Baby diary: 15 months 1 week

[petronia]

Daycare is closed since the start of the week, so I’m working from home with help from my parents. Though, it took them several days to grasp that my “working from home” is not exactly what they’ve done all their lives as an artist and a homemaker respectively: I still have to be on an office schedule and attend conference calls, and can’t wait for them to, say, go to the grocery store first and show up at my place around noon. (Never mind that they shouldn’t be going to the grocery store to begin with!!!) Anyway, I’m taking Thursday and Friday off this week and the next, as originally planned back when the figure skating Worlds and friends’ visits were still a thing, but we’re in for the long haul and will have to figure something out. I really don’t want to move back to my parents’ place, and it won’t help my productivity: Alan doesn’t like it when I’m present but ignoring him in favour of a laptop. But it’s also not fair to essentially make my mom do the weekday commute.

What will happen this summer? I’d been looking forward to taking Alan to picnics, pool play dates, Atwater Market, Piknic Electronik. Now it’ll be like the pre-vaccination stories of everything closed because the measles or the polio were especially bad. I took him to a play date at A’s down the street as the writing was on the wall - last play date for a while - “Oh, a baby,” said A when she saw Alan, in the tone a 20 month old takes that categorically excludes themselves from said category. He was shy at first, then had so much fun he didn’t want to leave, then fell asleep in the baby carrier home for 1.5 hours.

I noticed Alan would imitate A, and now he’s imitating me quite well: throwing his hands up in celebration, or participating in nursery rhymes, or trying to say words like “yay” or “bubble”. (Shanghainese as well, like do (throw) or me (gone).) He nods, definitively, to indicate what he wants, and is quick to tantrum if he doesn’t get it (the TV remote, or to squish his hand in butter). I spend a lot of time trying to change his focus. Luckily, he’s discovered BIRDS, and the young trees outside my bedroom window are always full of hopping and fluttering sparrows and chickadees. 

He also likes to climb. Not as aggressively as some kids, but he’s able to get from floor onto the sofa back, and thence onto the kitchen island if not stopped. Windowsills are probably next. Luckily, my bathtub is very deep and he can’t get a leg over (yet). I set up a corner in my bedroom where he can clamber over floor cushions and the bed, and also play at hanging clothes hangers on the laundry rack (safety hangers, supervised). “Helping” with laundry is still popular, as well as Swiffer and any/all kitchen gadget. 

Since he’s been at home he’s started to wake at 5:40am and nap at 10am and 2pm. He wasn’t getting a morning nap at daycare, but guess he’s not ready to lose it yet.