Oliver update: 15 months

At 15 months, Oliver is on the verge of so much - walking, sprouting teeth, language comprehension - but isn't quite there yet. I predict that in the next three months he's going to truly emerge from baby to toddler.

Oliver started taking his first steps just after his 14th month, but his attempts at walking were really sporadic. By Christmas he had been standing up consistently on his own without pulling himself up and his spurts of attempting to walk slowly increased. He set a personal record last week with 20 steps. He rounded the corner of the room and headed towards the door and I expected him to keep walking and never return to crawling, but then he stopped, let himself plop onto his bottom and continued on with his signature crawl.

His attempts at walking come in spurts throughout the day. He'll take a few steps, fall down, get up again, try to walk, fall and maybe try a third time before resorting to crawling for a couple of hours before giving it another go. He looks so proud of himself when he walks that I can't help but to drop what I'm doing to cheer him on.

When I brought Oliver in to the doctor throughout his thirteenth and fourteenth months because of ear infections, she had pointed out that his top two teeth looked like they were starting to come in, but I wouldn't have otherwise noticed anything. Then at his 15-month wellness check-up, the doctor used a tongue depressor to get a better look and, finally, I could see that the teeth had just barely broken the gum line. Over 15 months and he's just working on teeth number three and four.

By Oliver's 12th month, he had ceased throwing food on the floor, seemingly overnight, but in the past two weeks he has started throwing his sippy cups on the floor. While this is just as frustrating as food throwing, I feel more prepared in how to react. If he throws either sippy cup on the floor, both are taken away and put out of sight. And I feel I have a better understanding of what an seemingly out-of-context behavior means - in this case it often means he simply wants out of his booster seat.

Meanwhile we're back to more mess with eating once I discovered that he could feed himself quite well with a spoon. Quite "well" for a 15-month-old of course. The first couple of spoonfuls often end up in the food catcher of his bib, but as he reaches the bottom of the bowl, he's forced to take smaller spoonfuls of food and then much of that actually makes it in his mouth. I've even seen him dip his spoon into the pocket of his bib to spoon out the leftovers that dropped from his spoon at the beginning of the meal.

I've probably gotten away longer than most baby-led weaning advocates with being able to eat in front of my kid without him begging for what I'm eating, but I'm quickly needing to become more strategic about when I indulge in something I don't want Oliver to have. I've long taken to eating a banana as a snack on the sly and out of sight of Oliver, but increasingly I need to wait until his nap to help myself to a cookie, because he reaches out for anything he sees in my hand or on my plate. I can placate him now with a teeny tiny bit of my snack, because it takes him awhile to chew anything, but I know that won't last long.

The intense separation anxiety that reemerged at 12 months - the kind that left Oliver wailing if I left the room - showed the slightest signs of possibly improving. I noticed that sometimes he was slower to start crying and then just cried instead of sobbed inconsolably. Once a day I might have even experienced a reaction out of my child that I'd only envied in other children, which was no reaction at all to my brief absence. Then Christmas arrived, and we traveled for part of the holidays, which made Oliver's days even more hectic and off-schedule and any gains I thought maybe I'd seen quickly vanished. Only time will tell if being back home and establishing our old routine will put Oliver back on track for growing out of this latest separation anxiety phase.

Even though I know deep down that separation anxiety is a normal part of early childhood, I couldn't help but ask the doctor about it at Oliver's 15-month wellness check-up. As I suspected, Oliver's behavior is in the range of "normal," especially in the context of his being able to play by himself, his connection to his caregivers (mom and dad), his interest in playing with other babies and his ability to calm down relatively easily after being left with other caregivers. Oliver's pediatrician acknowledged that the experience of your child crying every time you leave is sight is frustrating, but reminded me that I can and should take care of myself and Oliver won't suffer physiological damage from crying. It was like I had been given permission to leave Oliver by himself to play (or cry, as the case usually is) while I run down to the basement to switch the laundry, go to the bathroom or ferry something upstairs without also having to take him with me. The downside is that while we often talk about certain behaviors as being phases, he cautioned me that some kids deal with separation anxiety all through their early years.

The only other behavior that I wanted to ask about, more out of curiosity than anything, was why Oliver suddenly hates baths. He didn't like them as a young baby, but many babies don't and then finally around six months he really started to enjoy baths. That lasted barely six months and he's back to crying through them, which means we bathe him about once a week, if that. Which is fine, because babies don't need to be bathed very often, and I think the whole process is a pain. But they do need a bath at some point. I experimented with varying water temperatures and different times of day, hoping to catch him in the best mood. Finally I wondered if because it's winter, possibly Oliver is just cold. But the doctor responded that some kids, despite the absence of a traumatic experience, like a near-drowning, just develop a fear of the water. Again, just normal.

Everything else at Oliver's appointment checked out as "normal" as well. At 30 inches tall and just under 22 pounds, Oliver is sticking to the 20th and 10th percentiles, respectively, (with 50th percentile for head circumference) and while the doctor acknowledged that he's on the small side, (no surprise to either of us) he's making the appropriate gains and is following his growth trajectory perfectly - exactly what the doctor is looking for. And because Oliver is ever so quickly approaching two years, the point at which doctors says that a child's adult height will be double their height as a two-year-old, his pediatrician checked the growth chart to determine how tall Oliver will be in another nine months and then predicted that he'll be between 5'6" and 5'7" as an adult.

As at every appointment, the pediatrician asks me a list of questions to determine which developmental milestones Oliver has reached. He asked me if he's walking (almost!), whether he feeds himself (for months now), scribbles with Crayons (when he's not trying to eat them) or waves goodbye (we think so...or maybe it's just coincidence) and, finally, whether he's saying any words.

Well, just some version of "da da" and "mum mum," which we're actually wondering if he's saying "yum yum" since we noticed he also says that when he sees food, whether I'm around or not. The doctor followed up with an explanation that it's not unusual for them to not have much of a spoken vocabulary at all at this age, even if they're understanding a lot, and then sometime between 18 and 24 months seem like they're learning a new word a day. Oliver was sitting on the exam table occupying himself with the print-out I'm given at each check-up with a list of developmental milestones and reminders for the next three months, when the doctor suddenly looked up from his notes and said with excited surprise, "Did he just say, 'What's that?" Since I listen to Oliver's babble all day, his chatter doesn't always register with me, but when I looked over at him, he was pointing at a word on the paper and looking up at me expectantly. It sure looked like he had just asked me "What's that?" In the past three weeks, Oliver has started pointing at random objects, usually the window or the Christmas tree, and saying "Da!" which we translate to mean "that".