Silas being goofy
Silas identifies himself
Silas plays with his cars
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
30 pictures of Silas
Family portrait with cat and car
Silas the goofball
Silas and Papa sleeping in at the hotel in Oslo
Silas plays in the ocean from a Norwegian island
Silas with Vigeland's famous "Angry Little Boy" sculpture
Silas cooperated very nicely with some Norwegian children to fill buckets with sand
None of us had a very high opinion of long-haul flights
The Papas (Brian and a friend) carry the boys in Ergos
Silas spends 45+ minutes deeply absorbed in "car land"
Silas and his little friend do some important toddler business
Silas sleeps in at a friend's house in Stockholm
Silas took apart a glockenspiel and told us it's a "bus"
Just tootin' on the recorder while riding my rocking horse, no big deal
Brian made Silas a parking garage with old boxes and he loved it
He rides his scooter like a big boy now, with a helmet
Playing in our local park's fountain
Mama and boy
"Cool man Si"
Cheerful breakfast companion
Silas is ADDICTED to "I spy" books and he's pretty good at it too!
We're so lucky that he plays so well on his own, and even reads to himself
Exploring a huge puddle after a rainstorm
Back in "car land"
Absorbed in playing with his dollhouse
My last day transporting him to school via public transit, and his last nap at the bus stop
Much bigger than when we first started!
Silas with his friend Alicia, at Fresh Pond
Beach exploration
Outfit of his own choice
Silas and his best buddies from school
Saturday, July 11, 2015
A long update: Silas at 18 months
Silas is 18 months old now! At the end of his first year and a half, things are looking good for our family. Brian finished his brutal first year of teaching 5 new courses, and I have very nearly finished my PhD. The day after school ended, we all flew to Norway for a zebrafish conference, and then took a short flight to Sweden to visit a friend (whom I met on the internet!) and her family, including a young toddler. Now that we're back, it's summertime. My dissertation defense is in 11 days, and while I still have work to do to prepare for the talk and my final submission, it's just loose ends. With Brian home all day, no need to stay up late working, no need to get up early, and no fixed schedule, we are finally... FINALLY... relaxing.
At 18 months, Silas is doing beautifully. At the moment, he's in a particularly endearing phase, suddenly more affectionate than he has been recently. He continues to have distinct behavioral phases, some more difficult than others. They tend to last a few weeks. Before this current cuddly phase, he was very focused on asserting his independence in any way he could (VERY keen on making his own choices about eeeeeeeverything), which sometimes lead to conflict. Every once in a while we have a really terrible day, when we all just butt heads all day long (and our "pick your battles" philosophy gets a workout) and nothing goes smoothly, but fortunately they are very rare.
He says many many hundreds of words (we've completely lost count) and primarily uses 2- and 3-word phrases these days. His grammar is certainly not correct, but he often links ideas together and says things like "cars... no fall down... box" to mean something like "The car could fall off the edge of the box, but I'm stopping it". He uses plurals (often incorrectly), possessives, and a few pronouns. He has also started using his words to talk to other children, which is neat. He answers questions about where he has been and what he has done, which has opened the door for more substantial conversations (he also jumps in to our conversations constantly - there's nothing he's not listening to). He also tells us if something hurts and shows us where and tells us when he is hungry.
The evolution of his motor skills is less dramatic, but he continues to get more and more coordinated. He goes down shallow stairs without help or holding on to a rail, and goes down big ones either holding a hand or a railing. He can throw balls well and kick them somewhat clumsily. He ADORES pushing anything large - his stroller is a big favorite, but any furniture will do. He has just graduated to riding his scooter the "big boy way", i.e. standing on one foot and pushing with the other. He's fast enough that we took him to the bike store to buy a helmet, and while he gamely tried it on after we explained what it was for, he clearly dislikes it - hopefully that won't be the end of his scooter riding.
