Baha'i Dad Chronicles: 16 Months

Here's a question for you. At what point do you stop counting your child's age months? I leave you to ponder that one and share some updates about the little man in my life. So much has happened in the last few weeks that I'm not sure what to report. I'll start with a list of the words and phrases that are now popping out of Douglass Ali's mouth:

1. Daddy
2. Mommy
3. See
4. Hi
5. Bye-bye
6. No
7. Uh-Oh
8. Papa

He has also mastered saying "More" in sign language. That's as far as we got with the whole baby sign language thing, but it comes handy.

He has a variety of developmental tasks that he is working on right now. It's like he has a kind of list in his head and goes about it in a very systematic way. They include:

1. Jumping
2. Buckling the belt on his booster seat.
3. Drinking with a straw.
4. Taking the straw out of a juice box and putting it back in.
5. Sitting in a chair while turning pages in a book.
6. Feeding himself with a spoon. (or a Spork actually).
7. Taking off his father's watch and putting it back on.
8. Taking off his father's Baha'i ring and putting it back on.


There are some funny things that he is up to these days as well. Did I mention that he is running now? Well, one of the things running helps with is running away from your parents when you are doing something you aren't supposed to be doing. He sees us coming to correct him and he takes off down the hallway in a flash. He seems to find this hilarious. Also, any animal he sees he says "Wuff, wuff". He loves having a pretend conversation on the phone. He now includes periodically laughing as if the person on the other end just told a good joke. He's beginning to figure out that if he sits on a toy with wheels, he can make it move by pushing with his feet.

One of the funniest things he does is putting on his bib by himself. He has figured out how to get it on but always puts in on backward so that it resembles a little cape. Sometimes he'll put two or three on at the same time.