Sarah K.K. here, back with another installment of Toddler Thursday: 

That's how the old saw goes, right? "You've got to walk before you can run"? Someone forgot to tell toddlers.

When my son first started to walk (right around his 1st birthday), he was understandably pretty unsteady. They call walking a controlled state of falling, and when you observe a child learning the skill, you can definitely see that. Unfortunately, far before his sense of balance was ready, he turned into a wannabe speed demon, rushing around faster than his little legs (or his growing brain) could take him.

That began the bruised-forehead stage of his life, and it hasn't ended yet. A couple of weeks after those first unsteady steps, I got a call from daycare. Isaac had been running on the playground, totally misjudged the blacktop and face-planted. He scraped his forehead and his nose, and when I went to pick him up, they even warned me before I saw him, telling me that he had hardly cried. I, however, almost did when I got my first glimpse of his injuries, even though he was beaming at me at the time.

Continue reading "Toddler Thursday: You've got to walk before you can run" »

Posted by Sarah Kickler Kelber at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Toddler Thursday
        

Sarah K.K. here with the next installment of Toddler Thursday!

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my toddler son, Isaac, was just starting to imitate our intonation now and then. In the past couple of weeks, but especially the past few days, he's taken it to a whole new level. He's babbling all the time, and while most of the time, it's nonsensical, he's learning words and sounds like crazy. The cat says "mao," and "milk," "go" and "whee" are in the repertoire now.

He's a sponge!

But the big news of the week was that night before last, he said, "I love you." Well, it kind of sounded like, "I love the boo," but we'll take it. I, sadly, was on the phone instead of in person, but my husband got it on video, and I'm thrilled I got to hear it in real-time, too.

Sure, right now, it's just a repeating of sounds -- he apparently wandered around his class saying it again and again yesterday. But I know the meaning will sink in, too. No matter what, that was a moment for the highlights reel of my life.

Posted by Sarah Kickler Kelber at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Toddler Thursday
        

This is Sarah K.K., back with Toddler Thursday after a short hiatus for that vacation I mentioned a few weeks ago.

I was concerned about flying cross-country with my son, who had learned to walk since our last cross-country flight. I was also a little worried because he got sick during our trip to California in the spring, but I wasn't overly concerned since I figured that was a fluke puke.

Well ... maybe not so much. We got on the plane, an early morning departure with a change of planes in Chicago, and I had my Bag of Tricks at the ready, filled with many of your suggestions, plus a few of my own ideas.

Continue reading "Toddler Thursday: Flight report" »

Posted by Sarah Kickler Kelber at 4:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Toddler Thursday
        

Sarah K.K. returns with this week's installment of Toddler Thursday:

There is something about this age (closing on 16 months) that just feels so momentous.

I mean, every stage of my son's life, even from the moment I learned I was finally pregnant, has felt this way to an extent. But there is just so much growth going on now, it's hard for me to get my grown-up mind around it.

Isaac just feels like a ball of potential -- who knows what his life will be like, or what the world will be like, but right now, everything feels so ... possible. Every day, he's saying a new word, grasping a new concept, doing something new that is funny, finding something new hysterical.

Even since last week's post, he's understanding and responding to "no" (and, of course, saying it more. Much more). A couple of days ago, one of his toys started playing the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" while we were reading a book, and he suddenly stood up from my lap and grabbed his head. I didn't even know he knew that yet!

A few days ago, he started calling me "Mama" on purpose (*swoon*) and running over and giving giant, heartfelt, laying-his-head-on-your-shoulder hugs. After Mr. Independent's stint of not being into cuddling, these new breakthroughs have been particularly gratifying.

I can barely begin to imagine how fast the synapses must be firing in his brain as he's making connections and learning so, so, so much every day. It's an amazing time, and I don't want to miss a second of it. Sometimes, I just want to wake him up in the middle of the night so we can hang out, but I resist the urge.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Posted by Sarah Kickler Kelber at 4:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Toddler Thursday
        

Here's Sarah K.K. with the weekly installment of Toddler Thursday:

I'm not sure how we got to 15 months old without Isaac knowing what "no" means, but here we are. He'll run into some forbidden corner of the basement, and I'll call out, "NO-NO!" But he just keeps on doing what he's doing until I go over to him and get his attention.

It's not as if he doesn't get the concept at all. If we're trying to feed him something he doesn't want or get him to go somewhere he's not interested in, he shakes his head wildly and even sometimes says something vaguely resembling "nue."

But for the moment, this communication seems to be going in one direction.

One of his favorite activities that I have to dissuade him from is causing a bit of a conundrum. He loves to run into the bathroom (we keep the doors closed, but the cats like to drink from the sink in the half-bath -- clearly Isaac isn't the only one we've had trouble communicating "no" to -- and they know how to open the door). The other day, I sprinted after him into the bathroom, only to find him singing "Hi-iiiiiiiii" into the toilet bowl, totally taken by the echo of his own voice.

"No! No-NO! Dirty!" I said to him as I pulled him away from the bowl (and immediately washied his hands, of course). But then it occurred to me: If I manage to communicate that he needs to stay away from the toilet because it's dirty, won't that pose problems later?

"So, kid, you know that nasty, gross, icky, disgusting, germ-ridden thing I've told you time and time again to stay away from? Yeah, well, now you have to sit on it. Make sense?"

