Jack

Jack is 14 months old. He's still a VERY quite little boy. He does say mama, so that's nice. But I think we'd all be a little happier if he could pick up on a little more communication. You can tell he's starting to get VERY frustrated that he can't communicate what he wants. I don't remember what signs he knew last month (and I don't feel like looking) but I don't think he learned any new ones. He did start to sign all done for a little while but picked up on a much more effective way to communicate that. He simply starts chucking food off his high chair. He throws it all over the kitchen. It kills me! I decided I wasn't going to just ignore it and started saying a pretty firm, "No, no, Jack. No throwing." So now when I say no throwing, even if he has no food left to throw he'll stare me defiantly in the face, and take his hand and act like he's throwing something. It's horrible! I thought Jack was going to be my mellow little guy, but I'm starting to see he's going to be just as defiant and strong-willed as his sister.

He's also trying to take the signs he does know and use them for more things, like baby has come to mean, baby dolls of course, but also all stuffed animals. His sign for more basically means, give me whatever I want, NOW. He waves bye bye when he wants go outside. And the milk sign is being replaced by shoving me in the legs and then going over to the fridge and putting both hands on it while making little noises that aren't quite a grunt, not quite a whine, but just a little Jack noise.

I do think he's starting to understand a bit more of what we say. Matt asked him, Are you hungry? He clapped twice (his sign for more) and started walking into the kitchen.

One quirky thing he does is tugs on his very thin hair on top of his head. He does it a lot when he's eating. So he'll end up with his own food mousse in his hair, making it stick straight up. He also tugs on his hair when he's tired and going to sleep. As soon as I start signing his goodnight song he puts his hand up and starts tugging.

Here's some pics of Jack that Matt got this month: