Hitting Milestones

Kate is hitting a 55 week post-due date developmental spurt (that's today, in fact). What's that mean? It means she's making a lot of progress all of a sudden.

For one thing, she's standing! She’s been lifting herself up on all fours a lot, and on Saturday, she finally managed to lift herself into a crouching stand for about five seconds. Yesterday was even more spectacular. She managed to get herself up from a squat to a full standing position two or three times and stay in a wobbly stand for about four seconds each time. She was just as proud of herself as we were. She’s having a wonderful time sitting on things that are several inches off the ground like Sadie’s ramp/pillow and launching herself into standing position over and over again. And I do mean launching. She caught air time a couple of times.

She’s stacking things now, as well. I noticed it for the first time on Friday. She was putting one toy – a block, a shape, a cup – on top of another. I forget when they’re supposed to hit this milestone, but I believe it’s right about now.

One milestone she’s demonstrated over and over is remembering where things are – or that they even exist – when she doesn’t see them. For whatever reason, she has a fascination with my toothbrush. She loves crawling around with it in her hand or mouth and sucking on it. It’s fun to watch her suddenly decide from out of the blue to crawl through our room and into the bathroom and open the door under my sink for the specific purpose of grabbing my toothbrush. She even closes the door when she’s done which is something I can’t always claim to remember to do.

I don’t mind that she wants my toothbrush. It can be inconvenient – I have problems tracking it down again when I need it at times or picking out the carpet lint – but she enjoys it. I do wish she wouldn’t drop it off by the toilet, however . . . better than in the toilet, I suppose.

Toddlers are famous for the word No. Kathleen has yet to say that word – we don’t use it in our house much, more often resorting to eh-eh or uh-uh as we do with Sadie – but she most definitely knows it. I have no idea when she learned to shake her head no. I’ll ask her if she wants another bite of food: she’ll shake her head. A sip of water or milk? Shakes head. Where did she pick this up?

She’s aware of what it means, too. It’s not some fluke or some action she’s imitating from someone else. No means no. She’s only started doing this during the past week.

I don’t know. Maybe we should be running in terror now that she understands the concept, but shaking her head no when she doesn’t want something certainly beats the temper-tantrum-and-flailing-arms method of communication she employed before. I prefer this one.

I guess that means she knows two signs now: bottle and no.