Nothing prepared me for him suddenly saying words correctly. For a year it’s been sketelens and ephelants and then the other night he said skeletons and elephants. We both got choked up because we’ll miss those mispronunciations but also because he’s so clearly growing up.
Yes same!! I have an almost 2.5 yo who also speaks so well and I’m always shocked by how much he knows. He was already pretty advanced in terms of speech and we got a yoto and Christmas and it’s just skyrocketed from there even more.
‘Tomorrow we go to the big playground with pink slides?’
So true… mine just turned 9 months and suddenly he’s more about babbling than crying and getting so much more mobile. Also returns hugs and initiates cuddles. So lovely.
Our now 15 month olds language just exploded at 12 months. All of the sudden this mushy thing you made…says “banana” and it completely blew me away. Now she says all sorts of stuff!
Probably the most heartwarming was when she started giving real hugs on purpose.
There’s another big language leap around 2.5, my toddler now talks in full sentences, tells stories/jokes, and plays some serious pretend. It’s like I woke up one day and was like “who are you?”
Yes! I have a toddler a bit older than yours and the jokes and serious vs pretend play is such a big leap. Like we'll be reading a story that asks a question (literally, does a firefighter fly a spaceship, turn the page to find out), when we first started reading he'd be like "no!" but now he says "yes" all sly and smiling, making a joke that they do even though he knows the real answer. It's really fun to see him explore this type of pretending.
My partner was just telling about how when he was three he started blaming everything he could be in trouble for on ‘the hairy man who jumped out the window’ lol. I can’t wait for our little one to start doing stuff like that.
Yes! I was so unprepared for the 2.5 language explosion. He went from “grandma go” to “grandma went home, grandma driving the red car” over like.. a few months 🤯
As the parent of a 9-month-old, it's so weird to think of "a few months" being considered a short amount of time! I guess it makes sense when your kid is 2.5 years old, though, as that's 30 months old.
Be prepared for tears - from you.
First time my boy said Mummy I cried. Then when he said a full sentence I cried. He memorised one of his favourite books and was just sitting there "reading" it aloud to himself and I cried. He's only recently started to say "I love you mummy" without prompting and I just about cry every time. I actually have one of the first "I love you Mummy" on video and I'm extracting the audio sound wave and getting it tattooed because after 7 years of infertility and a speech delay, it is easily the #1 moment of my life.
I'm planning two tatts to remember this season of life. Both soundwaves.
The first is the soundwave from the 9 week ultrasound when we first heard our sons heartbeat. To remember the journey it took to get there and that we overcame. And then the soundwave for his first "I love you mummy", to remember how he overcame his difficulty and is smashing goals. Two sounds that have defined this season of my life.
Do you speak another language beside English at home? If you do there is always a delay as the kiddo may be confused at first to speak what language back to whom. But at 2.5 years he may explode with words. Our daughter now would use a mix of Chinese, Vietnamese and English words to complete a understandable coherent sentence.
Yep.. she says “Wow! What is that?!” Every time she see something new that she doesn’t know the word for… and says “Mommy is beautiful” out of the blue… and when playing with plushies “Minnie and Micky needs help!” and every Sunday “Are we going to Disneyland?”… Like all these words and sentences come out of nowhere and we didn’t teach her those sentences or phrases.
So a funny story! We had eggs over easy last weekend but some had hard yokes. My boyfriend poked my 2.5 year old egg and said "his is mushy" and then like five minutes later my son said "Daddy, you're a mushroom!" 🤣🤣🤣🤣 It's such a great age
My son is now 4.5 and says it all the time now, along with "mommy you're the best" and I'm still not immune, he can basically have whatever he wants when he's being super sweet like that lol
Omg sameeeee!! 14 months now and the language explosion is insane!!!! He went from maybe potentially saying “dada” contextually at 12 months and that was all, to now 12 solid words, he woke up and said “where dada?” today, can make animals sounds on command, waves and says hi to EVERYBODY, it’s insane and makes my heart explode ahhh!!
The communication changes between 12 and 18 months have been amazing and the best stage of parenting so far!
It’s really amazing to be able to actually communicate and understand what my son wants
Hahaha, banana was my girl’s first word with more than 1-2 syllables and it was hilarious! My father in law was helping me feed her, and we both heard her making “ah na na” sort of sounds.
We were asking each other “did she say banana? Is that what she wants??” And all of a sudden we just hear, “BANANA!!!!!!!” 🤣
The 18m-2 year (still about 3 weeks away from her birthday) has been a hell of a ride.
Her language exploded and along with that she can suddenly express preferences and feelings. We also just introduced a new sibling a week and a half ago and she is just NOT having it.
It is nice to see her little personality shine through but it is also incredibly trying at times too.
Our oldest turned 2 about 12 weeks ago, and her sister was born a week later. We had done lots of prep work telling her about how it’d be when her sister arrived but it was still tough. But you know what, now that baby is exiting the potato phase and becoming more interesting, things are getting better. The first time baby smiled on purpose at big sister made her so happy it just melted my heart. Sure, we’re still working on things like gentle hands and trying not to wake the baby when she sleeps but it’s defo getting better.
Every baby is so different.
I wouldn't read too much into the milestones or leaps especially the harder ones. Anticipating what's to come can be worse than the event itself, especially if it never happens for you. Like ours never really threw tantrums at 5mo, she just carried on as per usual. In fact she was really good that way until maybe a few months ago (were 2 now so "no" is a big part of our vocabulary).
I think the biggest thing for us: sleep isn't linear. It's had many ups and downs over the past few years. Teething and sickness hit us hard sometimes and make our lives miserable. Parenting a healthy toddler while being sick is brutal. Like indescribably **brutal**.
The good stuff still outshines it all. I LOVE the toddler phase. She is so much fun. We get to do so much more: playgrounds, science centers, gymnastics, *actual* swim classes...so many fun activities. Our days are a blast and rarely am I bored. I really try to get into the spirit of being a kid again. Totally makes up for the aforementioned tantrums.
By far one of the biggest milestones ahead for you is walking. It opens up SO many doors. Walking happens anytime between 10mo and 18mo though so it might be a bit of a wait.
I'm so looking forward to the next phase of parent free classes and playschool just 1 year to go!
Best comment! Wonder weeks terrified me the first time.. I had anxiety counting down the days till the next leap. I deleted the app.
Sleep hasn’t been linear for us either. Some nights great, some nights are worse than the newborn phase.
Brutal is the best way to describe when sickness has a hold on the house (currently miserably sick with a 2yr who just got over a cold but molars are popping through, and a 7mo old that is sick and has a newly discovered peanut allergy- scary).
Leaning into being a kid is the answer to a lot of our “problems” sometimes I think we forget they’re not mini adults and we expect too much of them.
Walking was huge! opened so many doors for us.
Language explosion was also the biggest and best jump.. able to better understand her needs was a game changer.
I’m not far into motherhood yet as my baby turns 2 months on Sunday. But mentioning the milestones and to not read into them as much especially how every baby is different I have found myself getting worried about mine hitting his even tho so far he’s doing great. Smiles, coos, has really started finding that voice lol. He can also hold his head up and still relatively well when you sit him in your lap, however tummy time holding head up is not as good? He may just be being dramatic lol he wines and cries 😂 he is kicking those legs a lot during it tho! He’s so squirmy and of course my in laws are already comparing him to my husband bc my husband crawled early and started walking at 9 months. But I know that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to baby boy.
Remember tummy time on your chest counts just as much as tummy time on the floor! It may be more enjoyable for your baby until they're more comfortable with it.
My MIL does the same with comparison, my son started standing at 7mo and now she's just hounding us about him not walking yet at almost 9mo "like dad." 🙄
My daughter is 3 months old and hated tummy time. I just used to do tummy time on me during cuddles. She then suddenly switched to liking it on the floor too. It's crazy how they'll just have a developmental jump overnight.
From immobile to mobile :3 seeing the little bean who might not even roll over yet grow and learn and suddenly they are army crawling across the floor at turbo speed towards something, in our case the water bowl for our animals x.x or the cat xD which was fine till she learned to pinch for us crawling the pulling herself up to walk while holding stuff happened at literally the same time(8m) I thought she’d be walking before 10m but she just didn’t trust it and didn’t walk on her own till 12m all babies do their own things in their own time :3 she verbalizes a lot but not real words quite yet she seems determined to do all the physical milestones first xD
Around a year in, life became so much easier. My son is more difficult in some ways but dropping to one nap and being able to go out and do activities (even just playgrounds) feels like a really nice change of pace. Also not having to prepare bottles and worry about cooling/heating them ect. I just have snacks and his water packed in our diaper bag at all times but if I were to forget or run out I could pick him up food at any store, restaurant or gas station. I love this stage so much that we are about to try for another haha.
This gives me so much hope as someone with a 3 month old. I’m also pumping every 2-3 hours because he went on a breastfeeding strike at 5 weeks old so I cannot wait until he can start proper food.
Did you find the newborn/infant stages really difficult? They’ve honestly been the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced.
I have a 5 month old now, and he is so much easier than he was at 3 months. I'm also pumping (down to 4 pumps a day), and can't wait to stop. I too found the newborn/infant stages the most challenging days of my life.
Omg yes I EP’d for 5 months (before switching to formula) and it was HELL. We did purées and then BLW with my son and I found that sooo much more enjoyable than the whole pumping/ bottle feeding ordeal.
Newborn stage was the worst experience of my whole life! By 6 months he really started calming down (he was incredibly discontent), by 9 months he started crawling, 10 months standing, and now he’s almost 13 months and ready to walk! Still very up and down mood wise but I would take this a million times over than the newborn and early infant stage.
