Developmental Review

Some new developments have been unfolding in the Fish Bowl, especially now that TheFry is finally over all the miniscule illnesses he’s been struggling with since Thanksgiving:

1. TheFry has started taking steps. He will only take one or two at a time, and then drop to his knees. Then he will either start crawling like a madman to his intended destination, walk on his knees for a little bit before crawling, or collapse altogether into a desperate temper tantrum. Usually it’s the first or second option, though.

2. TheFry recognizes himself in the mirror. When I showed him his reflection, I said: “Who is that? It’s Dexter!” He responded by saying “Deh-ter.” I said, “Yes, that’s Dexter!” He responded again by saying “Deh-ter.” The other day I showed him his reflection in a little toy mirror we have and he said “Deh-ter” immediately. He only appears to be interested in this activity about half the time, but I think he’s catching on!

3. TheFry continues to love to read. Now he really wants to help turn the pages. His current favorite book is 곰돌아, 어디가니? (Little Bear, Where Are You Going?"). I am not very good at reading it but about 60% of the time he waits patiently for me to stumble through the words. It’s really helping my Korean reading skills improve a lot!

4. TheFry began to “play pretend” about two weeks ago. This really moved me, watching him imagine scenarios. His favorite game by far is feeding. He still will not feed himself at the table – he thinks it is a game and he will just end up scraping all the food on the floor – but he will feed himself (and others!) imaginary food. If I give him a cup and plastic fork he can play pretend for hours. The other day I woke up in the morning to him dipping a fork in an empty cup and then “feeding” himself.

Another play-pretend game he plays is crochet! If he has a crochet hook he will look for yarn and he will try and stick the hook in the yarn. He’s watched me so many times, I guess, it’s one of the things he knows about best!

5. He has started really getting interested in sorting objects. He will pull all the plastic bowling pins out of his toy box, for example, and line them up. Or he might spend quite a bit of time figuring out how to stack a set of plastic nesting barrels he has.

One particularly new development in this area is that he has become interested in building towers rather than just knocking them down. About 80% of the time he is building he will hand the blocks to me or PapaFish and then we will build the tower. However, on my dinner break this evening I was handing the blocks to him and he was trying to stack them up in a tower by himself! I am really excited about this one.

The down side of these developmental heights we’ve been climbing are the temper tantrums that have come with them. He just really screams and throws little fits sometimes. Also, he’s learned how to wiggle out of his seatbelt in his highchair and stand up in it, which makes me pretty nervous. I can’t take my eyes off of him for a second!

And now, the Stages of Tantrums:

Oh, Hi!

You have the camera!

Give me the camera!

Why won’t you give me the camera?!

Alas, cruel world, how will I survive?! My life is MISERABLE!

Does no one understand my pain?!

Fine, I give up—but I’m not looking at that camera EVER AGAIN.