14 Months Old

Snuggles is 14 months old this week. It's hard to believe!  This is a very fun age because Snuggles is starting to become more interactive.  He is really into repetitive activities.  For example, he likes zipping zippers up and down, stacking blocks, knocking them over, and stacking them again, and putting caps/lids on and off.  Another fixation he has right now is he likes putting things on his head and taking them off again. He puts Mama's headband on his head, he puts blankets on his head, he puts books on his head. You name it, he puts it on his head.

 Snuggles likes to wear hats, just like Daddy.

He likes to listen to music with Daddy's headphones.

Snuggles still doesn't walk independently, but he crawls really fast.  He also "cruises" around furniture and stands for brief periods by himself.  He occassionally walks behind a walker toy, but he just doesn't seem to be in a hurry to walk.  We're okay with that.  He's enough of a handful without walking.  Snuggles recently learned how to climb stairs (and he loves it!), but of course he hasn't figured out how to come down safely.  So we have to be really careful with him around stairs.

This video shows how fast Snuggles gets around crawling.  No wonder he's not in a hurry to walk!

Snuggles doesn't say many words intentionally, except "Uh oh" and "Uck uck" (for duck).  As a result, my favorite development with Snuggles is I no longer have to read his mind all the time.  Snuggles is learning to communicate with American Sign Language (ASL).  His babysitter has been working with Guitarman and me to teach Snuggles how to communicate what he wants using signs.  As we teach Snuggles the signs, we alway repeat the word over and over so Snuggles learns to speak the words as well as sign.  He doesn't sign all of the words consistently, but he responds appropriately when we use them. Here are some of the signs Snuggles uses:

• Eat
• More
• Bye-bye
• Milk
• Thank you
• Cracker

We're working on teaching him to sign:

• No
• Yes
• Drink
• Mama
• Daddy
• Blanket
• Bath
• Ball
• Play

He's a lot of work, but he sure is loads of fun!

Snuggles is changing so quickly that it's difficult to keep track of all the "new" things he does.  Just this week Snuggles learned how to blow kisses, and he is learning to play the "body part" game.  We ask him "Where's your tummy?" and he pats his tummy.  It's really cute.  Unfortunately, he thinks we need to show him our tummies, too.  So he pulls up our shirts to look at our tummies.  It's cute when we're at home, but not so much in public.  Last night, when he was in the nursery at church, Snuggles pulled up the volunteer's shirt.  We need to work on that before he gets us arrested.