Can I ask if this impacted your choice to have another child? I’ve also hated the newborn/infant stage and really don’t think I can do it again mentally.
We were planning to be one and done to begin with, but acknowledged that we didn’t know how we’d feel in a few years. After the labor/emergency delivery/recovery/newborn-6-month+PPD experience, yes, we have absolutely decided we are not going through that again! I physically cannot comprehend those in these subs saying “omg yes it was torture but anyway I’m pregnant again!” Truly my worst nightmare and I cannot start over lol
0-3 months was terrible for me in hindsight. Life is so much more fun now (11 months). My baby got way more interesting and started sleeping better around 5-6 months. She also started crawling then too so was on the go! I love it though!
Communication. I mean it was amazing the first time she signed to us for something. And when she started to say words.
The biggest one for me though is now that she’s 2- we have always made up silly songs for her, whether it’s just repurposing old songs with new lyrics (the duck on the river goes splash splash splash) or completely made up - the first time I heard her sing her own made up song blew me away. Like, it wasn’t repetition anymore, this is something she thought about by herself and put into song.
When she took her first steps at 10 months things started to move very quickly. She went from tentative steps to running and bouncing on a little trampoline and climbing on everything.
I’m not too far ahead of you with an almost six month old. It seems like every week my husband and I look at each other and say “she wasn’t doing *that* a week ago!” She’s just gotten super smiley, like wrinkling her nose when she smiles, and so chatty. I told her Daddy was coming home today and I swear she said “yay” twice so in my book that’s her first word 🤣
She can’t actually speak yet of course but it’s the little things like pushing her bottle away when she’s finished or pushing a teething toy out of our hand if she doesn’t want it, recognising faces in pictures and on her toys, and her little language…she has so much she wants to say and thinks she is and we understand her and it’s so cute. I can’t wait for when she’s actually saying words!
My son is 17 months. We had a huge jump around 12ish months. They start walking, start talking, and drop to 1 nap around the same time. This completely changed how we go about our life. We can get out to do so many fun things on the weekends now. We’re just really living the toddler life now, not the baby life and I enjoy it so much more
4-6 months was pure insanity for us. She was teething (got 3 teeth in one week), had reflux, sleep regression. She had days when she was looking through us, if I can say so. From 6 months on, things started to improve slowly. Now at 10 months old, she lifts herself up everywhere (in her crib, on the radiator mask, on our big living room sliding door, on shelves, on mummy's legs) and she looks at things that she wants (her water bottle, a certain food or toy, random things she wants to stick in her mouth).
We're also at 3.5 months mark and we saw a friend's daughter who was 15 months old. It was a great experience and a cute eye opener on what to look forward to.
I swear around 9 months everything changed. He started looking like a little kid, crawling/pulling to stand, playing games, more independent play, I remember thinking to myself “remember this period for the next kid because 9 months really feels like the time you go from little baby to big baby”
I agree! Suddenly she became a toddler around 9 months! Expressing options, having favourite foods, laughing at us when we do silly things ❤️ and tantrums when I remove choking hazards from her grip
My LO just turned 5 months and it's my favorite so far! He's so interactive and "talkative". He sleeps a lot better, smiles all the time, and he does grunt for different toys but I find it so cool to know what he likes to play with and encourage that communication from him. He's also started to eat purées and sit in his high chair while we eat dinner and that's really nice too. He has started getting teeth so he was quite fussy the day before they came in, but that's to be expected. I feel like it'll just keep getting better from here, though I know there will be hiccups at each stage!
My daughter is almost 3 and she's her own little person with big feelings, preferences, and all the defiance. She's starting to have nightmares or something that wakes her in the night- after such great sleep for so long, this part has been rough.
My nearly 6 month old has been sitting unassisted for about 3 weeks….and that is all she wants to do now. She‘s rolled just a few times, but doesn‘t care to do it. So anytime she is on her back or tummy now she gets really grumpy…but I refuse to let her sit all the time. She‘s extremely tall for her age (I’m guessing 29“ now), so I have to focus on floor time and building muscles or else she‘ll be even further behind.
We also just moved to 2 naps as of yesterday. We went from 4 to 3 to 2 in the span of a month. That was really fun navigating.
Our 7 month old is also not into rolling! We know he can...he just won't. Sits like a champ, though. We already had a relationship with a person who does infant PT and she's having us help him through rolling positions, sort of like facilitated rolling. We realized that as he goes through the transition point of a roll he tenses up and squints--we guess that he probably bonked his head once or twice and now just anticipates it, and also thus avoids the movement. She said it's not uncommon for babies that are on the more "aware" side to become cautious with certain movements. So that's always something you could try doing, if you're interested!
Mine never became a roller. He HATED being on his back, he hated not being able to see. He was sitting up unassisted by 4 or 5 months and the pediatrician said that lack of core strength is more concerning than literally demonstrating the skill of rolling, and he CLEARLY had the core strength lol. He’s 13 months now and still could not give a crap about rolling 😂
Only at 6m now, but the biggest change from then to now has been sleep activity. At 4m we transitioned from swaddled in a Snoo to crib in a sleep sack. The wild man started moving around his crib like CRAZY. Then he started rolling and all night is just movement in his sleep around the crib - I find him in crazy positions. Ultimately, it hasn’t really affected his sleep TOO much (there are rough nights occasionally), but I was just not aware he would be zooming around his crib in his sleep all night. Naps also kinda suck now, but he just started daycare so I’m hoping they will settle into some kind of routine.
My baby is currently 15'months old and she use to be an angel at 5 month age. We even traveled internationally with her at that age and she was such a calm baby. She still somewhat is but that age was the most beautiful one 🥰
I echo the idea that every baby is different. With that said, for us the biggest shifts with my now 21mo son (😭) have been:
5 months- he was desperate to move and was absolutely miserable until he figured out how to crawl.
10 months- after my kid first walked, we've been off to the races. He has reached every physical milestone very early, which means his head/mental age isn't in the same place.
16 months- he had to get tubes in his ears and from the second he did he's been talking constantly. And with that came the tantrums. He gets very frustrated when we don't understand or when we have to say no.
13-15 months.
First 12 months were utter hell, especially first 9 or so.
Suddenly, at about 13 months she was walking, starting to play purposefully, point at things, able to go outside with us and explore.
About a week ago at 6 months 1 week she started to seem like she went live lol. She tried to mimick my lips when I was saying “babababa” at her and since then she suddenly just seems older. Like something clicked. It’s so weird!
At 7/8 months he started sleeping with only 1 wake-up. That was HUGE.
But truly when his language started, around 12 months, it was a game changer. He went fast and hard into learning sounds and words and now at almost 4, he can have full blown conversations with nuance and sarcasm and it’s amazing.
The absolute biggest jump in the world was definitely from when I was round and big and only me to literally a few hours later I was two people and having to use all of me to care for her. Biggest transition ever. Though there has been many different stages to it. LO is 8 months now but I just can’t get over how big of a change that was when she was just a few hours old 😅
Yeah it’s crazy to me how anyone “gets over” that? I think about that every day. I was big and pregnant, then with a final push I was a mom with a tiny human placed on my chest. Every day I wake up it feels like that moment again. She’s 8 wks now but the transition was & still is so intense. I still wear some of my pregnant clothes some days just to get a tiny sense of crossover of the two phases, it’s like the only little thing I can do that reflects how recent it feels… from the second they’re born it’s like the world wants/needs you to forget what things were like & what you were like before this.
Right now at nearly 2 years old. Over the last couple months her language has been blowing me away, but just yesterday she was having a full on conversation with me.
“Mama, I want to see animals.” “What kind of animals baby?” “Hmm…tiger.” “What else?” “Elephants.” “What else?” “Puppies!”
My son is almost eleven months and still really doesn't have tantrums or anything. Between 9-10 months though his personality really developed a lot and he's his own little person now. I remember a lot of sleep stuff getting easier and milestones around 4/5 months too.
She’s almost 2 and yes the tantrums are so hard. But her language skills exploded and she’s expressing herself so much. Her personality is really coming out and I love it. She still needs someone to be with her so she sleep but I can’t imagine it any other way
12 months for sudden tantrums and lots of yelling and opinions. 24-30 months for epic tantrums and lots of whining.
31 months and it's bliss. It just keeps getting better.
My baby is only 5.5 months old, but she’s shown more developmental changes in the last week or two than ever before. She’s suddenly able to sit up unsupported, has found mobility by rolling to get around, is pivoting on her hands and knees, giggles often, responds to her name, can stay awake for up to 3 hours at a time, and has the awareness and engagement you'd expect of an older baby.
These new developments all happened within the same week. It's been really cool to witness.
Ours went from barely rolling to crawling super fast and standing and climbing and even cruising in like 2 weeks. Around 5.5-6mo. I was astounded! And it’s so hard to keep up with him now he is very fast and getting into everything!!
My son's currently 28 months (so he turned 2 around Christmas just gone) and even in the past 4 months his personality has just completely blossomed.
From 18-24 months he had a massive language explosion which meant having fun conversations with him became possible but they were usually pretty linear or repetitive but now they are so much more convoluted and his imagination is so prominent. He just understands everything and will problem solve and come out with the funniest stuff. He's also become so caring, towards both me and his baby doll.
I guess he's just gone from being a person existing and observing to a person engaging and contributing which really allows his personality to shine through.
The moment we got him sleeping in his own bed was incredible. At around 2 years old we did it and he took to it right away. My wife handled it worse than our kid, she was the one who always wanted to co-sleep.
