On DD’s one-year birthday, grandmas told me soon I would notice some signs that my baby—small and cute though she is—wouldn’t be a baby any longer. I understood, since I already glimpsed her growing sense of independence, emerging negativity, primitive temper tantrums and sprouting my-way-or-highway-mind-set.

However, I never expected these behaviors would constitute the theme of her second year.

Looking for renewable energy? Here I am!
At month 14, DD was a confident walker. She could smoothly start and stop, bend down to pick up a toy from the ground, or kneel on the floor, or squat down and rise. Furthermore, she could easily get objects which used to be beyond her reach.

Walking also saved her energy to move around, thus enabled her to be constantly in motion, testing out her physical abilities.

There was always something she could find to entertain herself, no matter it was keyboard, TV remote control, my glasses, daddy’s book or something in the trash bin. She kept inquiring, searching, exploring and destroying, with no stop in eyes, hands, legs or mind.

Yes, our baby terminator was not only bigger and stronger, but also equipped with renewable energy!

I am your general!
Beginning somewhere during her 14th month, DD began to walk around with arms behind and one hand above the other, like a general or admiral. She could manage the balance so well that she didn’t need to extend her arms out to the side and turn her feet outward. But her watermelon-shape belly still stuck out in front.

Where did she learn this pose? M and I don’t walk like this at home. Anyway, it was fun to watch a little penguin walk around like a proud ducky!

But this was not the end of the story. Physiologically, DD thought she was a general, and I and M were at her command. She discovered her index finger had some magic power. Whatever she pointed to, she could get it easily and quickly by me—her loyal servant—and sometimes by M.

If she didn’t get what she meant, she simply gracefully pushed it away and kept pointing to that direction where thousands of different items stayed side by side (just exaggerating). You can imagine how frustrated I was!

When I ignored or resisted her whimsical commanding, she immediately presented her general-style temper tantrums. She shouted, yelled, screamed and cried (do generals do that?). Unfortunately, M and I are not that type of persons who yield to power and pressure.

So DD didn’t get her way. Then she quickly turned into a sweetheart. Her way to compromise was to hand us a book and sit on our laps. Who could resist a beautiful and cute baby who smiled at you and wanted to snuggle with you? Plus, we love to read to her. Thus we quickly melted and surrendered, and followed obediently at her sugar-coated order!

A dropping entertainment
Since month 10, DD began to purposely drop a lotion bottle from the changing table, or a spoon from the highchair, over and over again for me to pick up. She also would grip a cup, drink from it independently and then toss it away. And I became the adaptor of her actions, for example, keeping picking up things of her dropping game or start ducking during her tossing game.

Then, as she got older, she continued to get enormous pleasure from dropping things, especially from her highchair. At dinner time, she simply pinched the food she didn’t like out of her mouth and tossed it away, not caring where it landed. After I handed her the milk cup, she held the cup, drank milk from it contently, then gracefully let the cup go from her hand and watched it fall. Sometimes the edge of the cover hit the ground and the milk inside the cup spilled all over the carpet.

I am more than frustrated. I was furious! But DD looked at me innocently with her beautiful big eyes, like asking “what?” M told me to control my emotions and stop growling. He said knowing that her dropping behavior irks me doubled DD’s amusement and gave her greater motivation to repeat it. He asked me to stay cool and pretend that it didn’t bother me at all (which was killing me).

As before, I quickly adapted her actions. I didn’t let her hold the cup and drink the milk by herself. Instead, I held the cup for her and immediately removed the cup away from the range of her hand after she finished drinking. This time it was her who growled and complained.

But don’t ever underestimate the brain of our tricky baby terminator. Quickly she found another place to test her scientific experiment—the stairs. Since we installed a hardware-mounted safety gate on the staircase with six steps, she couldn’t go downstairs at her will (we have two staircases in the house and only opened one for her to practice crawling and walking). But her toys, blocks, books or any other things could be dropped down between the bars of the gate.

Like a junior Isaac Newton, she watched the objects fall all the way to the stairs and the ground, fascinated and thoughtful. Now it was M who got frustrated and furious, since he had to leave early morning to go to work and he didn’t want to get stumbled while walking downstairs.

What should I say to him? Drop the complaints and stay cool!

Where are my shoes?
Walking barefoot, as I found out online, is actually good for babies because it helps build muscles in the lower legs while developing a sense of balance. Therefore I never forced DD to wear shoes.

One afternoon Grandma came to babysitter DD. She took off her sandals and placed them side by side against mine. DD watched the two pairs of sandals and pointed to them. Grandma explained to her that these were called shoes and we’d better put them on when we went outside.

DD observed the two pairs of shoes for a while, then she headed to her storage box and threw out all the toys. Soon the floor was littered with her toys. Just when Grandma was wondering what she was doing, she took a pair of her pink sandal out of the bottom of the storage box.

She was looking for her shoes!

Then DD sat down on the window seat and put out her feet. Grandma was amused. She came over and put the baby sandals onto DD’s feet.

DD walked around with shoes. She must be saying in her heart: this is not too bad.

Spotting the changing of her attitude to shoes, I gave her more opportunities to get used to them. Sometimes I dangled her sandals in front her and asked her “do you want to wear shoes”. If she didn’t object, I would put shoes on her feet. Also I taught her how to take shoes off, so if she felt tired of wearing them, she could talk them off by herself.

Little by little, she began to accept shoes and walked around with them.

Related posts:
Baby’s growth, month 13
Baby’s growth, month 12
Baby’s growth, month 11
Baby’s growth, month 10
Baby’s growth, month 9
Baby’s growth, month 8
Baby’s growth, month 7
Baby’s growth, month 6
Baby’s growth, month 5
Baby’s growth, month 4
Baby’s growth, month 3
Baby’s growth, month 2
Baby’s growth, month 1

Tags: Baby's Growth | Baby's Growth, From Lina, Second Year | Lina | September 3, 2009 12:05 pm | Comments (0)