Physically, he is relatively adventurous and very active (it's not uncommon for him to run in circles for 10 minutes straight yelling "RUNNING RUNNING"), but quite cautious. He's very safety-oriented and often points out places he might fall to us. When he sees a set of stairs that he's not sure he can climb down, he turns around and crawls down backwards or asks for help. He also points out hot things (the oven, hot food), reminds us that knives are sharp, and so on. We're really hoping he continues to develop this way - it allows us to give him a lot of freedom. We haven't followed him at the playground for a few months now, and he's quite capable of climbing up the structures and going down the slides all by himself. It's great for his sense of independence and capability, and also for our relaxation time!
Around the house, he's beginning to participate in more and more activities. He's helped us make cookies, pizza and stir-fry, and while he's not exactly HELPFUL he can follow my instructions well enough to actually make food without it being a disaster. He was given some small Montessori-oriented pitchers and cups for his first birthday, and constant practice with them on our porch using water has made him quite an expert in pouring. He also mixes and spoons very well at this point. He can help with chores: tidying, unpacking groceries, laundry, feeding the cats, sweeping (OK, he doesn't really HELP with that), and cleaning the floors.
Silas's food preferences have definitely narrowed since he was an infant, and he is unquestionably more suspicious of new foods, especially vegetables, than he used to be. We were more or less expecting this to happen, since it's an adaptive behavior for toddlers, and we feel reasonably confident that he's getting good nutrition, and he certainly sees us eating a balanced healthy diet. Sooner or later he'll eat his vegetables again, right? Actually, he DOES eat them at school - this is probably a combination of the fact that he generally does what he's told at school, and the fact that nobody there is keeping an eagle eye on his consumption. Despite our efforts not to, I suspect that our attention has given him the idea that we Really Want him to eat vegetables, which of course makes him resist. Oh well! I think he eats a healthy diet and we get veggies in there in various ways. He feeds himself well with a spoon and fork, though sometimes gets frustrated and picks food up with his hands, which is fine with us. He drinks from an open cup unless we are out of the house, in which case he uses his straw cup.
Socially and emotionally, Silas's development seems good, but there are some aspects of toddler psychology that baffle us! At school and at the playground, with other children, Silas is very mild-mannered and never, ever grabs things from other children. He also never bites or hits. He looks confused and sad if somebody takes something from him, and he may ask for it back or ask for help. With school classmates he may even yell quietly if something he was enjoying was snatched straight out of his hands. There are two situations, however, in which his behavior is very different and we are still wondering why. When we come to pick him up at school, he instantly becomes more possessive and less cooperative than he has been all day. Often I watch him through the classroom window before going in, and see him playing quietly with the other children, only to become grabby and demanding when I walk into the room. It certainly has something to do with wanting to show us his space and his things, but we aren't sure exactly what's going on. When we shared a house with our friends in Sweden, at first, Silas was extremely possessive around their 22-month-old son, grabbing toy cars and screaming when he came near (even though he NEVER took anything and constantly brought Silas "presents"). It was so extreme and bizarre, and so unfair to the other child, that we had to insist that Silas not take anything away from him. There was a screaming fit followed by a clear mental struggle - he kept repeating "no take it cars" over and over and unquestionably understood what we meant. After that he didn't grab things any more, but despite the other child's constant generous gift-giving, Silas was still often possessive. However, the boys played together happily when no objects were involved (or at least no toy cars, Silas's favorite), and most particularly, they played happily together when the adults were not looking. While we still aren't sure exactly what was going on in Silas's head, we think he was confused by sharing a house with another child (which he's never done before) and may have been competing for our approval and attention. We were so confused and baffled to see such possessive and shouty behavior from him, since we never had before! It also totally steamrolled our plan to not intervene in the childrens' play. Oh well...
Having had this strange possessive episode (which, by the way, was punctuated by perfectly calm and reasonable - cooperative even - behavior at playgrounds during the same time period, baffling us further), Silas has been trying out some generosity, which I think he learned from our friend's son. He's been giving us toy cars, which he never did before, and also more hugs. Maybe we should spend time with some more toddlers :)
Silas's teachers (whom he will only be with for another few weeks!) say that he is a "leader" (their words) at school, staying focused on each activity longer than all the other children, trying whatever he is asked to try, and generally showing others how it's done. I wish I could be a fly on the wall - and in fact I think I may try to observe his classroom a little bit on one of his last days, although it's hard to do so without him seeing me! He really, really loves his main teacher Ms. Keana, and we will be sorry to lose her influence on him when he leaves Little Sprouts at the end of the month. However, overall, I think the Montessori environment will be better for him, and unfair as it may be, the school certainly as a lot more resources.
