Baby diary: 54 weeks 3 days

Christmas went all right, even though Alan ended up being vaccinated on the 23rd, and it was a doozy. Two big jabs in the left arm, one in the right, and a 48 hour high fever. Propped up with Tylenol all through friends’ visits and dinners and presents. :/ On Xmas Day my mom took a three-hour nap with him while I cooked. Then he was okay for a day, then yesterday spiked another fever (the measles jab related one is delayed 5-12 days).

During this entire time he had and has a runny nose, a regular snot factory. So we’ve all been fighting off his cold, though with echinacea that’s going well. :P

On the bright side: another growth spurt, and an early ending to the 55-week fussy period. Self-feeding and pincer control progress well. No words, but he's babbling a lot, even attempting to sing along to melodies or animal noises, so I'm pretty confident he'll be fine in the long run. No walking either, and there I think Alan's height works against him: all the walkers (including informal ones) are too low, he ends up bent double over them or walking on his knees! He's a cautious little guy, when you get down to it: wants what he wants but not if he thinks he risks falling on his face. I'm the same, and perhaps it's a fault.

Now, the thing that niggles at me is that he doesn't understand representation. It's become more and more apparent as he becomes more apt at other skills: drawings and photographs mean nothing to him. It's why he's not interested in books -- as far as he's concerned I'm just pointing at blotches on an object. His gaze slides right off. I got him a talking book as a Christmas gift, quite a clever thing, tap the images on laminated paper pages and it speaks vocabulary -- but he only plays with the physical controls (the mode and on/off toggles and the light-up mic button) and won't even look at the pictures. Daycare tells me that he's distinguished by his huge appetite and his obsession with the Xerox machine.

Objectively, this is a senseless worry in the long run: some people are illiterate in the modern world, but everyone ends up able to parse photographs and line drawings. But in the short run it's very different from all other babies I've met, and I don't know how to work with/around it at all. Maybe more 3D things? J&J gave him one of those flat wooden puzzles, and he got some Lego Duplo for his birthday, both barnyard-themed, and I've had some minor success associating those pieces with animals in songs.