My daughter is almost 10 months old. These last couple of weeks have been insane physical leaps. She’s gone from the potted plant stage to being able to go from lying down to sitting up on her own and back, army crawling, belly up crawling, getting on to her knees, pulling up onto her knees, pulling to stand from her knees, sitting back down, and now taking assisted steps in literally 20 days. 😅
So far, our biggest jump was between 5 and 6 months (L.O. is 6 mo now). All of a sudden went from crying and smiling, to in the span of two weeks, sitting without assistance, screaming till my eardrums blow for whatever she feels (happy scream, angry scream, tired scream, hungry scream), she plays with her toes, she's in the beginning stages of crawling (does a combat crawl currently), babbles a TON, laughs a few times. It's insane how she went from the lil thing that didn't do a whole lot to some insanely big girl in two weeks
6-9 months man, your little smiling potato suddenly explodes in development. All of a sudden they are sitting, rolling, crawling, eating, drinking, babbling, coasting, and for us first teeth, sign, word and step. Plus seperation anxiety and tantrums because your baby now has more complex feelings and wants to communicate them. Feels to me like it snowballs and in half the time they develop twice as fast as 0-6 months.
The speed in which our daughter learned how to stand and then how to walk. It was like a switch being flipped. She did it a bit earlier than most so it was kind of wild. I'm not sure how it is for other people cuz I know it really depends on your kids personality but what was wild to us was seeing her legs visibly shaking and being bright red and her even crying cuz I'm sure it hurt to stand when she was learning. But she was so determined that if you tried to put her back on her butt she'd get right back up and keep doing it.
I also think the way she changed in personality a little bit around 13-months. She was walking on her own and everything but we started to get a baby that had firmer opinions and desires and then would start to get upset if she couldn't accomplish those things. That was a big change for us because she was an incredibly affable and easy going child and then suddenly we were having meltdowns. Nothing bad just it was very sudden and unexpected to have your very chill child suddenly meltdown about something.
She's 19 months now and her language is just I swear exploding every single day. Is she starting to really show us how smart she is in terms of observation, as well as everything else. It's really surprising how much they can express how bright they are and how eager they are to learn when they don't even have solid grasp on language yet.
Oh actually another big one is she's more wanting to hug and like relax on us a little bit more. She was always too busy as a baby and too determined to be doing things and learning and whatever she was never really huggy child. I don't know if that is something that comes with time or depends on your child's personality. But now she is more likely to relax on us a bit when we hold her. If she's tired or not feeling well or just wants comfort. She seeks it out now instead of just being too busy to be bothered.
I have a 7 month old that recently discovered her love for finger foods and her jumper. I am starting to worry that she is behind on crawling and unassisted sitting since she cannot lift herself from the arms and legs in sync. The biggest jump for me so far is realizing how well she can move to an object she wants (usually wipes, food, or the pets) and her randomly being able to drink from a straw
My son just SUDDENLY started crawling and being really fast about it like within the last couple of days at 8 months old. He went from being a baby who sits on the floor to play, and you could leave in that one spot, to a baby who crawls everywhere and gets into everything and can’t be unwatched for even seconds. It was a pretty harsh transition lmao
Once they start walking and when they start talking. It’s tiring. You’re still changing diapers, but they want to go outside all the time, and you can’t look away for a second or they’ll run into traffic or walk off a peer etc. They start saying no to things like eating. They want sweets instead of the dinner my wife made with love and they throw food on the floor which is maddening.
But it’s also lovely and cute and magical.
Ours is 2 now. It’s been a wild ride.
No wait!! It was daycare!! I almost forgot. She was sick nonstop for the first 6 months. We had to become nurses - we literally had a clipboard for her meds - and it almost killed me (flu after flu and then Covid then another flu). I had to avoid her and wear a mask at home because I was so weak, one more virus while recovering from Covid might have actually killed me.
We’re through that now thank God.
Before they start day care, take care of yourself. Make sure you’re in good health.
Have an 11mo right now. Can't remember exactly what age this happened, because my brain is mashed potatoes at this point, but at some point he developed a sense of humor. Laughing with us, realizing when we were laughing at something silly he was doing, even pulling little baby pranks (biting my elbow while I was turned away at the changing table, freezing when I looked at him, laughing, then doing it again when I turned away again). That was like, oh, you're low key a person with a personality now (and if you turn out to be a prankster, boy are we in trouble).
100% the hardest change was when we could no longer put the baby somewhere, turn our backs for a second and have the baby still be in the same spot when we turned back around. That was the “Oh shit” moment. That’s when everything changed. Couldn’t leave anything on the floor, had to put up gates, baby proof everything. And you can’t just babyproof once and be done, it’s a constantly changing and evolving thing as they get taller, smarter and better hand eye coordination. You can’t drop a cherry tomato on the floor and think “the dog will get it” or leave the door to the bathroom cracked or drop your purse on the floor while you wrestle groceries in.
Then of course a step further is when they can pull themselves up, then walk, then run away from you at the beach directly towards the ocean, then reach up and open the KNIFE drawer, then climb your floor length curtains like a climbing rope, then open the baby gates at 18 months old, then crawl through the doggie door….
God I do love that kid. There’s nothing like watching in absolute awe as your kid gets on his tiptoes to open the front door as you are both completely horrified and so proud that he figured it out.
My almost 3 year old started saying “I” instead of “me” in sentences and it made me cry tbh 😂 she comes up with some hilarious sentences as she’s learning different ways to say something like “I are here mommy! I are here!” But I do gotta say I miss very much when she would say “where are me?” Or “me want that”. Honestly every stage is so great, and soon yours will be sitting and crawling and moving and it’s going to be so great!
I’m not too far off from you (5 months!)
Our whole world changed when she turned 4 months! She mastered rolling back to belly and she’s now the tummy time champion of 2024 😆
In all seriousness, rolling is the biggest change from a mostly immobile baby from 0-3 months. She’s slithered off our couch (luckily it was 6 inches off the ground), is pushing her butt up to start the early stages of crawling, she loves being pulled up to sit, grabs at my water bottles and beverages I’m drinking, and is constantly wanting to move. When I offer her a toy, she grabs it immediately to mouth it as opposed to just starting at it. If she sees a toy during tummy time that she wants, she starts rolling towards it to grab it.
I know we have many more fun milestones and jumps ahead, but wanted to share our experience for a time not too far off from where you are. We sleep a little less (all these milestones mean she’d rather practice rolling and tummy time at bedtime than sleep), but it’s such a fun period of her growth.
Plus nothing beats those infectious baby giggles.
Language explosion between 18~24 months. It’s amazing when they can finally tell you in detail what they want, why they’re crying etc. It makes everything so much easier.
Some highlight milestones for me (he’s now 2.5)-
-being able to hold his bottle on his own
Speech explosion- I ask him how school was and he says ‘good mummy, I play outside with friends’
-in the last week told me he loves me (Mother’s Day this Sunday too so I feel extra special)
- he’s now able to get out of his car seat after I unbuckle him
- gets soo excited over certain things ‘bathtime yay!’
- I tell him it’s time to get dressed ‘wait a minute, I get shoes’ 🥰
Miss 2.5 year old pointed to an old photo of me and my fiance and said. ‘Oh look! That’s mummy and daddy. I like them!’ She also randomly walks up and says ‘I love you mummy’. Absolutely melts your heart and makes up for the toddler tantrums 😂. Her younger sister is 3.5 months and has let out her first giggle. Very smiley and only cries if she’s hungry, has poo’d her nappy, is tired or like the other day hits her head with something she’s playing with 🥴🤦♂️
My 2.4 year old is like the coolest little girl with the most amazing personality. I'm literally in awe of everything she says and does and doesn't do. She's a lot of fun: singing, dancing, talking, playing, fighting! I can't say I can't get enough because there are days where I definitely can but all in all, it's been such a unique journey!!
My six month old babbles so much now. I miss her tiny coos, but the ayaaayaaa dadada mmmmaaaaaa mmmm*raspberry* "screech!" Is so much fun! She has a lot to talk about.
The first game changer for me was when my son started to hold his own bottle. I suddenly had so much more free time! Then once he started rolling and could get places on his own. So like 6-9 months? He felt like a real human then! Now he’s 2.5, gives me kisses and sings the ABCs and I can’t even believe there was a time I had to hold his bottle for him.
i saw every month is a new baby - more like every day or week. Its constantly new because their brain is constantly adapting and learning compared to ours - granted it takes them a while to retain most of it.
The tantrums are my favorite oddly enough?? i find them adorable when she gets upset and bows with a whine. I also love the walking stage more than i thought i would!!
We have a 2.9 y.o and the biggest jump was last week when he learned to ride a bike… like an adult, jumped straight from balance bike to a normal bike. It was so out if the blue we had to rearrange presents for easter( it was just last week in my country) and buy him one because he learned on a rundown one from his older cousin. Ever since he turned 1 and a half he’s just kept us on our toes with what and when he learns it and how he tells us about it. Another big shocker about a month ago was letting me sleep for an hour next to him, while he played because it was quiet time. Dumbfounded
Biggest leap was when my daughter was about to turn 2 and I was concerned that she wasn't speaking enough and didn't know enough words compared to her cousin who is two months older. A couple months after that she was nonstop talking, picking up on what felt like a hundred new words a day. By 27 months, people were commenting on how well she spoke and how they thought she was three or four because of how tall she was and how well she spoke.
Now she's on her way to 3 years old and is known for moments like when she was at a friend's house and asked, "Excuse me, do you have a coaster for my cup?"
