Rain, rain, go away...

...actually better if you stayed, Teodor loves you. Rain and after-rain are his favourite types of weather. His happy face makes up for all the suffering I go through standing nearby watching out for cars or unexpected falls while being cold and wet...I let him do more or less anything he wants in order for him to get all the sensory experience he is craving for, also for him to find out what happens if... and on the top of it, running/riding in the puddles makes him nicely tired and seems like it works really well for his immunity. 

Our neighbours had their eaves installed...he spent a lot of time playing with the water. It is cheaper than playing with the water running from our tap.

Deep puddles

Playing in another puddle...me waiting for him losing his balance and having an unexpected bath.

Play-space

Today was a typical Estonian November Day, dark and humid and cold...we decided to ditch our usual afternoon walk and I used the spare time for cleaning our living room aka his play-space...Have a peek :)

His official play-corner - he usually doesn't play there, he prefers to play on the big rug. I guess the foam puzzle is too colourful...Some time ago I wanted to get him more colour-neutral rug there but couldn't find a square shaped, so I just let it go.

Our coffee-table aka his working table :) He loves drawing and stamping there. He uses the box under the table with Waldorf-building blocks as a leg support. A few days ago he started to play with the rainbow, it makes great tunnels for his vehicles. 

Two bottom shelves of our hand-made bookshelf are his.

 The poster was his favourite place, now it is not that tempting any more. Probably we should exchange it for something else.

Attached to stuffed animals

It is said children around 18 months start to show affections towards plush animals/dolls/whatever...well, he has loved his loveys and Charlie for a really long time but now he starts to like other soft things and show affection towards them. At some level, it is super-cute :) Maybe one day he'll start to show a lot of affection towards his mother, so far he kisses me on a command and there is still like 80% chance he says "no" :-) He would never say no to kissing Charlie. I'm trying not to take it personally :)

The drawing development

In this post I talked that his drawing skills are developing, now he enjoys drawing circles more than anything. His favourite colours are blue and white, but mostly the blue.

Teething

He has been teething for several days and he wanted to spend his days in bed reading or playing. Sounds almost idyllic, right? A toddler not running around, a pregnant lady has time to lie down and have a rest...BUT! I hate it. He is a constant talker (well, what toddler isn't?), but he has only a few syllables and mostly he says "m" "mmmm" "m-m-m" - instead of signing/saying what he wants or naming the animals in the book...so it required my full attention. Yesterday I had a horrible headache at the end of the day, but when he fell asleep, it miraculously disappeared :) Oh, and we had to read the same books over and over and over...pure fun...for him.

Another fun thing about the days in bed: he nurses as often as a baby and eats solids only a bit...I was a bit thinking about stopping the breastfeeding before but as he has so many more teeth to grow, it wouldn't be probably very smart move.

Yesterday I gave him the Lego Duplo set, he loves the car, no surprise there. It kept him busy for at least half an hour and he was quite quiet :) The bright side, he forgot about the books, so no more reading the same stuff again and again.

Giving him the Duplo made me realize that I really cannot keep anything away from him, which is the reason I normally buy his presents only a few days before the event. The good thing is that he doesn't care about the amount of presents yet and as I read somewhere, at this age it is more important to give him toys all year round depending on his development rather than events...of course, Lego is an ever-green toy but with some other things it might be true.

What we no longer do

Generally I don't promote activities which might end up in me cleaning after. Considering how much time everything takes us, I consider it as a smart move. He will eventually learn it...and I seriously do admire all mothers of toddlers who don't care and just let the kids experiment and then they clean after without sighing or any hesitations. 

Never stop growing

Even though I don't pay that much intentional attention to developing our son any more, there has been some progresses going on lately, it is happening naturally, my role is to be mostly a facilitator.

He starts to lining up anything: coins, drawing blocks, pictures from memory game, Lego blocks...but he destroys the line before I manage to take a picture.

The only picture I managed to take

He is an obsessive tower builder, he builds them out of building blocks, Lego, stamps, drawing blocks...

He also an obsessive railroad constructor.

He is also a big fan of books, the best ones are those without any text, just sceneries where he can find stuff. Lately he has noticed that there are same things on different pages (in story books by Rotraut S. Berner) - e.g. he is able to follow the penguin through the book. He also enjoys books with animals, he loves me naming them. 

Pairing. Don't have any picture, but he seems to enjoy finding the same pictures in the memory game box or in his books where he is supposed to find something in the scenery. I decided not to become and obsessive laminate machine user because now it seems like he has reached the age when printing and laminating would make sense. 

Drawing - from angry scribbling to more abstract drawing...his hand/arm is becoming more relaxed. Again no picture. 

Oh, and he is no longer afraid to crawl under a table! He is super slow and careful, but he can do it! So proud of him, seems like one of the biggest achievements of his life :)