Silas loves: playing with toy cars (he gets so focused on his complicated imaginary scenarios that he'll jump if there's a loud noise, and often focuses by himself for 30 minutes), pushing things around, playing with his doll house and with small toy animals (the dolls and animals need to eat, wash their hands, sleep, etc.), reading books, often several times in a row, and going outside to take a walk, play on the playground or ride his scooter. He also likes playing with some toys, like blocks, Duplos, puzzles, and so on, but they don't hold his attention or capture his imagination like his cars and doll house do, and he only plays with them for 5 minutes at a time.
Our media policy has changed from "absolutely no electronic media, ever" to "judicious use" now that he's a bit older. On the airplane to and from Scandinavia, we let him watch Sesame Street on a Kindle, which he loved, and we also let him watch if he's home sick. Recently we've started showing him YouTube videos of things that interest him, like tigers roaring, trains, people walking on the moon, a tennis ball factory, and babies playing with cats. We briefly, and probably unwisely, let him watch a screen adaptation of "Fantastic Mr. Fox" on the airplane (when the Kindle's battery had died) and after a few minutes he turned to us in alarm when something scary happened on the screen. No more movies. We'll stick to Sesame Street and YouTube videos of trains and kittens. For now, he has no unsupervised media time or access, and watches no children's shows except in the special circumstances above. Screen time is probably averaging 3-5 minutes a day (or less?) so I'm not worried at all.
Last but not least: sleep. As I've mentioned before, since our initial sleep training at 8 months, Silas's sleep has never regressed to the point where it's been a Problem, but that doesn't mean we haven't had our little frustrations (all of which I would have scoffed at when his sleep was still horrible). Since Silas needs 10 hours of sleep (and 9-9.5 is not uncommon), as opposed to the standard 11-12, it's been very hard to carve out evening time for ourselves. He goes through phases of being more or less needy, sometimes comes into our bed, and sometimes has several weeks when he sleeps through the night. Overall, he sleeps fine, waking 0-2 times (though 2 is rare these days). Every now and again he has a bad night when he just can't get comfortable, but so do we all. We still haven't reached the point where we can go to sleep a few hours after him, knowing we'll get enough rest, since he might need to come in our bed, might wake up at 5:00, etc. Oh well, we'll get there eventually. Recently, his frequency of night nursing has gone, way WAY down after we bought a book called "Sally Weans from Night Nursing". Silas obviously identified with Sally in a big, big way and now often announces to us that he will sleep in his bed all night long, just like her. And he's been true to his word, most of the time.
There's so much more to say about our lives - my new job, our summer plans (Ithaca, Brightwater), our physics mentee who is babysitting Silas (Alicia, whom he loves), our Scandinavia trip, various summer activities at home, billions of cute little videos... but I suspect much of it will have to remain unsaid.
At 18 months, Silas is doing beautifully. At the moment, he's in a particularly endearing phase, suddenly more affectionate than he has been recently. He continues to have distinct behavioral phases, some more difficult than others. They tend to last a few weeks. Before this current cuddly phase, he was very focused on asserting his independence in any way he could (VERY keen on making his own choices about eeeeeeeverything), which sometimes lead to conflict. Every once in a while we have a really terrible day, when we all just butt heads all day long (and our "pick your battles" philosophy gets a workout) and nothing goes smoothly, but fortunately they are very rare.
He says many many hundreds of words (we've completely lost count) and primarily uses 2- and 3-word phrases these days. His grammar is certainly not correct, but he often links ideas together and says things like "cars... no fall down... box" to mean something like "The car could fall off the edge of the box, but I'm stopping it". He uses plurals (often incorrectly), possessives, and a few pronouns. He has also started using his words to talk to other children, which is neat. He answers questions about where he has been and what he has done, which has opened the door for more substantial conversations (he also jumps in to our conversations constantly - there's nothing he's not listening to). He also tells us if something hurts and shows us where and tells us when he is hungry.