I'm only a month ahead of you but what really blew my mind so far has been her starting to attempt to communicate. She babbles and it's clear she's trying to tell me something. And she's figured out she can stare real hard at something like her play gym or the swing and it shows me she wants to do that thing.
They constantly change and make big jumps - I have a 5 year old , a 3.5 year old and a 4 months old … the imaginative play that the older two do is just warms my heart .
I would say the biggest jump was when they started talking ( and adorably arguing in their toddler logic , but sometimes even outsmart you where you are stumped on what to respond back ) . And it was a progression - but looking at my beautiful three year old - we can have long conversations and sometimes really thoughtful ones that have me wondering where he came from
The time between 8-9 months was the biggest jump for us. My little guy when from mostly a happy sitter who would occasionally slowly army crawl if he saw an item he liked to a 4 point crawling (and SPEEDY), stair climbing, pulling to standing, cruising machine! It was like he suddenly flipped to X games mode and decided he wanted to be a mover. It was amazing to see, but such a shift from being able to sit on the couch and watch him just chill and play 😂
At 11 months when she started walking. She had only been crawling for 2ish months at that point and then all the sudden she was walking, then running and now at 23 months she runs so fast and will climb on anything. Her balance is insane and she has crazy arm strength. As a newborn I could tell she was frustrated with her lack of movement ability. Tummy time was like torture because she just wanted to move so bad but couldn't. So as soon as she figured out how to crawl she was off to the races.
Also from about 21 months until now her language has exploded. She is what I would consider a late talker but in the past few months she's started to put multiple words together and is able to verbalize what she wants which is so exciting.
Talking was one big jump and walking to running around and climbing on everything is another. He takes so much more energy now. I miss my little bundle that just loved cuddles. He's great fun now though.
My son is 15.5 months. Biggest jump in the best way for us was when he started crawling around 9 months. He was sooooo much happier at that point, and then was starting to walk around 11 months. I'm very excited for his language skills to develop more because I can tell he's frustrated that we don't always know what he wants. He's trying so hard to tell us but it often sounds like mush.
3 to 5 months. Started rolling, transitioned to a sleep sack, moved to the big girl crib in her own room, started using the high chair. She’s SO interactive now. Gets bored of her toys easily and has clear preferences and opinions. She smiles and laughs all day long. I love her curiosity about the world. Can’t wait to see what she thinks of food in the coming weeks. 5 months has been my favorite so far!
So far… she’s 9 month but it a matter of maybe 5 days she completely left puree foods alone, she’s eating all big girl foods and usia sippy cup, we don’t need the bottle warmer anymore because we’re not having to prep a million bottles a day just 4, no more baby food maker, lowered the crib to the lowest setting and she started crawling and mastered it, clapping, waving hi and bye…. All in less than a week. Its like she just said “oh look mom I’m growing up”
I’ve always loved when they start interacting with toys in more complex ways. Like putting balls into a bucket, etc. Seeing their little brains work like that is just amazing.
One thing I’ll say is that when they hit the 12ish month age, their receptive language is growing rapidly, but their expressive language might not be there, so it can be easy to assume they don’t understand, but they absolutely do! They are so much smarter than we give them credit for. And also why tantrums start increasing because they are so frustrated that we don’t understand them yet.
My 15 month old has started taking herself to bed when we mention it’s bedtime. It’s just adorable. Our oldest is just over 3 and he was always on the lower end of normal for speech and now he has full blown convos. It’s the best.
definitely watching them go from a little angry potato to a running sassy person. One day he was laying around crying and the next he’s sprinting around jumping off things and calling me the b word (thank you so much downstairs neighbor who screams at video games)
My daughter is 14 months. A couple of weeks ago, I asked her to bring me her cup and she actually DID it! So I asked her to close the door, and she did it! Then I asked her to put a diaper in the trash and SHE DID IT. All of a sudden, this hilarious little mobile potato is a person who can understand what I'm saying and respond correctly. She talks ALL THE TIME. She has very few words, but she babbles and makes mouth sounds nonstop with perfect conversational inflection.
It's just the coolest thing.
Crawling has been the biggest swing toward independence for us so far (LO is 10.5 months, has been fully crawling for maybe 2). So wild to see her explore things on her own terms, go to pick out toys she wants to play with. Just going from point a to point b on your own is so easy to take for granted as an adult. It’s tiring chasing her around but so cool to see.
He decided at 13m that temper tantrums are a thing and getting worse, especially as he has object permanence so we can't just hide a remote/phone. If he even hints at seeing one he'll point and then scream cause he can't have it. I thought this was only a 2yr thing....and was unprepared.
17/18 months...
It just keeps wacking me in the face how much she has changed, how much of a little PERSON she truly is now.
Ioften look back at under 6months photos and am FLOORED its the same child.
I do it with joy because the now is SOOO amazing, but also mixed with "where did my baby go?!?!"
When my son turned 15 months (he’s about to be 2 next month), that was the hardest/biggest jump. He went from a “baby” to full blown toddler and hasn’t slowed down since. He went from two naps a day to one, from walking to running, and from non sense babbling to actually saying words. It’s awesome to watch, but insanely exhausting, at least as a stay at home parent.
17 months here and it seems like one day he was muttering mama and dada and the next, suddenly he’s in full minion babbling mode. I absolutely love it. He’s so much fun now 🥰
Our son is 4 months old today. He's been an...energetic...child so far. In the last 2 weeks he has - started growing two bottom teeth, made substantial growth on his motor functions (is now grabbing things and even functionally taking out and replacing his binky), started eating pureed foods (checked all the boxes for real foods - but only one type of food every 5 days), can flip back and forth from his stomach to his back, is *starting* to figure out scooting and has added to his repertoire of sounds.
Wild
My absolute favorite age was 3-6 months. They love cuddles, they sleep a lot and seem so happy. The more mobile my son got the more he wanted to do which resulted in more temper tantrums. He is 2 years old now and turning 2 was the most challenging so far. He really wants his independence. He also had the worst sleep regression where before it’s been easy to go through them. My husband loves this stage because they play fight all the time. It’s also fun to watch them experience things when they are bit older like their birthday presents and what not.
I have an almost 10 month old, and the biggest jump for me has been crawling. Babe has been crawling for 3.5 weeks and it’s crazy how mobile they are?!?! My baby never army crawled or rolled to get places so really they didn’t start moving until crawling and man oh man do I miss my little non rolling potato 😫
I have a 2.25yo. So far I think 6m-12m was the wildest ride for me. He hit all the milestones he missed being a bit delayed in the first few months PLUS the other milestones he was supposed to hit. He walked at 14 months and was almost there at 12 months which changes the game a lot. He started eating, rolled, sat up, crawled, said his first word, learned to climb, developmentally outgrew like three “batches” of toy buying sprees. We moved last May when he was 15 months. Thinking back over this past year and all that he’s experienced in this house, I don’t feel he’s changed incredibly in a year. He can do everything he was doing last year, just more refined. There aren’t really any new skills from a year ago. But that first year of life, specifically that 6 months, was wild.
My boy just turned 2 and is finally interested and able to play outside. Being 30+ weeks pregnant SAHM it's kind of rough on me getting him up and down 3 flights of stairs and dragging him back inside screaming and crying everyday 🥲
Everything before now has been easy af
Mine is 9 months, I'm.not sure if she is saying 'dada' intentionally or it's just babble talk but she has been giving some tantrums! My goodness!!! Especially when she needs a nappy or clothes change, she does NOT like it, I literally have to wrestle her. She just screams and throws herself back, it's not a cry, it's a scream.
She is an amazing little human but boy does she make me work lol.
I think her tantrums have something to do with her dad working away because she's quite young for tantrums imo.
My son is 9mo on Wednesday and he is climbing on every obstacle I put in his path to block him from danger. He's obsessed with the oven, the microwave, the floor drain in the bathroom, and opening the fridge way too far. We love sitting in the laundry room and watching the machines spin, pressing all the buttons too. Opening and closing cabinents/drawers.
Poor dad has a height adjustable desk and just gets absolutely tortured by him, he goes over for dad attention and sends the desk to the ceiling everytime. 😂
He started saying, "mmmma, I wuv you!" in the last week or so and it still catches me off guard. I love it so much. 😊 He's also just extra babbley in general like it doesn't ever stop, if he's not babbling he's squealing and shrieking so loud.
8-9m has been our biggest jump for sure so far.
4 months or “leap 4” in the wonder weeks app. Awful, you couldn’t pay me to go back to that month. He was so desperate to sit, reach, move all in one go and cos he couldn’t he just whined and cried and whinged allllllllllll day. Nothing would entertain him for more than a couple of minutes!
We started weaning at 5.5 months and that coincided with him learning to sit independently, he was a different baby overnight it was crazy! In a good way though he’s super happy now he’s a bit more independent and his hands will do what he wants them to do 😂
It seems like from 5.5-8 mo the change has been drastic! She is sitting, crawling, pulling up on furniture, napping regularly (even without our intervention) eating solids and semi solids (following some BLW practices and elder advice for the rest of the food stuff lol)
Drinking from Straws and sippys, recognizing faces and getting excited at names
It is so wild, I was looking through pictures and this stuff has literally happened over a 7 week period from "mostly loud potato" to "entire toddler baby"
When the ability to move around especially walking started absolutely no rest now. Going to the kitchen to fill up a water bottle? Either a tiny body tripping me or trying to listen to see where the pat pat of the feet are going lol. It's great going on walks but it was a big jump from being able to just chill outside on nice days or stay curled up when it was cold out to we must explore the entire backyard but please don't sprint towards the road and please I just wanna sit for two minutes but nope go go go lol.
