I’m way behind on posting Nathan’s 10.5 month achievements.  I guess it is always a busy period around Christmas, and we went away for a week which hasn’t helped.  We are still trying to clean up and pack everything away after our camping trip.  Before our trip we went to a couple of Christmas parties, and one was at the hospital for people who went to Mumsense during the year.  Mumsense was the highlight of my week during the first 4 months of Nathan’s life, and it was great to get back and see Cheryl (photographed with Nathan above) and have a chat with her about how Nathan was going with his sleep and car travel and realise how much better he is now at these things than he was at the start.

Development wise, Nathan is now standing very steadily and can push himself up to standing from a squat without using his hands (I don’t know that I can do that!).  He spends quite a lot of time standing, and the day before Christmas he took 3 very deliberate steps before falling down…it was almost in slow motion and you could see him trying to work out how to make the steps.  He likes supported walking, and is pretty good when only supported with one hand (which is a lot easier for us if he only needs one hand held).  I tend to think that independent walking isn’t too far away now.  One thing that I was surprised about recently was when I asked Nathan to smell a flower, and he did just that!

We weren’t sure how a week of camping was going to go with Nathan, but it was a total success.  We ended up with a beautiful grassy tent site with a view of the Thredbo River, and a picnic table and fireplace very close by.  Nathan loved the tent, loved being outdoors, loved crawling on the grass and picking up sticks, leaves and stones, and loved looking at the birds and animals that frequent the area.  He would stop still and stare at any new animals, and then after a few minutes he’d want to go closer.  He saw kangaroos, wombats, ducks, other birds, and wild horses.  Nathan just loved the ducks that frequented the campsite, and spent almost the entire week saying “Du” (u as in up), and when he got really excited he would scream “Du, Du, Du!!!!”  If my attention was elsewhere and I heard Nathan say “Du!” and I would turn around and sure enough Nathan would be staring at a duck.

Nathan has started putting noises and actions to simple toys like aeroplanes and cars.  He makes aeroplanes fly in the air and cars drive along the ground while he makes appropriate noises. Talking about aeroplanes, he loves looking at them and every time he hears a plane he stops and looks in the sky trying to find it (and since we are so close to the airport he gets lots of opportunities for plane spotting).

Nathan has been inspecting his hands lately and seems to be trying to work them out.  He started clapping several weeks ago now, but he seems to be progressing to trying to open and shut his hands/fingers with relevent songs such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the Open Shut Them song and the Five Little Ducks song.  It is interesting that he seems to have rediscovered his hands because he first discovered them months ago now.  Perhaps he now sees new possibilities for them.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 8:56 am and is filed under Camping, Nathan's first year. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.