Today our little one turned 17 months old. As I have written before he is our little miracle and we are thankful for each moment we have with him. It is not always easy, but he really is a blessing to us.

We have had the principle since he was born that he should be able “to do as much as he can as soon as I can” and this was quickly illustrated around about his first birthday at around the time he took his first toddling steps. We have actively encouraged him to dress himself as much as he can. He needs help, but he can push his arms through his own sleeves and take t-shirts off himself. More recently he has been actively looking for his neck hole with his head and moving his legs to help put his trousers / shorts on. We use pants style nappies and he more or less climbs into them himself. We have similar levels of cooperation when putting on his PJs at night.

He is relatively able to feed himself, even to the extent of wiping his own spillages from his lips when eating something like yoghurt.

When we come home he washes his own hands and we simply have to wet his hands, squirt a bit of soap in them, and then rinse them off before passing him a towel so he can dry them himself.

He is a delight – but there is more…

One of the things that has really impressed me recently is his increasing ability to communicate and help with chores, even though he still speaks “baby” and has yet to develop either mine or his mama’s native tongue – although it is coming. He clearly understands.

Let me give some examples

A couple of days ago we wanted to take him out for a walk and he really didn’t want to put his socks on, but when I took him to his buggy and explained to him what we wanted he ran back to the room and the sofa and the socks were no problem.

For the last few weeks when it is time for nappy change he goes to get his own cream and wipes and brings them to us when we ask him (we keep them slightly out of his reach so we need to assist him a little bit – please note the key word is assist) and just this morning after he’d (obviously) filled his nappy he told me in “baby” that he wanted changing – as proven by his hand gestures. I simply said “go on then” and he went to fetch his stuff.

He's not been too well since our holiday last month and this morning he asked us to clear his nose!

The other thing that impressed me in a context when perhaps he didn’t was when he tipped a whole load of chopped fruit on the floor just because he wanted to. He was told to pick every single piece up – which he duly did.

Unfortunately, not such levels of obedience are always achieveable as illustrated this morning when he tipped some cornflakes on the floor and refused to pick them up.

But, on the whole we are definitely on a good path to creating and independent and capable young man who can do things for himself and he will only get better with age – aside from a bit of laziness and rebellion.

We are so proud of our little miracle.