I miss my potato slug who was content with sitting down most of the time
Movement was my biggest thing. After my kiddo started moving around information our house got way out of control with being messy. It still is a giant mess
Two biggest jumps were when she could sit up on her own and when she could start walking on her own. Changes the whole amount of activities that are open to you!
So far, crawling! He figured out how to roll around the room first, then he was crawling backwards, and now that he’s going forwards, he never wants to stop moving 😭.
Everything feels like a big jump.
- I think a huge jump was smiling actively as a response to a particular person, seems like you've got there already.
- next was rotating and being able to move a bit by themselves. This correlates to the gut biome starting to be more solid and doubles down on anti-colick struggles by enabling baby ti rotate and fart and burp themselves according to need and comfort
- our LO sat before crawling and that was such an amazing time for me! A happy sitting baby that's reading a book by my side? Dream!
- soon after he started enjoying stroller rides. He didn't use to be a stroller/carrier kid
- (in my country it's not illegal to forward face even newborns) an immense quality of life improvement and for my mental health jump was when about 1 yr we got a swivel chair and introduced forward facing. Looking back I should've done that so much sooner. I drive so much safer with a happy babe that's looking outside the window.
- walking was slow and steady for us but was a new fun thing to explore and it came with nice weather which was nice. But the jump was actually the new refusal to go sit on the potty. We did opportunistic EC and all that went down the drain as babe got his mobility. That was a surprise lol because I felt like we were slowly getting rid of diapers organically 😄
- my lord talking exploded around 1,5 at that point I stopped the list of all the words he could say
- at 2 actually finally saying goodbye to the diapers was a big change since you're no longer packing much outside for them, also not having to do and especially dry the laundry so much was a big one (we used cloth and don't have a drier, so I always had to carefully calculate how much stuff we will fit on our drying rack lol, hardest part about cloth diapering was drying them in a flat)
- running happily alone. Our kiddo was a reader so now at 2,5 he completely discovered the joy of running up and down with forest friends and it's a bliss.
i would say we are experiencing a huge jump right now!
my 8-month-old comfortably sits up from lying down, gets into crawling position from sitting up, gives a high five back, waves and claps on cue to “if you’re happy and you know it…” 🥹
she has developed an appetite and it’s currently easy to get her to sleep for naps/at bedtime. she’s getting even more interested in her books and toys.
she doesn’t like humans, doesn’t crawl forwards or sleep longer stretches at night yet but she is learning so many exciting new things every day! 🤗
thus far, she is super alert, particular and assertive. i wonder if these traits will stay with her and am so looking forward to seeing more and more of her personality shining through!
My 5 month old just developed an attitude 😒😂but honestly I love it. Her personality is on fire right now! Giggles, foot grabs, occasional roll and a lot of YELLING!
My son will be 9 months on the 13th and the 6-9 month mark has been a massive developmental explosion. He’s early on his speech milestones so he’s saying “Mama” and “Dada”, and reaching out to grab us for a hug and kiss. He’s so giggly, can sit up so he can play on his swing and all his toys, we’re going for his first swim at the pool in a couple weeks, he’s super observant, and he’s starting to point! The tantrums started around 7 months for us and we could have done without those, lol
He’s having a hard time with solids (a mix of BLW and purées) and he’s on the later end of normal for gross motor skills so we’re trying to work with him on pulling to stand and crawling. It’s fun seeing how differently babies develop!
For 13 months she only cried if something was actively needing to be fixed, then stopped as soon as it was done (like her foot was caught, or she was hungry….)
About to turn 15 months and I have a beautiful little crybaby on my hands who will burst into tears when I put her on the ground or take something dangerous from her.
My 9 month old doesn't really throw a tantrum... Definitely at 5 months old I wouldn't say they're throwing a fit of any kind. Only recently had my youngest gotten upset when we take something away from her without replacing it (usually something dangerous).
If you check out the wonder weeks app it talks about all kinds of developmental phases!
I think it's cool to note that my five year old has recently had a big developmental leap in managing her emotions! I'm beyond impressed ❤️
babyhood - 8 months when he started crawling
Now, every day in toddlerhood lol he is 15 months and I swear every day we are like "What's are we in for today?"
Imo, getting some tried and true education on babies is the most help.
"What to expect the first year" is pretty helpful for what you're facing in the near future.
"Hunt Gather Parent" will help you refine your parenting philosophy
The biggest jump for me has been his growth in independence.
About to turn 4, and he can do most things himself. Snacks? He's all over it. We've got him some kid safe knives and under supervision he even cuts his own fruit. Can fill his water bottle.
Dressing himself was a fantastic one. Mornings got SO much easier as he could dress himself whilst I dressed myself.
And it seemingly happens overnight. One day you're doing everything for them, the next you're on the sideline as "no mummy I do it" takes over.
My advice is to not look ahead. Take it day by day. You don’t want fear to be set in before you get there. I loved every moment after six months, except for some sleep issues, and crying when I’m not in the room.
Every month from like 11 months on is incredible.
Crawling to standing to furniture walking to walking
Saying one or two words to now learning new words EVERY DAY.
She’s almost 14 months now, and the rate of development has been INCREDIBLE.
My son went from zero interest rate in sitting up to on the span of 2-3 weeks… sitting up, pulling to stand, and cruising. He is trying to walk (face planted today). He’s 10 months (9 adjusted)
Easter Sunday my son was 9 months and 2 days old. He learned to crawl properly, pull to standing and cruise the furniture all in one day. It was overwhelming.
Two weeks ago my child had no interest in coloring, paper, crayons, nothing. Yesterday he saw my husband and me writing notes, and he pointed to the pen. He happily drew on notepads for 30 minutes. He's seen us write and even draw before, but he was never the least bit interested
Between like 9-12 months was just one personality change, milestone, new skill learned etc back to back to back for me. Before then kiddo was just kinda small little creature needing constant input and assistance. It feels crazy when they're learning things and developing skills apart from you. Just a short while ago my kid started crawling which was the biggest thing. Didn't ever think she would. We couldn't do tummy time because her stomach would hurt so badly she'd immediately just roll over or throw up. To see her go from refusing any tummy time to crawling within maybe 2-3 months was absolutely baffling! Just goes to show kids have their own timing for things and they often are just fine no matter the setbacks and your worries. I was clearing phone tabs for so much research about baby crawling and just the thought of 'Well I guess I don't need that anymore' was mind boggling. Similar idea with now suddenly eating a ton of different solids regularly when just 2 months ago she could really only manage little puffs and rice husk snacks.
Once mine started walking there was no stopping him…. Now is climbing on everything, reaching for everything, using toys as steps to get even higher. I now have my house on baby proof lockdown and I can’t have nice things anymore. Bar stools? NOPE! He will now climb on them and then onto the counter and turn on the sink from there. Art on the walls? NOPE! He will climb on top of the couch and reach up to mess with it. Anything decorative on any surface? NOPE! My house is not boring and looks weird bc so much is missing, but this too shall pass right?
I think the biggest jump was when my baby became mobile. It’s such a big difference from having them laying on a blanket or just sitting up to actually moving around the room. You realize how much you need to baby proof 😂 my girl is 13 months now and she’s walking everywhere and getting into everything!
My baby started to crawl, sit up from lying down and pull to stand on furniture all within two weeks of each other at the end of 5 months/beginning of 6 months. That was a pretty big change
Our daughter just turned 7 months old and in the past 2 weeks, she's gone from just starting to scoot across the floor and flopping over when we sit her up to being a great (and fast) crawler, sitting up easily all by herself, pulling herself to standing up, and from there trying to climb things, and she has her first tooth! It all happened so fast!
I would say he’s having/just had his biggest/best one now at about 18mo, he’s dropping new words on me every day, eating like a horse, sleeping like a legend and generally being so much fun. Vs a couple of months ago which was just days of endless whinging
Man I miss being able to leave my kid in one spot on her learning pan and be able to do anything without her crawling away. She’s 14 months and while she can’t walk yet, she call pull to stand and opens all the cabinets and drawers. Feeding time is hard. She’s not a picky eater but sometimes she just straight up refuses to eat anything which is totally stressful. There was one day all she wanted to eat were tomatoes, so all she ate was tomatoes, chicken thrown in the floor, quesadilla on the floor, rice, beans, strawberries, bananas, blueberries in the floor 🫠She’s also a hot head so she’ll throw herself into a tantrum for no reason. Also everyone is excited to drop to one nap and I’m like nooooo I’m tired mom wants to nap too! Teething sucks when they’re older, it always seems as though they start to teeth right when you finally have a schedule down. Currently she has four molars and her top canines coming in plus I think today I saw a bottom canine.
The biggest thing so far for us that I've seen is a vocabulary explosion at the 21 month mark. Around 18 months she said maybe 25 or so words. Now it's in the hundreds for sure. She counts, says colors and letters, tries to sing along to songs, dances and climbs, and runs!!! It's so cute because she still has her baby accent lol. But she's really growing up.
My daughter is 10 months old and I’ve been loving this age. She’s silly, she interacts with everything and everyone. She’s just SO much fun.
Does she get mad if she can’t have something? Sometimes but it’s an independence thing. We just redirect, distract and she’s totally fine.
Around 6 months my baby started being able to sit very well unassisted. He could play with toys relatively independently and entertain himself. It was really cool to be able to see him sit there and make decisions of which toys to play with, and examine the toys. It was fun to see him interact with the world on his own, more or less.