The evolution of his motor skills is less dramatic, but he continues to get more and more coordinated. He goes down shallow stairs without help or holding on to a rail, and goes down big ones either holding a hand or a railing. He can throw balls well and kick them somewhat clumsily. He ADORES pushing anything large - his stroller is a big favorite, but any furniture will do. He has just graduated to riding his scooter the "big boy way", i.e. standing on one foot and pushing with the other. He's fast enough that we took him to the bike store to buy a helmet, and while he gamely tried it on after we explained what it was for, he clearly dislikes it - hopefully that won't be the end of his scooter riding.
Physically, he is relatively adventurous and very active (it's not uncommon for him to run in circles for 10 minutes straight yelling "RUNNING RUNNING"), but quite cautious. He's very safety-oriented and often points out places he might fall to us. When he sees a set of stairs that he's not sure he can climb down, he turns around and crawls down backwards or asks for help. He also points out hot things (the oven, hot food), reminds us that knives are sharp, and so on. We're really hoping he continues to develop this way - it allows us to give him a lot of freedom. We haven't followed him at the playground for a few months now, and he's quite capable of climbing up the structures and going down the slides all by himself. It's great for his sense of independence and capability, and also for our relaxation time!
Around the house, he's beginning to participate in more and more activities. He's helped us make cookies, pizza and stir-fry, and while he's not exactly HELPFUL he can follow my instructions well enough to actually make food without it being a disaster. He was given some small Montessori-oriented pitchers and cups for his first birthday, and constant practice with them on our porch using water has made him quite an expert in pouring. He also mixes and spoons very well at this point. He can help with chores: tidying, unpacking groceries, laundry, feeding the cats, sweeping (OK, he doesn't really HELP with that), and cleaning the floors.
Silas's food preferences have definitely narrowed since he was an infant, and he is unquestionably more suspicious of new foods, especially vegetables, than he used to be. We were more or less expecting this to happen, since it's an adaptive behavior for toddlers, and we feel reasonably confident that he's getting good nutrition, and he certainly sees us eating a balanced healthy diet. Sooner or later he'll eat his vegetables again, right? Actually, he DOES eat them at school - this is probably a combination of the fact that he generally does what he's told at school, and the fact that nobody there is keeping an eagle eye on his consumption. Despite our efforts not to, I suspect that our attention has given him the idea that we Really Want him to eat vegetables, which of course makes him resist. Oh well! I think he eats a healthy diet and we get veggies in there in various ways. He feeds himself well with a spoon and fork, though sometimes gets frustrated and picks food up with his hands, which is fine with us. He drinks from an open cup unless we are out of the house, in which case he uses his straw cup.
Socially and emotionally, Silas's development seems good, but there are some aspects of toddler psychology that baffle us! At school and at the playground, with other children, Silas is very mild-mannered and never, ever grabs things from other children. He also never bites or hits. He looks confused and sad if somebody takes something from him, and he may ask for it back or ask for help. With school classmates he may even yell quietly if something he was enjoying was snatched straight out of his hands. There are two situations, however, in which his behavior is very different and we are still wondering why. When we come to pick him up at school, he instantly becomes more possessive and less cooperative than he has been all day. Often I watch him through the classroom window before going in, and see him playing quietly with the other children, only to become grabby and demanding when I walk into the room. It certainly has something to do with wanting to show us his space and his things, but we aren't sure exactly what's going on. When we shared a house with our friends in Sweden, at first, Silas was extremely possessive around their 22-month-old son, grabbing toy cars and screaming when he came near (even though he NEVER took anything and constantly brought Silas "presents"). It was so extreme and bizarre, and so unfair to the other child, that we had to insist that Silas not take anything away from him. There was a screaming fit followed by a clear mental struggle - he kept repeating "no take it cars" over and over and unquestionably understood what we meant. After that he didn't grab things any more, but despite the other child's constant generous gift-giving, Silas was still often possessive. However, the boys played together happily when no objects were involved (or at least no toy cars, Silas's favorite), and most particularly, they played happily together when the adults were not looking. While we still aren't sure exactly what was going on in Silas's head, we think he was confused by sharing a house with another child (which he's never done before) and may have been competing for our approval and attention. We were so confused and baffled to see such possessive and shouty behavior from him, since we never had before! It also totally steamrolled our plan to not intervene in the childrens' play. Oh well...
