Happy 16 months to my sweetest, most opinionated little buddy! Expressing his opinions has definitely been the theme this past month (well, that and new tricks like WALKING)!
The biggest news, of course, is that James is now a full-fledged walker. Just in the last week has he started to walk almost all of the time. Though, when he's tired, sometimes he still drops to his knees and crawls. My favorite thing about him walking is that it is SO much easier to just go outside and play! Before walking, he mostly would sit in the stroller while I worked in the garden, but now he piddles around and picks dandelions and it is so fun. We have spent up to 3 hours outside!
He has the sweetest personality, and it just keeps getting better! He loves to give kisses and hugs and sign "I love you" (all of which he usually will do on command). However, separation anxiety has really ramped up this past month. He has started crying every time he goes down to the nursery in church... a few weeks ago, he cried the entire time (I know it's true, because I was right next door teaching the toddler Sunday school class). It makes things like going to church and my Side by Side group (where we have childcare for a few hours of adult time of eating and chatting and Bible-studying) really pretty stressful. I know that it is a developmental phase and an important time for James to learn independence and that he can trust me to always return to him, but I feel badly for those who have to take care of him while he just screams! It's gotten so bad lately that even when Stuart comes home, James comes running to me because he is afraid I'm going to leave him. I'm very much looking forward to moving past this phase.
His little opinions have become stronger - it mostly comes out at meal time when he would prefer to just eat fruit (any fruit) at every meal, every day. But he also makes it clear which toy he wants to play with, when he wants to go outside, which book he wants to read, when he wants to wear a hat, and sometimes even when he is tired and wants to nap! He even picked out his clothes the other day for my mom while I was at work - she had some pants laid out to put on him, but he went to his closet and started getting excited over his denim overalls. He was quite proud when she pulled them down and dressed him in those instead!
He hasn't had a lot of new verbal words this month:
Baby (both sign and verbal)
Grapes (verbal)
Bless you (pronounced "shoo" - he did this twice after I sneezed the other day... hasn't done it since, but I am counting it!)
I think that puts his verbal word count up to 15ish. He's also started making a clicking sound for duck... not quite a quack, but he definitely intends it to go with "duck!"
He is definitely in the middle of trying to drop from two naps to one... This has been the hardest nap transition yet! When he dropped from three to two (around 7-8 months), he was really struggling for a few weeks, and then I just dropped one cold turkey for him, and he slept like an angel from then on. This time around, it's much more complicated! Some days he still wants two naps and acts like he is so tired at 9am (usually when he goes down for his first nap) and he will either not sleep at all, or he'll sleep up to 3 hours in a row! Then it's just hit or miss whether he will want to nap again later in the day. And some days he falls asleep in his carseat and/or is cranky at the end of the day and is acting so tired. Other days he is content all day after just one long morning nap. I have tried to extend the morning and put him down toward the middle of the day, in hopes that he will just take one long nap, but later in the day, and that has yet to work well. It's so hit or miss, and it is very challenging to try and schedule anything from doctor's appointments to lunch dates or walking with a friend. Hoping he figures it out soon...
Though, I should mention that he continues to sleep like a rockstar at night (7pm strict bedtime until 7-7:30am almost every morning), so I better not complain!
We have started to have to discipline James pretty regularly... We are mostly going by the advice offered in Paul Tripp's Shepherding a Child's Heart. We do not expect James to understand the concepts of obedience, honor and forgiveness, but we do want the vocabulary to be familiar to him and for his understanding to grow someday, and we recognize that ultimately the goal of discipline is not to change or shape behavior, but to reorient the heart.
The most challenging aspect for us right now is to decide what he is and is not allowed to do, and to be consistent to communicate those things clearly to James. We do still want him to explore and be curious, so I don't tell him "no" just for making a mess (even if we just cleaned up) or playing in the dirt or anything else that is inconvenient for me. We do tell him "no" and enforce anything that could be dangerous (playing with outlets/power cords, especially under Stuart's desk, and playing in the fireplace). The other big thing is discipline during meal times. This falls more under "honor" and teaching James in some subtle ways that the world does not revolve around him - he is expected to sign "please" and "thank you" - even when he's grumpy - and if he complains about what is offered, then he has to be polite in order to move on to the next course. Since he grew out of that developmental stage where he learned about gravity, we've enforced a hard and fast rule of no throwing food - he gets disciplined for this, so as to teach him to honor others and how to behave appropriately (someday hopefully his heart for serving others by acting appropriately will follow), and told that he must obey this seemingly arbitrary rule that we have developed, so as to teach him that we were placed over him as his parents, and he is to respect our authority, even if he does not understand (of course I think this gets a little grey once he is an adult, but that's lightyears away, right??).
There seems to be lots of nuances and details to discipline, especially if you're trying to do it right and train your child's heart, not just change his behavior Pavlov-style. I'm sure we will learn a lot in the next few decades about discipline (of course, this all being a shadow of how God disciplines His children, about which we have a lot to learn!).
We love our little guy and enjoy so much watching him grow!
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