For at least a month now, every time we go to the park, and Spencer sees a tricycle which some other kid brought, he has to try it out. Frequently this makes the little boy or girl mad, because they don’t want to share, and the parents also get upset, because they want their kid to share. It seemed like it was time to get Spencer a tricycle. I started looking a good month ago, paying attention to other ones I saw around, as well as ones in the store. I decided I wanted one with a push handle, in case he gets tired of peddling. I thought that this radio flyer tricycle looked particularly cool. I decided to try to buy a used one, so I started looking at craigslist. I was surprised to find that most of the tricycles offered on craigslist were more than 50% of the price of a new one. Apparently used stuff is more expensive these days because of the bad economy. Yesterday I decided to go ahead and buy a new one for Spencer. He was immediately very happy. He can’t really pedal yet, so it is good that I can push (and steer as well).
In other news, Spencer took part in a word learning experiment today at CU-Boulder. They had various objects differing in shape and material, and were trying to discover whether he associated likeness via shape or material. Interestingly enough, he seemed to group things by material, not by shape, which I found very surprising. His receptive vocabulary continues to grow rapidly, but his active vocabulary is still fairly small. Tonight in the bath we practiced the word boat, which he pronounced simply as [bo].
Spencer and Clare reading Trucks and Cars and Things That Go
Spencer had his 18 month checkup on Tuesday. In addition to the normal stats, I also noticed two new ones: 87.3% of growth percentile based on weight-for-age; 48.69% of growth percentile based on length-for-age. He also got his last round of shots for several years. That is nice.
It seems like Spencer is developing really quickly lately. He is starting to be able to plan ahead much more, and his receptive vocabulary is growing rapidly as well. A few anecdotes:
Sit down
Last week at the reunion we were eating dinner one night. Spencer was sitting on a normal chair next to Geebi, and I was sitting across from him. He started to stand up on the chair, and I asked him to sit down several times. He continued standing, so I started to get up from my chair to make him sit down, and as soon as I stood up, he sat down. Spencer knew exactly what I was saying, but he was testing me!
Barbecue Sauce
Sunday night we were about to eat dinner, and I was getting something from the fridge. Spencer frequently likes to shut the refrigerator door, so I was going to let him do that, but he wanted it open. I shut the door, but he kept opening it back up, and was pointing to something in the refrigerator door – barbecue sauce. He wanted some barbecue sauce. I got it out and handed it to him, and he was immediately happy. We then proceeded to heat up a veggie chicken patty for him to dip in barbecue sauce. Speaking of dipping, he was also dipping chips in a bowl of salsa last week at a Mexican restaurant
Communicating
When Spencer wants to go outside, he starts trying to climb into the backpack, or he finds his shoes and brings them to one of us. He doesn’t have any words yet, but he is starting to communicate better. He has been saying “Uh-oh” a lot over the last week, but it seems to be at somewhat random intervals.
Stacking
Just a few months ago, Spencer only wanted to destroy towers. Now he is actively building them. Dave got a short video of Spencer stacking yogurt cups.
Spencer has been making funny noises for the last couple months. I have been capturing them on video occasionally. Here is a highlights reel. He has two different sounds in particular he likes to make. The first is kind of an l-like sound, in which he sticks his tongue out. The second is a more of a car noise, which is pretty much a voiced bilabial trill. I’m not exactly sure where he learned these sounds – definitely not from me. He could be trying to imitate some other sounds I make, or perhaps the sounds of other objects, like cars.
Spencer really seems to enjoy brushing his teeth. Right now he mostly just sucks on the toothbrush, but that’s a pretty good start. I think that he partly likes it because we do it together. The only part I dislike is when he tries to brush my teeth with his toothbrush. He is a very sharing boy!
