Over the past few months we have enjoyed watching some of Oliver’s favorites evolve. At 17 months, here is a glimpse of what is hot and what is not in Oliver’s world. (I started this post a few weeks ago, but I am just now finishing it and I’ve added a few 18 months updates).
The HOT List:
Showing off his skills. Oliver knows the colors: blue, green, yellow, red, purple,
and white (with about 80% accuracy).
18 months: He has started point out things as “the purple car” or “the white plate”. For shapes, he knows circles, squares,
diamonds, hearts, stars, and usually triangles. He knows all of the capital letters of the alphabet (we have
not really mixed the lower case ones in yet). Oliver likes to identify letters everywhere we go: business
signs and windows, at the airport, on food containers, etc. He doesn’t really know specific numbers
yet, but knows what “numbers” are in general when he sees them. He loves to compare and point out
when things are different, e.g., big/small, old/new, middle/edge, right/left, and
light/dark. Ask him to spell go
and he will tell you “G-O” and ask him to spell bus and he will tell you
“B-S”.
He has a really good vocabulary which is starting to include
more emotion related words (e.g., like, happy, love, tired out, worried, relief, scared). 18 month update: I recently started asking him, how long will mommy love you...he replies with the answer, "ever", and now he tells me (usually with a hug), "love mommy ever" or "love Myrtle ever." He uses lots of two-word phrases, e.g., “fuzzy pillow”, “excuse me”, “get it”,
“may I”, “up please”, “jumbo jet”, “lazy bones” and “my (insert any of his
toys, mommy, or food).” 18 months
update: Oliver has dramatically increased the length of his sentences. A few memorable sentences he came up with the past couple days: “Mommy, wake up!” “fuzzy blanket feels so good”, “nice
and soft”, “word of the day”, "where is it?", "rub my back", “up on bed”, “Oliver all done pooping now”, and
“give me bunny grams…please”.
He can get pretty excited when he is telling us something, and sometimes
his sentences come out sounding more like orders than statements. Sheryl told the story this week that
she had Oliver out in the stroller and a woman stopped to hold a door for them. As the woman reached for the door,
Oliver yells at her “Open the door!!”
Oliver refers to himself as "Oliver", but if you ask him his name he will say "Marx." If you ask him where he lives, he will tell you "M street" and/or "DC". If you ask him how old he is, he still says "two" so we have given up because by the time he agrees to be one he will be two anyway.
Books. Oliver
still loves books and reads a large portion of his library each day, but his
preferences (identified by the number of times he asks for the book to be read
“again”) change each week.
However, one consistent favorite for the past couple months is Lois
Lenski’s “The Little Airplane.” I
cannot begin to describe how much he loves this book. He talks about Pilot Small (the main character) regularly,
recites phrases from the book in his daily vocabulary, e.g., “it’s a sunny
day!” and “little auto”, and on occasion carries it around with him and gives
the book hugs. He will literally fill in every few words as you read it to him. For the first few
weeks that we had the book, he would have us read it to him several times
throughout the day often 2-3x per reading (“read again”). Now, he has much of the book memorized
so he will sit by himself and flip through the story narrating each pages with
a few key words or ask us to read it but skip to his favorite parts. Lois Lenski wrote a whole series of
“Small” books in the 30s-50s.
Given his love of Pilot Small, we recently got him “The Little Auto”, “The Little Train”
and “The Little Sail Boat”. The
Little Auto and Train books are also now favorites. Other current favorites: Good Night Construction Site, Little Red Caboose (Golden
Book), Little Tug, and How Things Work (he refers to as “Amy’s Book” since it was a gift
that came in the mail with a note from Amy).
Stuffed Animals.
Oliver’s constant companion these days is “Myrtle” the turtle. Sheryl got him the turtle on a trip they
took to the DC aquarium. She says
it was love at first sight. He
carries her around throughout the day, she has to be in the crib at night when
he goes to bed and in the morning, we can hear/see him on the monitor making
her dance and talking about her.
