned about my sleep and am mostly resigned to rolling with whatever happens each week.
2. His occasional clinginess, when I would rather he play quietly on the floor next to me while I cook or do housework.

I honestly can’t think of any other things I’m not enjoying at the moment – 10 months is pretty fantastic. I’m starting to look forward to Edward’s first birthday now, and perhaps the start of walking.

Edward has suddenly launched himself through quite a few developmental milestones this past month, which has been fun and busy and rather dizzying. 12 months and the end of little-babyhood seems to be looming on the horizon, and he seems like more of a small child each day.

Things I’m enjoying at 9 months:
1. Crawling! Well, sort of. He drags himself around quite speedily with his arms – legs are not involved too much in the process – picking up great swathes of dirt and cat hair on his clothes. He is a great incentive to keep the floor clean. Being able to move to things that interest him keeps him much more occupied on his own, allowing his supervising parent to move freely in a slightly bigger orbit around him than before.
2. All the other new things he can do now – sitting himself up, grinning with his shiny new teeth, imitating bird noises, dancing, pulling himself up to standing, chatting away with long strings of “mamamamamama” and “dadadadada”, which we think are very occasionally applied to the correct people.
3. He has started joking with us – he blows raspberries, or pokes at my stomach, then grins eagerly up at us, waiting for us to laugh in response.
4. Playing games with him and making him laugh, and the sheer number of things that make him laugh uproariously – chasing games, making “high fives!”, tickling his feet, and any number of ridiculous noises.
5. The clever things he can do with his hands – using a castanet, bouncing a ball (and then dragging himself after it), and picking up leaves with index finger and thumb and examining them closely.

Things I’m not enjoying at 9 months:
1. Unpredictable sleeping patterns – some days have long naps, some days have short naps. Some nights he wakes once, other nights he spends half an hour crying before I can settle him, or he wakes every ten minutes for a while after I put him down. What I wouldn’t give to know what was coming up each day.
2. His recent unhappiness at being left with his nanny and cousin two days a week – I have rearranged my work schedule so that I can spend time with all of them on their days together, and then gradually reduce that time, hopefully gently adjusting him to the situation.
3. The two colds he has had recently. The first one was the worst – he slept appallingly – and although he has had a chesty cough with the second, he has dealt with it better and mostly maintained semi-decent sleep. I think it has contributed to his days of crying with his nanny though.

So many parenting related matters cause a current of anxiety, the unanswerable “am I doing the right thing” question – unanswerable because no-one else is your child’s parent, and no-one can answer that question better than you, despite the fact that you might feel like you don’t know what you’re doing half the time. Is this grizzling teething pain? Digestive pain? Am I feeding him the wrong things? There is so much vastly contradictory advice about introducing solid food that you might as well ignore it and do whatever the hell you feel like, for all the reassurance it’s going to give you. (On this point this is an interesting post about cultural differences in ideas about first foods for babies). If he lies there and cries because he’s trying to reach a toy, should I give it to him, or will he never learn to crawl if I hand him things?

In the end I always reassure myself with the fact that despite people’s vastly differing parenting styles, no child ever fails to learn to move because their parent too readily hands them a toy. These small details, even though they seem all encompassing at the moment, don’t matter all that much. I have stopped waiting for the point where I will know what to do, and just “do” instead.

We have just come through the other side of Edward’s first cold, which I found a bit stressful – it was the first week of us both being at work, and I found it hard leaving his snuffly self with his grandparents (possibly something I should have re-thought, as he gifted his Nonna with a cold as well). It feels awful looking at your child in pain (or at least discomfort) and not being able to do much at all to help them. Combine that with very broken sleep and we were all feeling pretty dreadful by the end of the week. It’s amazing how pathetically grateful you become when the longer stretches of sleep return – your child wakes up at 3am and while you’re blinking blearily putting him back to sleep, you’re thinking contentedly about what a spectacular baby he is, so clever to sleep for 6 hours. Give that baby a PhD in sleeping immediately. Or at the very least a gold star.