Noah is now eighteen months old, and ‘officially’ of school-going age. There are many playgroups and classes that have a minimum age requirement of 18 months, so I definitely have more options to keep him busy now. If we were back in Singapore, I mean. For now, because our return date is still unconfirmed, all Noah does is erm, hang out with mummy.
I recently started taking Noah on longer walks, and by that, I don’t mean our previous ‘walks’, where I was the only one doing the walking, with him strapped to my chest in the carrier or sitting comfortably in the stroller. Nope, the little boy now has to walk beside me, holding my hand, when we walk to the nearby market. We take a much longer time to get there and back, of course, but it’s a tiny step towards his independence. I still carry him across roads or in more crowded areas, but I do try to let him toddle along as much as possible, to give him a bit of exercise. We’ve met plenty of lovely people who smile at him, or stop for a quick chat, which is quite nice.
Stoning after a long walk
One perk of being able to walk on his own: the ability to touch more things
Noah seems to have become a little more reserved around strangers, and would sometimes refuse to say hi or wave at them. He is still on good terms with the staff at our serviced apartment, allowing them to carry him, and blowing flying kisses at them whenever we meet. A friend I spoke to said that this is normal behaviour, as he is more aware of his surroundings and is probably developing the concept of ‘stranger danger’ on his own.
This growing awareness is also something that we have noticed, especially when it comes to C being away. I wrote previously about how he got upset when C went back to work after a two week break, and recently, when C went on his business trip, Noah has been asking me for ‘papa’ very frequently. C told me that the night before he left, he talked to Noah, telling him that papa would be away for a week, so he had to be a good boy, and listen to mummy. According to C, Noah sat very quietly, then got up to give C a kiss, as though he understood what he was saying. *awwww* It’s really tough on everyone when C has to travel for work, and this is the first time that Noah has been so affected by C’s absence. He tries to kiss the screen whenever we Skype with C, and after each call, he’d ask me for ‘papa’ again.
Noah has also discovered the joy of watching YouTube videos, but for some strange reason, he only likes watching certain videos of ‘The Wheels on the Bus’, and watches them repeatedly during his meals. This drives me absolutely nuts, because I hear the song in my head all the time now, even when I’m trying to fall asleep. (I know that many people will be horrified that I have resorted to showing him YouTube videos to get him to eat, and/or that we give him french fries, nachos, and whatever he asks for, but unless you have a very fussy eater who is super small-sized please don’t judge us.)
Our little boy is still that: little. I’ve been trying to find ways to weigh him, and came across a free baby weighing scale in a pharmacy nearby recently. Noah is only slightly more than 9kg at the moment, and below the 5th percentile, according to the chart in our health booklet. He seems to be teething at the moment, and though he’s not much of a drooler, he has been putting almost everything that is inedible into his mouth to chew. I spied four upper teeth coming out, so I guess he might be feeling uncomfortable. He’s got a bit more hair now, and has been trying to comb it whenever he can get his hands on my comb.
‘Combing’ his hair
His only new word this month is ‘bee’, which he occasionally mispronounces as ‘ba’. (Don’t ask me how that can happen. They don’t even sound alike!) He learnt it while we were reading Pouch!
and he likes to mimic the giggling kangaroos in the book, going ‘hee hee’ when we get to that page. He’s been trying to hop like a kangaroo, though his version of hopping is to just squat and stand up again.
We’ve been reading a book about faces, and when we get to the one on ‘happy’, he will get all excited and kick his legs, in an exaggerated show of happiness. He will put his hands on his head for ‘hat’, or when we talk about how it is a hot day, and will tilt his head to the left and pretend to lie down, when we get to the ‘asleep’ face. He doesn’t do ‘sad’ very well, but if I pretend to be sad when he’s naughty, he gets really affected, sticking his bottom lip out, and sometimes, tears will even begin pooling in his eyes. I always burst out laughing when that happens, because his sad face is so funny, and C always tells me to stop making Noah turn into a drama queen. Heh.
His ‘happy’ faces
‘Asleep’
He also learnt a new ‘dance’, from reading ‘The Wiggles Dance with Dorothy’, which requires him to put his hands on his hips and sway from side to side. He can’t figure out where his hips are, and places his hands on his belly instead, even though I’ve tried guiding his hands to his hips. He also figured out how to turn around in circles, and does that repeatedly, till I get giddy watching him, though it’s quite cute watching him do his latest ‘dance moves’, and sometimes, when he’s in a good mood, he’ll do the shaking of his hands bit after that.
‘Dancing’
Just after I wrote about him not being able to get near the TV last month, he managed to climb onto the coffee table and switch on the TV one morning. He hasn’t repeated that stunt again, but sometimes, he manages to switch the TV on with the remote control by pressing randomly on the various buttons, and will stand there to watch whatever programme he gets. He loves those with dogs, and will bark at them. The Australian Open is now on, and after we brought him to the World Tennis Challenge in Adelaide, and the Australian Open in Melbourne, he has taken to grunting like the players whenever he sees a tennis match on TV, or even when we mention the word ‘tennis’. He has also figured out how to climb onto his rocking cow on his own, so he can play with it to his heart’s content now, without asking for help to get onto it. He absolutely adores his rocking cow, and it’s as though he forgets that he has it, because each time he sees it, he goes over to it, says ‘hi’, then proceeds to kiss it. He loves kissing most of his toys, and I’m glad that he likes them, or it’ll be money down the drain!
Perched on the coffee table
These days, Noah has become more attention-seeking, in that if he ‘injures’ himself, he will hold up the ‘injured’ part, like his hand, and whine until we kiss it better for him. I say ‘injured’, because it can be the slightest of knocks, or even an imaginary bump, but we usually oblige him, because hey, it’s an opportunity to kiss our baby, right? I do tell him not to be so whiny, because I don’t have much patience for whiny kids, but I also know that he will definitely outgrow this phase where mummy’s kiss can make everything better, so I’m just going to enjoy my superpower while it lasts.
Happy 18th month, sweetheart!
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