He has us give her kisses (he gives her hugs/kisses regularly),
he will feed her, brush her teeth, she does loops and flips, she sometimes
rides on his trucks, and she is usually wet from being chewed on. (18 month update: he is on his second Myrtle, we had to
replace “old Myrtle” with “new Myrtle” after he had nearly chewed old Myrtle’s
eyes off). He also makes requests
for and gives lots of huggies to his dolphin, blue monkey, and doggie. They are all in his crib at night and
he calls them “my animals.”
Mommy. There
was a time when I thought Oliver was definitely not a “mamma’s boy.” That time has passed. Around 14-months, he started to get
more attached and have a harder time with me leaving. The past 2-months he has been in full mommy mode. I’ll also digress and say it was around
mid-December when one day he just stopped calling me “mama” and started calling
me “mommy” totally on his own.
When we visited Wisconsin for Thanksgiving he learned that mommy was
another word for mama. But, after coming back to DC he did not
use the name mommy and we all only ever referred to me as mama. Then one day, he started calling me
mommy and we all just had to adjust.
When he sees me each morning, he first tells me about his animals, talks
about the sunrise, planes, trains, pilot small, or whatever else is on his
mind, but at some point he will ask, “mommy, work?” If I say yes, he says “no work” with total disappointment,
and if I say no, he joyfully says “mommy home!” Either way he doesn’t let me out of his sight. He knows all the signs of work, and
will say, “mommy, no makeup” or “mommy, no shoes.” Once Sheryl arrives he wants to be on my lap, in my bed, or held (very
effective since it is very hard to get ready or leave the house when he is
attached to me). The flip side of
it being so heartbreaking to leave him each day is that he is so happy when I
get home. He often runs to me, “mommy
home, no work!” He will ask now,
“comfy clothes?” Then he grabs my
hand and takes me to his books or toys and keeps me close for the rest of the
night. On the weekends, he will
sometimes just randomly give me a hug and say, “love” or “no work”. 18-month update: this has improved slightly over the
past week. He is crying less when I
leave, though he still asks me not to go and says “Mommy, no work, home today.”
But, today he even blew me kisses when I left.
Legos. He likes
building garages, barns, rockets, chicken coops, and cars with his Legos. He also
has a Lego chicken that we lost one day.
Now it is the running joke; he will randomly belt out “chicken loose” and
we run around trying to find the Lego chicken. He also has a “grandpa” Lego figures who is now a farmer,
pilot, astronaut, race car driver, etc. You name it and grandpa does it.
Trains, planes, helicopters, trucks, buses, and
automobiles. Train tracks are a
daily activity along with flying his planes/helicopters, driving/digging with his
construction vehicles, driving people on bus, and racing his hot wheels. He likes to remind us that helicopters do not need a runway
and takeoff from a helipad, and he learned from “Amy’s book” where the
swashplate is and how the pilot “tilts” it to control the blades. His planes are referred to as
“yellow plane”, “bi-plane”, “jumbo jet”, and “broken jet”.
Dancing.
“Goldfish” and “Rocketship Run” by Laurie Berkner
are his current favorites.
Crafts.
Painting, drawing, GLUE, stickers, chalk, and scissors (he does not get
to do the cutting).
Outside. He
enjoys being outside and loves to go for walks. He knows red is for stop and holds out his hand “STOP!, no
go” when we get to the cross sections.
When the light turns green and we assue him it is time to cross, he yells “GO!”
and will giggle the whole run to the other side. He will play in the dirt and rocks for as long as you will
let him.
Bath time. Bath is almost always at least and hour and he rarely wants to get out.
The NOT hot List:
The Bus. I am a
little sad to say, the bus is no longer the center of his universe. He still plays with regularly, but it
is not his must have toy anymore.
But, he does still love buses in general and will tell you that “kids,
not dogs” ride “school buses” and “grown-ups” ride “city buses”.
Sophie. No
interest in Sophie for many months.
Llama, Llama books.
We still read them regularly, but since pilot small entered his world
Llama, Llama just isn’t as popular.
Yoga class. I
don’t know if it is because his stranger anxiety has hit a high, if the class
falls right during his nap time so I often have to wake him up when we arrive,
or if yoga is just not his thing, but when I ask if he wants to go to yoga
class he tells me no. And the last
few classes he has made it clear he would rather be somewhere else.
Pandie. She got
bumped from the crib and has not been invited to sleep with the other animals
for a few weeks now.
