Antics of a 14-Month-Old

Jasper is a funny kid. There are some things that he just loves. One of those happens to be the school pictures of his cousins, Linnea and Karin. I have them attached to a clip magnet on the refrigerator low enough so he can reach them. He loves to come up to the frig, pull down the pictures until the magnet hits the break between the frig and freezer and is free for him to take with him. ... and take them with him he does! He carries those pictures all over the house. Generally they stay together, but sometimes I find them separated. They're beginning to show their wear, but he still loves to carry his cousins with him.

This green collapsible sac generally holds all his animals. Lately he's been picking up the sac and, with great flare, emptying it completely. He doesn't generally do much with the animals once they're all on the floor ... but he loves to empty the sac anyway. Yesterday I decided to see what he'd do if I put the sac on his head. Turns out he loved it! It fit perfectly over his head. He walked around blinded by the sac, but he also figured out if he pulled on the front of the sac a little he could see out the bottom to see where he was going. He walked around the ottoman multiple times this way.

Lately I've been working with Jasper to recognize and respond to the command "come." Most of the time he would just stare at me. I knew he could recognize by the tone of my voice that he was suppose to do something. However, he either didn't know what to do or was just going to be obstinate. I don't know which. We're making some progress currently, and I'm happy to say he comes more often than not. I praise him and thank him generously when he starts coming to encourage him to come all the way. This generally works the best.

So he's also started splashing at the sink. No longer is hand-washing the low-key activity that dominated our past months. Now it is an all-hands-on-deck effort to get him clean and keep the sink area from getting drown in water. Never a dull moment.

Yesterday Jasper also learned how to use his spoon. Lately he's been showing interest in using his spoon when I feed him yogurt. So I decided to let him try using it completely. I got a little yogurt on his spoon and then handed it to him and said "take it to your mouth." He quickly figured out what to do, and it was pretty funny to watch him. Our spoons have a small spoon surface, which is great for his small mouth. However, they are long - so it took him a long time to get it spun all the way around to his mouth. His anticipation while the spoon was turning was visible, and I was pretty much on the edge of my seat waiting for the spoon to make it to his mouth. It did, and we both were thrilled! This is how his tray looked after the yogurt (and after multiple interim wipe-ups by me). It was a mess.

Tonight Jasper used his spoon again to eat the yogurt. Now that he's done it once, he's not interested in just being fed by me. This should be interesting because he's still not getting much into his mouth. It didn't work too well to record this myself while helping him eat. We kind of made a mess. :)

Tonight after dinner Drew started doing some "wax-on, wax-off" moves also similar to the motion Jasper makes to clean off his tray. For whatever reason, Jasper thought it was hysterical and laughed and laughed. Here's a clip.