18 thoughts

Muppets, moving house and making animal noises. Read about all these and more in my latest monthly collection of thoughts about parenthood.

1. I may have been singing too many Muppets songs to our 16 month old son. His answer to ‘what does the cat say?’ recently was ‘mahna mahna’.

2. Despite his confusion about what cats say, our son has been getting quite good at doing animal sounds this month. His sheep and lion sounds are a bit similar but he’s getting really good at doing ‘moo’ sounds despite the relative lack of cows in our area.

3. I’m not sure if our son wants to follow in my footsteps but it certainly looks like he wants to walk in my shoes (see picture below).

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4. Our son recently helped to unpack a whole bag of shopping. I’d put in on the floor while I opened the fridge door and he then handed me all the items one after another without me even asking. I hope that this is a sign of things to come!

5. Helping to wash the dishes is another thing that our son did this month. He managed to combine this with helping to wash the kitchen floor at the same time.

6. Our son’s helpfulness this month has also included playing a role in organizing my new office.

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7. Our son’s gradually starting to understand technology although he does sometimes put the television remote control to his ear and say ‘hello’…

8. …and he also seems to occasionally confuse cutlery and technology. He recently put a plastic fork to his ear and said ‘hello’.

9. Our son has been enjoying feeding corn to our chickens recently. He’s also occasionally tried to feed them clothes pegs recently, but they’ve turned their beaks up at them.

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10. In the week before we moved house, our son started making chicken noises in the kitchen while he was sitting in his high chair. He’d noticed one of the chickens peering in the window and seemed like he was trying to say hello. I like this progress towards multilingualism.

11. I recently carried out a parenting experiment to see whether an episode of Raa Raa The Noisy Little Lion or coverage of the live televised debate on Scottish independence would get our toddler son to sleep. Two episodes of Raa Raa weren’t enough, but he was fast asleep after half an hour of the independence debate.

12. Our son took a very ‘hands on’ approach to helping to pack boxes before we moved house (see picture below). I recently wrote a blog post about this entitled Moving house with a toddler.

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13. This month, I have learned that the way to get our son out of the bath without him crying is to let the water out of the bath and then lift him out.

14. When I stood on one leg at a bank machine, our son looked a bit puzzled. I tried to explain to him that I was checking my balance.

15. Our son is getting much better at steering his toddle truck. A few months ago in our old house, he’d just push it forward and cry when he bumped into something and couldn’t push it any more. He’d then wait for someone to come and turn the toddler truck around so he could push it some more.

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16. Our son decided to get up at 7am to watch coverage of the Scottish Indepedence Referendum results with me. I’m glad to see him taking an interest in politics at such a young age.

17. On way home after three days at a conference, I discovered one of our son’s little red socks in my trouser pocket.

18. It was a lot easier when I was writing posts such as ‘7 thoughts from my 7th month as a parent’ 🙂 Anyway, I’ll see if I can keep going with these posts until our son turns two.

What do you think of this post and what do you remember from your first year and a half as a parent? Please feel free to share your views in the comments section below or on the ‘Dad’s The Way I Like It’ pages on Facebook or Google+.

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