Saturday, February 28, 2009

Merav, we miss you ...

Last Saturday we lost Merav, Boaz's sister, after a fierce and courageous battle against leukemia. Merav loved Itamar very much, and we are grateful that he at least got a chance to play a little bit with such a wonderful person.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

1 year 2.5 months

At 14 months Itamar moved to a new day care, in which all the kids are around his age. No more sleeping babies to sit on. During the first 2 weeks Itamar was sick (eye infection, virus, grumpy, whingy, not sleeping, etc.) but we are on our way to a full recovery and back to normal.


Despite his lack of speech, Itamar is showing signs of a deep understanding about life. At 14.5 months, he is making huge leaps towards grown-up-hood. He is very excited about following instructions: putting a nappy in the bin, closing the lid and clapping his hands in satisfaction. This is usually followed by putting his dirty clothes in the bin as well, and then transferring them to the laundry hamper after several frustrated requests from us. This action is very handy too: instead of the cheerios hitting the floor during meal-time, we give him a bowl and he patiently places them one by one inside the bowl. Itamar now does lots of things in order to get praise, such as stack rings on a stick, put shoes away in their place, put things away in a drawer or closet - always followed by clapping his hands happily. He also now likes to add blocks to a tower, rather than knocking the whole thing down. Quite an achievement.



His linguistic awareness is expanding to more complex babbling, but still only 1-2 words in his vocabulary. Meh meh means either water ('Mayim') or dummy. Et ze means 'this'. But he now says 'Aba' in the correct context - i.e. whenever he hears the front door open, or when he wants Bo'az to come to him. Mum's arrival is probably taken for granted, so he doesn't call her yet at all.

Other physical advancements include seating himself down on chairs, running very fast, passing objects to people when asked, feeding himself and others with a spoon, among other things.

Another thing Itamar does lately is throw himself on the floor in frustration. Classic symptom of not being able to say what he wants. When he started walking he enjoyed his newly-found independence very much and constantly ran all over the place. However, now he is at a stage where he refuses to walk and wants to be held all the time [Note: Apparently this only happens with Mum, according to Dad...]. If we refuse he bends his knees and folds over backwards on the sidewalk. This form of communication is quite annoying, and we are waiting patiently for the day when he will simply say "hey, pick me up, i can't be bothered walking!" This also explains why we so often see empty strollers in the streets, with the strollers' natural inhabitant being held in the parent's aching arms...



Itamar also got his first haircut!