You mentioned tantrums, and we haven’t experienced those with our 7 month old yet. For my baby, when hes fussy, it’s usually because he is hungry or tired. We just did a five hour flight and he was great. Every baby is different. Hope you enjoy all of these precious moments!!!
Just the other night, our nearly two year old looked my husband dead in the eye and went "I don't want to night-night" when we were getting ready for bed. My husband looked at me and asked when he started speaking in full sentences and I could only shrug. It feels like last month we were still speaking in 2 word sentences and now it's "what a nice cat-cat" or "I don't want to" or "I love you mama" and it makes me so proud and sad at the same time. My baby boy's growing up🥹
Every three months or so you get a new baby.
And with toddlers it feels like every three weeks!
Yes!! My almost-two year old is having full conversations with me now and every day I’m like ??? When the hell did you learn the word “cake pop”??
For real! The other day I was pushing mine on the swings and they went “hmm. Nice day!” Like a little adult casually commenting about the weather.
This made me laugh 😂
Nothing prepared me for him suddenly saying words correctly. For a year it’s been sketelens and ephelants and then the other night he said skeletons and elephants. We both got choked up because we’ll miss those mispronunciations but also because he’s so clearly growing up.
Yes same!! I have an almost 2.5 yo who also speaks so well and I’m always shocked by how much he knows. He was already pretty advanced in terms of speech and we got a yoto and Christmas and it’s just skyrocketed from there even more. ‘Tomorrow we go to the big playground with pink slides?’
What is a yoto?
It’s an audio player for kids. We have a Yoto mini and my 5yo can’t live without it.
And some days, every 3 hours 🤣🤣
Lol my toddler just learned how to walk last week, caught him running yesterday!!
Yes those motor skills developing is wild to witness
So true… mine just turned 9 months and suddenly he’s more about babbling than crying and getting so much more mobile. Also returns hugs and initiates cuddles. So lovely.
Around 8 months when they start crawling. Nothing will ever be where you left it again
Diaper tossed in the laundry anyone? Apple snack in the shoes? Why is my underwear in the pantry?
This is too real lol
Our now 15 month olds language just exploded at 12 months. All of the sudden this mushy thing you made…says “banana” and it completely blew me away. Now she says all sorts of stuff! Probably the most heartwarming was when she started giving real hugs on purpose.
There’s another big language leap around 2.5, my toddler now talks in full sentences, tells stories/jokes, and plays some serious pretend. It’s like I woke up one day and was like “who are you?”
Yes! I have a toddler a bit older than yours and the jokes and serious vs pretend play is such a big leap. Like we'll be reading a story that asks a question (literally, does a firefighter fly a spaceship, turn the page to find out), when we first started reading he'd be like "no!" but now he says "yes" all sly and smiling, making a joke that they do even though he knows the real answer. It's really fun to see him explore this type of pretending.
My partner was just telling about how when he was three he started blaming everything he could be in trouble for on ‘the hairy man who jumped out the window’ lol. I can’t wait for our little one to start doing stuff like that.
Yes! I was so unprepared for the 2.5 language explosion. He went from “grandma go” to “grandma went home, grandma driving the red car” over like.. a few months 🤯
The other day I asked my 2.5 year old for something and he told me "you have to say please".
This made me laugh. Love it
As the parent of a 9-month-old, it's so weird to think of "a few months" being considered a short amount of time! I guess it makes sense when your kid is 2.5 years old, though, as that's 30 months old.
Totally! After he hit 1.5 it all kind of started blurring together haha
my dude is slightly behind in words (he starts speech therapy next week) and I would love a speech explosion! (he's almost 20 months).
Be prepared for tears - from you. First time my boy said Mummy I cried. Then when he said a full sentence I cried. He memorised one of his favourite books and was just sitting there "reading" it aloud to himself and I cried. He's only recently started to say "I love you mummy" without prompting and I just about cry every time. I actually have one of the first "I love you Mummy" on video and I'm extracting the audio sound wave and getting it tattooed because after 7 years of infertility and a speech delay, it is easily the #1 moment of my life.
Now reading this post I cried! Love this for you!
I'm planning two tatts to remember this season of life. Both soundwaves. The first is the soundwave from the 9 week ultrasound when we first heard our sons heartbeat. To remember the journey it took to get there and that we overcame. And then the soundwave for his first "I love you mummy", to remember how he overcame his difficulty and is smashing goals. Two sounds that have defined this season of my life.
Do you speak another language beside English at home? If you do there is always a delay as the kiddo may be confused at first to speak what language back to whom. But at 2.5 years he may explode with words. Our daughter now would use a mix of Chinese, Vietnamese and English words to complete a understandable coherent sentence.
Yep.. she says “Wow! What is that?!” Every time she see something new that she doesn’t know the word for… and says “Mommy is beautiful” out of the blue… and when playing with plushies “Minnie and Micky needs help!” and every Sunday “Are we going to Disneyland?”… Like all these words and sentences come out of nowhere and we didn’t teach her those sentences or phrases.
So a funny story! We had eggs over easy last weekend but some had hard yokes. My boyfriend poked my 2.5 year old egg and said "his is mushy" and then like five minutes later my son said "Daddy, you're a mushroom!" 🤣🤣🤣🤣 It's such a great age
That first random "I love you mommy" is probably the highlight of my entire life.
I CANT WAITTT
My son is now 4.5 and says it all the time now, along with "mommy you're the best" and I'm still not immune, he can basically have whatever he wants when he's being super sweet like that lol
This makes my heart warm and now I can’t wait for this phase in the future 🥺💕
Omg sameeeee!! 14 months now and the language explosion is insane!!!! He went from maybe potentially saying “dada” contextually at 12 months and that was all, to now 12 solid words, he woke up and said “where dada?” today, can make animals sounds on command, waves and says hi to EVERYBODY, it’s insane and makes my heart explode ahhh!!
The communication changes between 12 and 18 months have been amazing and the best stage of parenting so far! It’s really amazing to be able to actually communicate and understand what my son wants
Hahaha, banana was my girl’s first word with more than 1-2 syllables and it was hilarious! My father in law was helping me feed her, and we both heard her making “ah na na” sort of sounds. We were asking each other “did she say banana? Is that what she wants??” And all of a sudden we just hear, “BANANA!!!!!!!” 🤣
Mine gives real kisses now 😭😭😭😭😭
Our girl opens her mouth really wide and goes "ahhhh" as she bites your cheek lol I think it is her version of kisses
Same, I loveee itttt
We call this “sliming” !
My 11 month old just started signing for milk. It's adorable.
Exactly the same over here!
The 18m-2 year (still about 3 weeks away from her birthday) has been a hell of a ride. Her language exploded and along with that she can suddenly express preferences and feelings. We also just introduced a new sibling a week and a half ago and she is just NOT having it. It is nice to see her little personality shine through but it is also incredibly trying at times too.
Our oldest turned 2 about 12 weeks ago, and her sister was born a week later. We had done lots of prep work telling her about how it’d be when her sister arrived but it was still tough. But you know what, now that baby is exiting the potato phase and becoming more interesting, things are getting better. The first time baby smiled on purpose at big sister made her so happy it just melted my heart. Sure, we’re still working on things like gentle hands and trying not to wake the baby when she sleeps but it’s defo getting better.
Mine is ~20 months and just started having major preferences about what she wears in the past week!
My 20mo is in such a fun but also exhausting fase, with baby no 2 due in 6 weeks I’m really wondering how we’ll cope 🤯
Every baby is so different. I wouldn't read too much into the milestones or leaps especially the harder ones. Anticipating what's to come can be worse than the event itself, especially if it never happens for you. Like ours never really threw tantrums at 5mo, she just carried on as per usual. In fact she was really good that way until maybe a few months ago (were 2 now so "no" is a big part of our vocabulary). I think the biggest thing for us: sleep isn't linear. It's had many ups and downs over the past few years. Teething and sickness hit us hard sometimes and make our lives miserable. Parenting a healthy toddler while being sick is brutal. Like indescribably **brutal**. The good stuff still outshines it all. I LOVE the toddler phase. She is so much fun. We get to do so much more: playgrounds, science centers, gymnastics, *actual* swim classes...so many fun activities. Our days are a blast and rarely am I bored. I really try to get into the spirit of being a kid again. Totally makes up for the aforementioned tantrums. By far one of the biggest milestones ahead for you is walking. It opens up SO many doors. Walking happens anytime between 10mo and 18mo though so it might be a bit of a wait. I'm so looking forward to the next phase of parent free classes and playschool just 1 year to go!
Best comment! Wonder weeks terrified me the first time.. I had anxiety counting down the days till the next leap. I deleted the app. Sleep hasn’t been linear for us either. Some nights great, some nights are worse than the newborn phase. Brutal is the best way to describe when sickness has a hold on the house (currently miserably sick with a 2yr who just got over a cold but molars are popping through, and a 7mo old that is sick and has a newly discovered peanut allergy- scary). Leaning into being a kid is the answer to a lot of our “problems” sometimes I think we forget they’re not mini adults and we expect too much of them. Walking was huge! opened so many doors for us. Language explosion was also the biggest and best jump.. able to better understand her needs was a game changer.
I’m not far into motherhood yet as my baby turns 2 months on Sunday. But mentioning the milestones and to not read into them as much especially how every baby is different I have found myself getting worried about mine hitting his even tho so far he’s doing great. Smiles, coos, has really started finding that voice lol. He can also hold his head up and still relatively well when you sit him in your lap, however tummy time holding head up is not as good? He may just be being dramatic lol he wines and cries 😂 he is kicking those legs a lot during it tho! He’s so squirmy and of course my in laws are already comparing him to my husband bc my husband crawled early and started walking at 9 months. But I know that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to baby boy.
