Tag: toddler

She moves and leaps

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Technically Aviana doesn’t  crawl, she scoots on her bum and drags her right leg. It’s kind of Gollum like and a little creepy…if I dressed her up in some weird creepy baby Halloween costume, she would terrify many people with her scooting crawl.  When she was learning to get from A to B she was incredibly frustrated as she developed this skill, but as soon as she figured it out, all was right with the world. I sense this period of frustration happened again, but this time with walking.

Aviana has been ‘walking’ with our assistance for quite some time.  Even the doctor thought she would be walking within weeks of when we saw her at the 9 month wellness visit.  But no, and I could see that Aviana was very frustrated by this.

Another odd thing happened.  Aviana turned into a grumpy/touchy baby with head banging and hair pulling being her signature move.  I wondered what had happened to my sweet girl, who seemed to turn into the demon toddler from hell. So I thought I should check my wonder weeks app and low and behold, she started her 8th leap. It was the exact day her grumpiness started that the leap started.

The wonder weeks app has proven to be very accurate in its timings over the past year. This particular leap is the ‘world of programs’ leap. The signs of this leap includes temper tantrums. I thought that babies didn’t have temper tantrums much later into toddlerhood, but I was so wrong!

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Really, we think Aviana can walk and that she hasn’t sussed out that it’s actually quicker to get places by walking. We think this because she can walk with us holding just one hand (barely a finger even). But on my Birthday (a few days ago), at 53 weeks old she decided to walk on her own! She was very pleased with herself! But was so excited she kept falling over. Which frustrated her more.  So I think the mental leap and her walking development turned her into a very touch baby.  Technically we have 18 days left of this leap, but with her figuring out how to walk she became noticeably a little less grumpy. With the wonder leaps, I tend to find that she is crankiest at the beginning and end of the leap, but not always constantly for the whole leap.

I am really excited about this leap, I can see her doing some of it already in just the past week.  Aviana has been very observant of us making breakfast, dinner and knows the correct order of putting the toys away in the bath just before she gets out. The signs are all there of her working through this leap.  The wonder weeks has been a really fascinating app to help us through some of her crankier stages in life.

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The pre-toddler stage

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Aviana is not a toddler just yet, but she is not a newborn baby either. She is just a baby…but she is on the very verge of becoming a toddler. I started to feel this more apparent recently as she has begun to learn how to communicate her needs to us in a variety of ways, including what seems to be the tantrum – crying because she can’t have something her way. This is something new to me!!! With a newborn baby crying can be stopped by feeding, sleeping, playing, soothing or distraction. This kind of tantrum is surely a sign of her getting closer to toddlerhood. Perhaps this is just the worst of the last leap she has been through and it will end tomorrow or not. Either way, I’ve felt like I’m out of my depth on what’s next for my 9mth old as she begins to enter toddler-dom.

So as any typical analyst would do, I went to the book store and selected a couple of books about parenting toddlers to start my research. How will we parent our toddler? Of course the bookshop houses many different publications claiming they have the best technique to raise a happy toddler. But with all the many publications about raising a newborn, this time we are a bit more aware of what our style might be and what might better suit Aviana. So I selected the baby whisperer for toddlers-it was helpful for when A was a newborn and seemed to work well. I haven’t read it all yet, but it started out explaining that if you already read the first book, you already have foundations for following his one. Which is kind of a relief! But the one thing that struck me is that the Baby whisperer explained that a toddler is like a teenager in the same respect as that they are going through a huge transition in their life moving a big step/leap towards independence. And that’s to be expected to be hard on both the child and the parents in many ways.

So here we are on the verge of this transition! I’m looking forward to it, but a bit nervous too! Isn’t this the stage where we make or break our children’s future??!! Hehe…OK a bit melodramatic, but I’d like to get a head start on learning a bit more about toddlers.

What have you found to be useful resources (books, websites, groups, people) in helping you understand your toddler better???!!