microstanding

The trip up was uneventful. Mom’s headphones weren’t working, so she put her Zoom meeting on speakerphone and we got treated to an hour-long discussion of revenue projections for the upcoming fiscal year.

Anyway, BB! He had his first birthday a couple weeks ago. He’s a pro at crawling (Mom said he should be in a baby derby), but he’s not quite walking yet. He loves standing while holding on to objects, and when distracted will sometimes let go and freestand for a couple seconds before bomping to the ground. I tried to encourage this, e.g., he’s standing at the edge of his playpen, holding on with his right hand and holding a ball with his left. “Hey BB!” I offer him another ball. He will sometimes take it with his right hand and stay balanced for a second or two before gravity catches up with him like a cartoon character. He’s getting there! (However, he’s more likely to throw the ball in his left hand out of the playpen before accepting the new one. Throwing toys out of his playpen is one of his favorite pastimes. He's in his cat phase.)

He is a problem-solver. Apparently, he used to have a humidifier tank(?) in his playpen. Earlier this week he pushed it to the edge of his playpen so he could clamber on top and attempt to escape. He has now lost humidifier privileges. He still tries standing on anything possible near the edge (books, boxes, pillows, you if you happen to be sitting near the edge, etc.). There’s a big world to explore outside the playpen and he wants to see it all.

He vocalizes a lot, sometimes for fun (he likes music and sometimes seems to try and sing along), sometimes to communicate (e.g., expressing annoyance or frustration), but I don’t think he’s grasped the concept of language yet, i.e. that certain sounds have certain meanings. “Da” is one of his favorite syllables, and sometimes by coincidence he says it while looking/pointing at his dad. “Yes!!” several adults immediately exclaim. “Da-da!! That’s your da-da!!!” He doesn’t get it. An older child would realize that “da” gets him immense positive attention in certain contexts and try to milk it, but BB just looks at us quizzically and then goes back to dropping Cheerios off his high chair.

He's starting to eat actual food. For dinner brother made him broccoli and salmon, but he refused to eat the broccoli. Brother then mixed both dishes together into porridge to trick him into eating the broccoli. It didn’t really work. On one occasion BB actually spat out a mouthful and carefully separated the broccoli from the salmon, which he picked up and re-ate.

For tomorrow’s meals brother & wife made sweet potato meatballs for BB (pureed sweet potato, carrots, onions, ground pork/beef). They’re trying to get more meat in his diet because he has an iron deficiency and iron in meat is apparently easier to absorb. I sampled a meatball and it was pretty good. If BB won’t eat them, I’ll happily take them.