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Man, I had forgotten what it was like to have a mobile baby in the house. He is into everything. I should be thanking him for giving more of a grace period than most babies do by remaining so stationary the first year of his life. It's one of those fine line things with a baby with delays...you want them to "catch up" more than anything, but you're also kind of enjoying the fact that they stay babies for a little longer than most others. Ava has proved to be an invaluable resource, as she will wrap her arms around him and slide him back to safety if he's getting into trouble. She is so helpful.
Right now, Seth is pulling up onto his knees by grabbing the ottoman and very methodically taking the cover off the Harry Potter book I've been re-reading. Why does he want a Harry Potter book? I don't know, because he is a strange child. He likes puzzles, but not the wooden ones...he just likes to sort the 24 piece puzzles over and over. Into the box and out. He likes books, but not board books. He likes the fan and TV remote. I can surround him with toys, but he always returns to the same items. I guess it's a good thing we didn't have a big party for him...all the baby gifts would sit unused while he experiments with turning the ceiling fan on and off.
He's such a funny baby...he's starting to sing along when you sing to him, or rather, he'll sing when you stop singing, to remind you that he would like you to continue. He crawls like a crab, using his right foot like a crank to keep himself going. He loves food and eats more of it than I've ever seen. For dinner last night, he ate a pork chop (cut up, of course), a cup of ravioli, an entire avacado, cottage cheese, a can of mandarin oranges, and I even managed to get him to drink about 6 ounces of pediasure before bed. We've decided to make the switch from whole milk to Pediasure given his issues right now. Now that he's been given a failure to thrive diagnosis (I think I forgot to mentiont that), I don't want to mess around. His GI and I discussed milk vs. Pediasure when he was 11 months old, and we both were leaning towards milk, but it's just not working. I'm hoping he'll like the sweet taste of Pediasure enough to learn how to drink from a cup better, and so far it seems to be going well.
He's also learned to yell at people. If you do something he doesn't like, he'll give you a dirty look and shout something unintelligible at you. If you say no to him, he immediately dissolves into tears (Which is a step forward from laughing every time we said it a few months back). He's talking up a storm, and is up to about 10 words. He hears remarkably well, and while it's a challenge keeping him in functioning equipment (He breaks things...a lot), when he's hooked up and everything's working I think you would have trouble distinguishing him from any other one year old, aside from the gear he wears, of course.
He definitely knows people now, too. He will pick someone he knows and liks out in a crowd, and gasp, reaching one arm out to them, as if he's saying "Hey! I know you! Get over here!"
He's also getting a sense of humor, which is hilarious, and he and Ava and Jace will often sit around, just cracking up at who knows what. It's so cool to see them really enjoying each other...I didn't know how it would go, with three years between Seth and Jace and four between Seth and Ava. But Ava and Jace still love him more than anything, and can't wait until he can learn how to play Duck Duck Goose. They get really, really frustrated trying to play it with just the two of them. =)
