milestones

As my child grows older, it seems that the nearly weekly milestones of an infant and young toddler are now few and far between. Jonah's been walking for god-knows-how-long and talking up a storm for months on end. He's been weaned off breast milk for about a year and a half, so there hasn't been much to report on the developmental front. But.. today I do have a couple to share.

Jonah has had the bad habit of drinking a bottle of milk in bed at bedtime to help him fall asleep - with follow-up toothbrushing, of course. But because we accidentally -not purposefully- forgot his bottle in Seattle last week, we have switched Jonah to drinking milk out of a cup while we (or mostly Tim) read him a bedtime story. The transition has been much smoother than expected.

Jonah has also been doing well falling asleep on his own (without mom or dad laying down with him or sitting down in his room).

The next step will be to have Jonah learn to fall back asleep on his own if he wakes up in the middle of the night. His solution to night wakings now is to call to dad and dad lying down with him. That's fine since Tim doesn't mind, but it would be nice to teach Jonah to fall back asleep on his own.

As far as diaper training, Jonah's pretty much been potty trained since about two, two-and-a-half. He still needs to be reminded to go to the bathroom occasionally and still has an accident once in a while, but has been doing well with peeing "like a big boy." He still wants his diaper to poop in, though, and throws a huge, panicked fit if we try to get him to use the potty or toilet. He also still wears a diaper at night. We have been having him take naps without a diaper, but that means that more often than not he wakes up with a freshly soaked bed. More work for us, yay!

The next milestone, I hope, will be Jonah learning to fall asleep for a mid-day nap by himself. At this point, we still walk him around in a stroller. But we plan to leave the stroller behind when we move.

My next goal is to teach him more Czech in preparation for our move. He understands quite a few words and phrases and incorporates some of them into his speech occasionally, though most of the time he responds to me in English. It is quite a challenge for me to always try to speak Czech to him when I'm alone with him, because English tends to come out automatically since I've used it as my primary language more than half of my life. My dad and his wife are coming to visit us in two months and I don't want to feel embarrassed that Jonah doesn't understand much. Avoiding embarrassment is sometimes what it takes to motivate me. So, I'm intensifying my immersion program ;)