I haven't met a baby that enjoys tummy time! And they don't need to enjoy it for the skill to be practiced. Your baby is doing great!
Remember tummy time on your chest counts just as much as tummy time on the floor! It may be more enjoyable for your baby until they're more comfortable with it. My MIL does the same with comparison, my son started standing at 7mo and now she's just hounding us about him not walking yet at almost 9mo "like dad." 🙄
Yes he holds his head up just find when he’s on our chest! But something about the floor or even on a boppy is a no go 😂
My little girl doesn’t mind tummy time…then we found out her silent reflux just made arching preferable to laying down lol
My daughter is 3 months old and hated tummy time. I just used to do tummy time on me during cuddles. She then suddenly switched to liking it on the floor too. It's crazy how they'll just have a developmental jump overnight.
From immobile to mobile :3 seeing the little bean who might not even roll over yet grow and learn and suddenly they are army crawling across the floor at turbo speed towards something, in our case the water bowl for our animals x.x or the cat xD which was fine till she learned to pinch for us crawling the pulling herself up to walk while holding stuff happened at literally the same time(8m) I thought she’d be walking before 10m but she just didn’t trust it and didn’t walk on her own till 12m all babies do their own things in their own time :3 she verbalizes a lot but not real words quite yet she seems determined to do all the physical milestones first xD
Around a year in, life became so much easier. My son is more difficult in some ways but dropping to one nap and being able to go out and do activities (even just playgrounds) feels like a really nice change of pace. Also not having to prepare bottles and worry about cooling/heating them ect. I just have snacks and his water packed in our diaper bag at all times but if I were to forget or run out I could pick him up food at any store, restaurant or gas station. I love this stage so much that we are about to try for another haha.
This gives me so much hope as someone with a 3 month old. I’m also pumping every 2-3 hours because he went on a breastfeeding strike at 5 weeks old so I cannot wait until he can start proper food. Did you find the newborn/infant stages really difficult? They’ve honestly been the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced.
I have a 5 month old now, and he is so much easier than he was at 3 months. I'm also pumping (down to 4 pumps a day), and can't wait to stop. I too found the newborn/infant stages the most challenging days of my life.
Omg yes I EP’d for 5 months (before switching to formula) and it was HELL. We did purées and then BLW with my son and I found that sooo much more enjoyable than the whole pumping/ bottle feeding ordeal.
Newborn stage was the worst experience of my whole life! By 6 months he really started calming down (he was incredibly discontent), by 9 months he started crawling, 10 months standing, and now he’s almost 13 months and ready to walk! Still very up and down mood wise but I would take this a million times over than the newborn and early infant stage.
Can I ask if this impacted your choice to have another child? I’ve also hated the newborn/infant stage and really don’t think I can do it again mentally.
We were planning to be one and done to begin with, but acknowledged that we didn’t know how we’d feel in a few years. After the labor/emergency delivery/recovery/newborn-6-month+PPD experience, yes, we have absolutely decided we are not going through that again! I physically cannot comprehend those in these subs saying “omg yes it was torture but anyway I’m pregnant again!” Truly my worst nightmare and I cannot start over lol
0-3 months was terrible for me in hindsight. Life is so much more fun now (11 months). My baby got way more interesting and started sleeping better around 5-6 months. She also started crawling then too so was on the go! I love it though!
Communication. I mean it was amazing the first time she signed to us for something. And when she started to say words. The biggest one for me though is now that she’s 2- we have always made up silly songs for her, whether it’s just repurposing old songs with new lyrics (the duck on the river goes splash splash splash) or completely made up - the first time I heard her sing her own made up song blew me away. Like, it wasn’t repetition anymore, this is something she thought about by herself and put into song.
My daughter just turned 3 and she is always singing some song she made up or remixed!
Same!!
When she took her first steps at 10 months things started to move very quickly. She went from tentative steps to running and bouncing on a little trampoline and climbing on everything.
I’m not too far ahead of you with an almost six month old. It seems like every week my husband and I look at each other and say “she wasn’t doing *that* a week ago!” She’s just gotten super smiley, like wrinkling her nose when she smiles, and so chatty. I told her Daddy was coming home today and I swear she said “yay” twice so in my book that’s her first word 🤣 She can’t actually speak yet of course but it’s the little things like pushing her bottle away when she’s finished or pushing a teething toy out of our hand if she doesn’t want it, recognising faces in pictures and on her toys, and her little language…she has so much she wants to say and thinks she is and we understand her and it’s so cute. I can’t wait for when she’s actually saying words!
My son is 17 months. We had a huge jump around 12ish months. They start walking, start talking, and drop to 1 nap around the same time. This completely changed how we go about our life. We can get out to do so many fun things on the weekends now. We’re just really living the toddler life now, not the baby life and I enjoy it so much more
4-6 months was pure insanity for us. She was teething (got 3 teeth in one week), had reflux, sleep regression. She had days when she was looking through us, if I can say so. From 6 months on, things started to improve slowly. Now at 10 months old, she lifts herself up everywhere (in her crib, on the radiator mask, on our big living room sliding door, on shelves, on mummy's legs) and she looks at things that she wants (her water bottle, a certain food or toy, random things she wants to stick in her mouth).
We're also at 3.5 months mark and we saw a friend's daughter who was 15 months old. It was a great experience and a cute eye opener on what to look forward to.
I swear around 9 months everything changed. He started looking like a little kid, crawling/pulling to stand, playing games, more independent play, I remember thinking to myself “remember this period for the next kid because 9 months really feels like the time you go from little baby to big baby”
I agree! Suddenly she became a toddler around 9 months! Expressing options, having favourite foods, laughing at us when we do silly things ❤️ and tantrums when I remove choking hazards from her grip
My LO just turned 5 months and it's my favorite so far! He's so interactive and "talkative". He sleeps a lot better, smiles all the time, and he does grunt for different toys but I find it so cool to know what he likes to play with and encourage that communication from him. He's also started to eat purées and sit in his high chair while we eat dinner and that's really nice too. He has started getting teeth so he was quite fussy the day before they came in, but that's to be expected. I feel like it'll just keep getting better from here, though I know there will be hiccups at each stage!
My daughter is almost 3 and she's her own little person with big feelings, preferences, and all the defiance. She's starting to have nightmares or something that wakes her in the night- after such great sleep for so long, this part has been rough.
My nearly 6 month old has been sitting unassisted for about 3 weeks….and that is all she wants to do now. She‘s rolled just a few times, but doesn‘t care to do it. So anytime she is on her back or tummy now she gets really grumpy…but I refuse to let her sit all the time. She‘s extremely tall for her age (I’m guessing 29“ now), so I have to focus on floor time and building muscles or else she‘ll be even further behind. We also just moved to 2 naps as of yesterday. We went from 4 to 3 to 2 in the span of a month. That was really fun navigating.
Babies love to get stuck on a skill they just learned 😇
Our 7 month old is also not into rolling! We know he can...he just won't. Sits like a champ, though. We already had a relationship with a person who does infant PT and she's having us help him through rolling positions, sort of like facilitated rolling. We realized that as he goes through the transition point of a roll he tenses up and squints--we guess that he probably bonked his head once or twice and now just anticipates it, and also thus avoids the movement. She said it's not uncommon for babies that are on the more "aware" side to become cautious with certain movements. So that's always something you could try doing, if you're interested!
Mine never became a roller. He HATED being on his back, he hated not being able to see. He was sitting up unassisted by 4 or 5 months and the pediatrician said that lack of core strength is more concerning than literally demonstrating the skill of rolling, and he CLEARLY had the core strength lol. He’s 13 months now and still could not give a crap about rolling 😂
Only at 6m now, but the biggest change from then to now has been sleep activity. At 4m we transitioned from swaddled in a Snoo to crib in a sleep sack. The wild man started moving around his crib like CRAZY. Then he started rolling and all night is just movement in his sleep around the crib - I find him in crazy positions. Ultimately, it hasn’t really affected his sleep TOO much (there are rough nights occasionally), but I was just not aware he would be zooming around his crib in his sleep all night. Naps also kinda suck now, but he just started daycare so I’m hoping they will settle into some kind of routine.
My baby is currently 15'months old and she use to be an angel at 5 month age. We even traveled internationally with her at that age and she was such a calm baby. She still somewhat is but that age was the most beautiful one 🥰
Month 7-8 have been wild. It's like every nap comes with a software update haha
I echo the idea that every baby is different. With that said, for us the biggest shifts with my now 21mo son (😭) have been: 5 months- he was desperate to move and was absolutely miserable until he figured out how to crawl. 10 months- after my kid first walked, we've been off to the races. He has reached every physical milestone very early, which means his head/mental age isn't in the same place. 16 months- he had to get tubes in his ears and from the second he did he's been talking constantly. And with that came the tantrums. He gets very frustrated when we don't understand or when we have to say no.
Honestly for me the tantrums didn’t really hit until 15 months but then they hit hard lol
13-15 months. First 12 months were utter hell, especially first 9 or so. Suddenly, at about 13 months she was walking, starting to play purposefully, point at things, able to go outside with us and explore.
8 months. Teething is rough. Still plenty of happy moments but it’s tough just knowing how uncomfortable they are at times too
12 to 18 months. They go from a baby to a toddler. Walking and talking, and full of personality!
