I Wonder…Could it be a Wonder Week? Aka: Wonder Week # 46

Urgh, I’m so annoyed!  I just finished writing this post which I started yesterday and it didn’t save.  Now, I have to retype half of it…

Ok, tiny rant over…

Well, after a short hiatus caused partly by blogger’s block, partly by juggling three jobs and a family life and partly by good ol’ procrastination, I am back (right on time for Canadian Thanksgiving too!).

In my last post, I mentioned that my son still wasn’t STTN.  Well, he still isn’t, but I’m ok with that.  However, he has been generally cranky, clingy and “mood swingy” (even if my parents won’t believe me and think he’s a perfect angel all the time 😉 ).  I had all but forgotten about wonder weeks until I received a message in my inbox on a particularly headache-inducing day.

“Get ready for wonder week #46”

Ok, so that’s not how the title was worded exactly, but it is what it meant.

“Of course!”, I thought.  Little Dude’s developing skills and fragile mood finally made sense!

I’m not going to go through the signs of a wonder week again as they are pretty stable from time to time.  If you’re curious about what to look out for before a wonder week, I encourage you to read this and this, post (for the record, I’m sure I wrote about these more often, but these are the only two that popped out at me for now).

I am however going to give a little specific insight into what exactly this wonder week (WW) consists of.

According to the authors, who dubbed this WW the “world of sequences”, it is the moment where a baby:

can begin to realize that to reach many of his goals, he has to do things in a certain order to be successful.  You may now see your baby looking first to see which things go together and how they go together before trying to put them in each other, pile them on top of each other, or piece them together.

I’ve definitely noticed my son performing some more complex actions lately.  Here are a few of the things that he’s been doing:

• Takes off his sock and tries to put it back on (the key word here is being ‘tries”)
• Places his toys on top of his floating books in the tub
• Pulls apart two “duplo” blocks and puts them back together
• Places different sized objects inside containers
• Pushes a toy towards the couch to try to climb up on his own
• Can stand up on his own (without pulling up), might take a step forward before squatting back down
• Dips his cracker/weetabix in a soft food (applesauce, hummus…) and brings the food to his mouth
• Grabs the phone, puts it to his ear, pushes on some buttons and hands it to me
• Tries to scoop up different types of food with his spoon
• Turns on/off the light when prompted

I also seem to have turned my son into a pavlovian experimental subject.  He has not only been conditioned to clap when he hears the word “bravo” but he also when he pulls up and lets go of the object he used to pull up.  He also waves when he hears the word “bye bye” and is starting to wave when he hears “bonjour” (hello).

In the realm of language development, he understands the words mom, dad, look, what’s that, go get, give, come here, no (though he doesn’t always listen to this one)…and, though he is not particularly loquacious, uses the words “maman”, “papa” (or, his version of those words), “ga”, which is short for “regarde” (look) and “quoi” (what).  The last two words are usually accompanied by one of his fingers pointing in the direction of something.

I’m in awe of how quickly he’s developed since birth.  It is thoroughly amazing how much these little ones learn in such a short amount of time.

I should be back tomorrow for TTT and plan of starting to post more regularly again after that.  Look out for a post on themes for some guest posts I would love to see ’round here on Wednesday.

Happy Thanksgiving, fellow Canadians!

Take care all.