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By Published On: January 20th, 2016

Our little one is 11 months old! As he is […]

image1Our little one is 11 months old! As he is developing into his own little person and becoming more and more aware of himself and his individuality, he’s also becoming quite possessive. Whether it’s mama or his toys, our little man is starting to see green. When Matthew and I show each other any kind of affection, an embrace or a kiss, Graham’s mama radar goes off, and he drops whatever he’s doing to crawl over and push daddy off. It’s hilarious seeing him wiggle his way in between us and push his daddy away saying “no!” with a little shake of his head. Poor Matthew doesn’t know whether to crack up laughing or be a little hurt by Graham’s current favoritism toward me.

Graham and I have had a couple playdates with baby friends in the past week, and both times Graham has been reluctant to share his toys. Whenever another baby picks any toy up, that toy immediately becomes the object of Graham’s desire. I know kids really can’t understand the concept of sharing for a couple years, but I’ll keep trying to enforce the idea. Besides the sharing problem, playdates are becoming really fun at this age. Even though it’s just parallel play, Graham seems interested in and happy to be around other people his size.

image3At 11 months, Graham’s attention span is getting noticeably longer. All this time spent reading to him is starting to pay off as I can see that he really loves storytime now. I’ll say “Let’s read some books,” and he’ll crawl into my lap and happily sit through 8-10 short books at a time. We are loving all of the cute Sandra Boynton books (especially “Happy Hippo, Angry Duck,” “Blue Hat, Green Hat,” and “Are You a Cow?”—he thinks they’re hilarious) and lift-the-flap books like “Dear Zoo” by Rod Campbell.

I try to make it a point to have storytime together at least a couple times a day. It’s amazing seeing how much his little brain has developed and changed in the past few months as he’s starting to be able to point things out to me in the books, and lift flaps when I ask him to. His communication skills are improving every day, and I’m loving every second getting to know my sweet little boy better and better.