Miles-blogging #12
A rather belated update on Miles, who was nine months old a week ago (and we've finally sorted out our internet connection today, so hopefully no more extended periods of being out of contact - not that that's necessarily a bad thing). Miles finally got the hang of crawling on his hands and knees early last month, and now there's no stopping him (I've timed him at 0-100kph at 10.7 seconds, and that's without shoes). Not only does he crawl around everywhere and therefore investigate everything, now he can also pull himself up and walk around slowly and carefully while holding onto something, sometimes while doing another action as well such as bending down to pick up a toy. This actually means more work for us: we have to constantly make sure he doesn't lose his balance and whack his head on our ceramic floor tiles. We're both fairly sure he'll be walking unassisted by next month, though when he's moving around that means we'll have to keep an eye on him practically all the time.
Sprog's Masterclass: His degree of manual coordination is extraordinary. He can hold a bottle of milk, turn his head upside down and twist the bottle while changing hands at the same time so it's still in his mouth, all in one effortless movement. That surely took some working out. Even though he can't read yet, he already has a favourite picture book: When I Go to the Nursery, probably geared for children a bit older. I wonder how much he actually understands of the pictures but his face really lights up when he looks at it and he always listens as we read it. One book we've found useful for what to expect month by month is Dr Miriam Stoppard's Baby's First Skills, which I've been using as a general guide. As much as Miles loves to laugh, mess about and find out about things, one thing he does little of so far is copy our actions (and I'm not sure he's aware of just how much we copy him to encourage this). He's now certainly learned to understand the meaning of "no", which I was concerned about last month.
He's also beginning to sleep more throughout the night without waking up, and last night he actually slept twelve straight hours, which was pretty unusual. At the moment I'd say he's moving faster than average with physical developments and coordination; he's certainly a bright boy and is happy to play either alone or with his mum or dad, though I often think that perhaps we need to put a little more time into his interactive development. But our first priority is always that he's happy and engaged with everything and everyone around him, because there's no reason why he shouldn't catch on with all the many different ways of communicating in his own good time.