Anders These Days

Snapshot of Anders at 17-months:

Food
Anders is still a great eater, though he has started to express more opinions about what he wants and what he doesn't. So far, he seems to be eating primarily vegetarian fare. Peas and kidney beans are particular savory favorites. But his true passion is for fruit. He is a fruit fiend: bananas, pineapple, grapefruit, apple, orange, pear, mango, and pretty much all berries.

His all-time favorite food, though, has to be blueberries. We picked up some organic blueberries recently and had to carefully ration them out. If given his way, he would eat them all in a single sitting. Looks like dad is going to have some competition come blueberry season.

Teeth

Anders has enough of his deciduous teeth at this point that he can pretty much eat anything he likes. He has all of his incisors and three out of four of his first molars. Teething hasn't been too bad for him, though we think that it is waking him up in the middle of the night or early in the morning occasionally. He also doesn't try to chew on everything in his sight. Needless to say, we have no complaints.

We've kept up the evening toothbrushing routine, and he is usually pretty enthusiastic about it, though his brushing skills are still not terribly effective. But at least it is now a part of his normal routine, even if Dad is the one who is doing most of the brushing.

Dislikes
Anders is apparently old enough now that he has started to exhibit some fears.

1. Horses. He doesn't mind pictures of horses, but anything three-dimensional appears to be a problem: his rocking horse, Zak's stick horse, even the horse-shaped jumparoo that he used to love. If he sees any of them, he will start pointing and yelling until they are taken out of his sight. (Sorry, Stef!)
2. Roaring. This one probably should have been obvious. Several of his books have pages that call for animals (usually a lion) to roar. One night dad read one such book, "How Loud Is A Lion?", as a bedtime story. When we got to the roaring page, Dad's impression of a lion roar was a little too good; Anders screamed and had to be consoled by Mom. I don't think that he's picked that story since. Anders also has a circus trailer that hauls a tiger and a lion and has a button on the front that produces a roar. Occasionally he will hit the button, causing him to back away and start crying. We really need to take the batteries out of that toy.

Activities
Anders loves his books. He will often just pick up one of his books, sit down, open up the book and start reading it out loud to whoever is around. It doesn't seem to matter that half of the time the book is upside down. He also spends quite a bit of time looking at his animal flash cards; the cat, giraffe, and lion are his favorites.

He still gets excited by cars, trucks, and pretty much anything with wheels. And sometime last fall, he learned to make car noises. Now he does it whenever he sees a car, whether it be in real life, in a book or magazine, or on his own shirt.

He seems to have pretty good hand/eye coordination. He likes playing "ball" and can do a decent job of throwing or rolling the ball to you. He doesn't quite understand that it's more fun if you are not standing right next to the other person, though.

If we want to keep Anders entertained, all we need to do is give him some crayons and put down a piece of paper. That will occupy him for a long time. And of course, the results will end up on the fridge.

It's really starting to get interesting now...

- Mike, Corinne, and Anders Rocket

Date: February 22, 2010