Having had this strange possessive episode (which, by the way, was punctuated by perfectly calm and reasonable - cooperative even - behavior at playgrounds during the same time period, baffling us further), Silas has been trying out some generosity, which I think he learned from our friend's son. He's been giving us toy cars, which he never did before, and also more hugs. Maybe we should spend time with some more toddlers :)
Silas's teachers (whom he will only be with for another few weeks!) say that he is a "leader" (their words) at school, staying focused on each activity longer than all the other children, trying whatever he is asked to try, and generally showing others how it's done. I wish I could be a fly on the wall - and in fact I think I may try to observe his classroom a little bit on one of his last days, although it's hard to do so without him seeing me! He really, really loves his main teacher Ms. Keana, and we will be sorry to lose her influence on him when he leaves Little Sprouts at the end of the month. However, overall, I think the Montessori environment will be better for him, and unfair as it may be, the school certainly as a lot more resources.
Silas loves: playing with toy cars (he gets so focused on his complicated imaginary scenarios that he'll jump if there's a loud noise, and often focuses by himself for 30 minutes), pushing things around, playing with his doll house and with small toy animals (the dolls and animals need to eat, wash their hands, sleep, etc.), reading books, often several times in a row, and going outside to take a walk, play on the playground or ride his scooter. He also likes playing with some toys, like blocks, Duplos, puzzles, and so on, but they don't hold his attention or capture his imagination like his cars and doll house do, and he only plays with them for 5 minutes at a time.
Our media policy has changed from "absolutely no electronic media, ever" to "judicious use" now that he's a bit older. On the airplane to and from Scandinavia, we let him watch Sesame Street on a Kindle, which he loved, and we also let him watch if he's home sick. Recently we've started showing him YouTube videos of things that interest him, like tigers roaring, trains, people walking on the moon, a tennis ball factory, and babies playing with cats. We briefly, and probably unwisely, let him watch a screen adaptation of "Fantastic Mr. Fox" on the airplane (when the Kindle's battery had died) and after a few minutes he turned to us in alarm when something scary happened on the screen. No more movies. We'll stick to Sesame Street and YouTube videos of trains and kittens. For now, he has no unsupervised media time or access, and watches no children's shows except in the special circumstances above. Screen time is probably averaging 3-5 minutes a day (or less?) so I'm not worried at all.
Last but not least: sleep. As I've mentioned before, since our initial sleep training at 8 months, Silas's sleep has never regressed to the point where it's been a Problem, but that doesn't mean we haven't had our little frustrations (all of which I would have scoffed at when his sleep was still horrible). Since Silas needs 10 hours of sleep (and 9-9.5 is not uncommon), as opposed to the standard 11-12, it's been very hard to carve out evening time for ourselves. He goes through phases of being more or less needy, sometimes comes into our bed, and sometimes has several weeks when he sleeps through the night. Overall, he sleeps fine, waking 0-2 times (though 2 is rare these days). Every now and again he has a bad night when he just can't get comfortable, but so do we all. We still haven't reached the point where we can go to sleep a few hours after him, knowing we'll get enough rest, since he might need to come in our bed, might wake up at 5:00, etc. Oh well, we'll get there eventually. Recently, his frequency of night nursing has gone, way WAY down after we bought a book called "Sally Weans from Night Nursing". Silas obviously identified with Sally in a big, big way and now often announces to us that he will sleep in his bed all night long, just like her. And he's been true to his word, most of the time.
There's so much more to say about our lives - my new job, our summer plans (Ithaca, Brightwater), our physics mentee who is babysitting Silas (Alicia, whom he loves), our Scandinavia trip, various summer activities at home, billions of cute little videos... but I suspect much of it will have to remain unsaid.
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