For the time being, I'm leaving "DIRTY" out of the "no-no" equation where the toilet is involved. These are the complexities that never would have occurred me until they were staring me in the face.

But that's toddlerhood in a nutshell, isn't it?

Posted by Sarah Kickler Kelber at 3:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Toddler Thursday
        

 Sarah K.K. is back to take on the ga-ga-goo-goo set for Toddler Thursday:

We're flying cross-country in a few weeks with the little one, and frankly, I'm worried.

This won't be Isaac's first time on a plane, or even his first cross-country journey, but it will be his first time flying since he started walking and discovered the joys of mobility.

His previous flights have posed their own challenges.

When he was nearly 4 months old, Isaac and I flew solo to Oregon to visit my mom, who had been ill and unable to travel to us after his birth. Leg 1 was a packed flight, and he got a little antsy, but the father of a 5-month-old was crammed into the seat by me, and he just kind of rolled with it, thankfully. Leg 2, we had more space, and he slept like a log for most of it, but since it was getting late, the pilot started the descent without making an announcement. In Portland, you go kind of over the mountain and then doowwwwn to the river real quick to land, and even on a grownup head, it can be brutal. I didn't have a chance to get Isaac his pacifier or bottle and he woke up in screaming pain. I was desperately trying to get him to calm down when a flight attendant unbuckled herself, came over, and helpfully told me that although crying would eventually clear his ears, if I could get him "to take a bottle or pacifier or something, that would really help." I looked at her with a crazed expression, three kinds of pacifiers hanging off my fingers, a bottle tucked under my arm, a knuckle near Isaac's screaming mouth being ignored, and tried to clear the white-hot fury from my brain to form a sentence when my seatmate saved me. "She's offered him everything she's got, OK?" Rarely have I felt such gratitude toward my fellow man.

At 6 months or so, we flew solo to Texas, but it was pretty uneventful except that the carseat didn't quite fit between the rows, so even though we each had a seat, I had to share mine with part of his carrier for most of the flight. Eh, whatever, he slept most of the way.

Just shy of a year, Isaac accompanied us to California. The flight out was going really smoothly (we had the row to ourselves!) until he choked a bit on a goldfish cracker after drinking a full bottle of milk. Let's just say I wished I had followed my initial instinct to pack an extra outfit for myself into the carryon. (I have to say, though, the flight attendants were so good after the vomit incident and helped us clean up remarkably quickly and efficiently. I was impressed. And relieved.) On the way home from California, the planes were completely full, but strangely, Isaac slept for about three-quarters of our time in the air. Speaking of relieved.

But now ... I don't know. Every second his feet are on the ground, he is on the move. If we have to hold him still, and he doesn't want to, he kind of freaks out. He's at that stage (15 months old) where he easily gets frustrated because he's just figuring out that he can communicate with us, but we often don't understand. The good thing is, he sometimes spends ages playing with his books, and one of his new favorite things is to plop down in one of our laps. So maybe with a snacks, a few new interesting books and his favorite stuffed animal for naptime, we'll be OK.

But if anyone has suggestions for flying with toddler, hit me in the comments!

(Photo of plane wing by me, taken a while back, and not while flying with child)

Posted by Sarah Kickler Kelber at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Toddler Thursday
        

Something I've noticed recently about my almost-15-month-old son, Isaac (whom you met last week): The kid's got opinions.

Unfortunately, he doesn't always have the means to express them, and this means it's meltdown time.

Food or drink -- or rather, the desire for such -- is often at the center of these breaks from reality. I always feel so silly when I realize that the kid just wants some milk and it's taken me so long to figure it out.

We started working on the baby sign for "more," hoping that would give Isaac a way to let us know when he was hungry or thirsty. And we really thought he had it figured out. But the other day, my husband was feeding him dinner, and Isaac was signing "more" -- and saying it -- but every time he offered him more of the food options he had there, Isaac shook his head and cried.

At a loss, my husband handed him his bottle of milk, and voila! Happy again! In Isaac-land, "more" appears to mean "bottle."

So who's teaching whom here?

(Photo by me)

Posted by Sarah Kickler Kelber at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Toddler Thursday
        

Hello, all. This is Sarah K.K. from over in Reality Check land. A while ago, Kate and I had talked about me guest posting every so often about my return to work after maternity leave, but I was so overwhelmed by the transition, I couldn't quite manage it. But now that my little guy and I are in a little more of a groove, I volunteered to write about toddler-dom.

Let me back up a bit: My toddler in question is Isaac, and he's closing on 15 months old. (When do you stop with doing the ages in months and just start round off, anyway? I think that's a post for another day.) He started walking right around his first birthday, while his dad (my husband, Judah) was out of town for two weeks, unfortunately. Lately, he's upgraded to running, even though his balance isn't quite ready for that yet. And, hence the headline on this post, his favorite word in his limited vocabulary is "hi," which he likes to say a lot. (True to his mom's Southern roots, he manages to turn it multisyllabic.)

After that none-too-brief introduction, here's what I want to talk about today: In an attempt to distract your toddler, have you ever given them something to play with that you later regretted? ...

Continue reading "Toddler Thursday: Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" »

Posted by Sarah Kickler Kelber at 9:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Toddler Thursday