Recent evidence that Sam is most definitely a toddler comes not from his toddling (though there is plenty of that). Instead, it comes from his increasingly definite opinions. We never really had the impression that Sam was lacking in opinions before now, but the past couple of weeks have seen a distinct increase in how emphatically he expresses them, and a corresponding decrease in how willing he is to be distracted from something he wants. Two examples:
Though he's been quite adept at getting off the bed or the couch by turning around and sliding down feet-first for a while now, he doesn't get many chances to practice going down stairs. So a couple of days ago, I tried to give him some chances, first inside the apartment on the three stairs going from the bathroom down to the hallway, and then outside, on the four stairs from the front door to the front yard. However, he wasn't having any of this going-down-backwards stuff; he wanted to go down standing up, facing forward, like an adult. I would tell him "feet first", and he would smile at me slightly, stand there, and dip his foot off the edge of the top step. I would pick him up, turn him around, put him down on his hands and knees, then coax his foot down to the next step-- and he would crawl forward, stand up, turn around, look right at me, and dip his foot off the edge again. For about ten minutes. So finally, I held both his hands and helped him take the huge steps down facing forward. Um-- he won't be left alone around any steps any time soon.
He also had a brief but heartfelt crying fit later that same day when I wouldn't let him play with the straw in my smoothie cup. We'd been sharing a smoothie, me offering him sips from his own little cup (to repeated demands of "moh!"), but he spied my red straw and grabbed for it. I tried offering him a drink, but he hasn't figured out how to drink from straws yet, and he just wanted to paly with it. I realized this too late, and he sprayed an arc of raspberry smoothie across himself and the stroller before I grabbed it back, stuck it back in my cup, and kept it well out of reach. When he realized he couldn't have it, he pitched a fit. At the park. With plenty of lovely distractions to look at and run to, all around him, and as much moh lovely smoothie as he wanted in his own cup. I have the feeling this is going to get worse before it gets better.
On the brighter side: his stranger anxiety is at a general low, and his separation anxiety also doesn't seem too bad (then again, when I leave him, it's always with familiar people like his babysitters)-- despite a predicted increase in both of these things around this age. So hopefully his upcoming new-babysitter experiences-- our May-only babysitter starting next week, and Aunt S. and Uncle D.'s wedding later this month-- will go smoothly.
Some new things Sam can do: use a spoon (it's a messy endeavor, and half the time the bowl of the spoon is facing down, but he keeps determinedly dipping then maneuvering to his mouth, and ate some baby food green beans all by himself-- an extra bonus, because he's been pretty uncooperative on the spoon-feeding front for a few months, so he's been getting all his veggies finger-food style); use a fork (though with a bit less success); take bites of something (specifically, a soft taco that I was holding for him); scribble with crayons; spin the salad spinner:
New words in the past couple of weeks: bear (which he has used both to refer to his teddy bear, and to request a reading of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear", one of his favorite books); bird (another stuffed animal); baby; bye (including as a command, yesterday, when he wanted our babysitter to leave so I would nurse him); "oof" for woof (when he sees a dog while we're walking, he will often announce, "Dah! oof! dah! oof!"); "moh" for more; "wah" for water.
Final note: we googled snudge to see if this blog comes up (it doesn't, at least not in the first couple of pages of links). And we found, to our surprise, that it exists already as a word. There are a couple of old definitions (e.g., "n., a thief who hides under a bed in order to rob a house"; "v., to lie snug or quiet"), neither of which really apply to Sam. There are also some modern and, shall we say, not-family-friendly ones (google them yourself, if you're curious-- hi, Grandma!), which, ahem, don't really apply to Sam either. For the record, J. made up the name, as he has most of the nicknames Sam has had since birth; it was probably from a combination of snuggly and fudgie. Sam is snuggly only occasionally, usually first thing in the morning, but he's fudgie most all the time, though he seems to be stretching out and getting taller and less chunkalicious (but not any less delicious) every day.