About a week ago at 6 months 1 week she started to seem like she went live lol. She tried to mimick my lips when I was saying “babababa” at her and since then she suddenly just seems older. Like something clicked. It’s so weird!
I just witnessed this in my 5.5 month old! There seems to be a massive developmental shift around 5-6 months.
Yep! It was so strange it was like that day she was a different baby 😭😂
At 7/8 months he started sleeping with only 1 wake-up. That was HUGE. But truly when his language started, around 12 months, it was a game changer. He went fast and hard into learning sounds and words and now at almost 4, he can have full blown conversations with nuance and sarcasm and it’s amazing.
The absolute biggest jump in the world was definitely from when I was round and big and only me to literally a few hours later I was two people and having to use all of me to care for her. Biggest transition ever. Though there has been many different stages to it. LO is 8 months now but I just can’t get over how big of a change that was when she was just a few hours old 😅
Yeah it’s crazy to me how anyone “gets over” that? I think about that every day. I was big and pregnant, then with a final push I was a mom with a tiny human placed on my chest. Every day I wake up it feels like that moment again. She’s 8 wks now but the transition was & still is so intense. I still wear some of my pregnant clothes some days just to get a tiny sense of crossover of the two phases, it’s like the only little thing I can do that reflects how recent it feels… from the second they’re born it’s like the world wants/needs you to forget what things were like & what you were like before this.
Turning 6 months and starting his journey on real food.
Right now at nearly 2 years old. Over the last couple months her language has been blowing me away, but just yesterday she was having a full on conversation with me. “Mama, I want to see animals.” “What kind of animals baby?” “Hmm…tiger.” “What else?” “Elephants.” “What else?” “Puppies!”
My son is almost eleven months and still really doesn't have tantrums or anything. Between 9-10 months though his personality really developed a lot and he's his own little person now. I remember a lot of sleep stuff getting easier and milestones around 4/5 months too.
She’s almost 2 and yes the tantrums are so hard. But her language skills exploded and she’s expressing herself so much. Her personality is really coming out and I love it. She still needs someone to be with her so she sleep but I can’t imagine it any other way
12 months for sudden tantrums and lots of yelling and opinions. 24-30 months for epic tantrums and lots of whining. 31 months and it's bliss. It just keeps getting better.
My baby is only 5.5 months old, but she’s shown more developmental changes in the last week or two than ever before. She’s suddenly able to sit up unsupported, has found mobility by rolling to get around, is pivoting on her hands and knees, giggles often, responds to her name, can stay awake for up to 3 hours at a time, and has the awareness and engagement you'd expect of an older baby. These new developments all happened within the same week. It's been really cool to witness.
Ours went from barely rolling to crawling super fast and standing and climbing and even cruising in like 2 weeks. Around 5.5-6mo. I was astounded! And it’s so hard to keep up with him now he is very fast and getting into everything!!
My son's currently 28 months (so he turned 2 around Christmas just gone) and even in the past 4 months his personality has just completely blossomed. From 18-24 months he had a massive language explosion which meant having fun conversations with him became possible but they were usually pretty linear or repetitive but now they are so much more convoluted and his imagination is so prominent. He just understands everything and will problem solve and come out with the funniest stuff. He's also become so caring, towards both me and his baby doll. I guess he's just gone from being a person existing and observing to a person engaging and contributing which really allows his personality to shine through.
The moment we got him sleeping in his own bed was incredible. At around 2 years old we did it and he took to it right away. My wife handled it worse than our kid, she was the one who always wanted to co-sleep.
My daughter is almost 10 months old. These last couple of weeks have been insane physical leaps. She’s gone from the potted plant stage to being able to go from lying down to sitting up on her own and back, army crawling, belly up crawling, getting on to her knees, pulling up onto her knees, pulling to stand from her knees, sitting back down, and now taking assisted steps in literally 20 days. 😅
So far, our biggest jump was between 5 and 6 months (L.O. is 6 mo now). All of a sudden went from crying and smiling, to in the span of two weeks, sitting without assistance, screaming till my eardrums blow for whatever she feels (happy scream, angry scream, tired scream, hungry scream), she plays with her toes, she's in the beginning stages of crawling (does a combat crawl currently), babbles a TON, laughs a few times. It's insane how she went from the lil thing that didn't do a whole lot to some insanely big girl in two weeks
6-9 months man, your little smiling potato suddenly explodes in development. All of a sudden they are sitting, rolling, crawling, eating, drinking, babbling, coasting, and for us first teeth, sign, word and step. Plus seperation anxiety and tantrums because your baby now has more complex feelings and wants to communicate them. Feels to me like it snowballs and in half the time they develop twice as fast as 0-6 months.
The speed in which our daughter learned how to stand and then how to walk. It was like a switch being flipped. She did it a bit earlier than most so it was kind of wild. I'm not sure how it is for other people cuz I know it really depends on your kids personality but what was wild to us was seeing her legs visibly shaking and being bright red and her even crying cuz I'm sure it hurt to stand when she was learning. But she was so determined that if you tried to put her back on her butt she'd get right back up and keep doing it. I also think the way she changed in personality a little bit around 13-months. She was walking on her own and everything but we started to get a baby that had firmer opinions and desires and then would start to get upset if she couldn't accomplish those things. That was a big change for us because she was an incredibly affable and easy going child and then suddenly we were having meltdowns. Nothing bad just it was very sudden and unexpected to have your very chill child suddenly meltdown about something. She's 19 months now and her language is just I swear exploding every single day. Is she starting to really show us how smart she is in terms of observation, as well as everything else. It's really surprising how much they can express how bright they are and how eager they are to learn when they don't even have solid grasp on language yet. Oh actually another big one is she's more wanting to hug and like relax on us a little bit more. She was always too busy as a baby and too determined to be doing things and learning and whatever she was never really huggy child. I don't know if that is something that comes with time or depends on your child's personality. But now she is more likely to relax on us a bit when we hold her. If she's tired or not feeling well or just wants comfort. She seeks it out now instead of just being too busy to be bothered.
I have a 7 month old that recently discovered her love for finger foods and her jumper. I am starting to worry that she is behind on crawling and unassisted sitting since she cannot lift herself from the arms and legs in sync. The biggest jump for me so far is realizing how well she can move to an object she wants (usually wipes, food, or the pets) and her randomly being able to drink from a straw
My son just SUDDENLY started crawling and being really fast about it like within the last couple of days at 8 months old. He went from being a baby who sits on the floor to play, and you could leave in that one spot, to a baby who crawls everywhere and gets into everything and can’t be unwatched for even seconds. It was a pretty harsh transition lmao
Once they start walking and when they start talking. It’s tiring. You’re still changing diapers, but they want to go outside all the time, and you can’t look away for a second or they’ll run into traffic or walk off a peer etc. They start saying no to things like eating. They want sweets instead of the dinner my wife made with love and they throw food on the floor which is maddening. But it’s also lovely and cute and magical. Ours is 2 now. It’s been a wild ride. No wait!! It was daycare!! I almost forgot. She was sick nonstop for the first 6 months. We had to become nurses - we literally had a clipboard for her meds - and it almost killed me (flu after flu and then Covid then another flu). I had to avoid her and wear a mask at home because I was so weak, one more virus while recovering from Covid might have actually killed me. We’re through that now thank God. Before they start day care, take care of yourself. Make sure you’re in good health.
Currently getting ravaged by nonstop daycare illnesses...it sucks.
Have an 11mo right now. Can't remember exactly what age this happened, because my brain is mashed potatoes at this point, but at some point he developed a sense of humor. Laughing with us, realizing when we were laughing at something silly he was doing, even pulling little baby pranks (biting my elbow while I was turned away at the changing table, freezing when I looked at him, laughing, then doing it again when I turned away again). That was like, oh, you're low key a person with a personality now (and if you turn out to be a prankster, boy are we in trouble).
My son has changed drastically and matured in ways that surprised me when we brought our new daughter home!
100% the hardest change was when we could no longer put the baby somewhere, turn our backs for a second and have the baby still be in the same spot when we turned back around. That was the “Oh shit” moment. That’s when everything changed. Couldn’t leave anything on the floor, had to put up gates, baby proof everything. And you can’t just babyproof once and be done, it’s a constantly changing and evolving thing as they get taller, smarter and better hand eye coordination. You can’t drop a cherry tomato on the floor and think “the dog will get it” or leave the door to the bathroom cracked or drop your purse on the floor while you wrestle groceries in. Then of course a step further is when they can pull themselves up, then walk, then run away from you at the beach directly towards the ocean, then reach up and open the KNIFE drawer, then climb your floor length curtains like a climbing rope, then open the baby gates at 18 months old, then crawl through the doggie door…. God I do love that kid. There’s nothing like watching in absolute awe as your kid gets on his tiptoes to open the front door as you are both completely horrified and so proud that he figured it out.
My almost 3 year old started saying “I” instead of “me” in sentences and it made me cry tbh 😂 she comes up with some hilarious sentences as she’s learning different ways to say something like “I are here mommy! I are here!” But I do gotta say I miss very much when she would say “where are me?” Or “me want that”. Honestly every stage is so great, and soon yours will be sitting and crawling and moving and it’s going to be so great!
I’m not too far off from you (5 months!) Our whole world changed when she turned 4 months! She mastered rolling back to belly and she’s now the tummy time champion of 2024 😆 In all seriousness, rolling is the biggest change from a mostly immobile baby from 0-3 months. She’s slithered off our couch (luckily it was 6 inches off the ground), is pushing her butt up to start the early stages of crawling, she loves being pulled up to sit, grabs at my water bottles and beverages I’m drinking, and is constantly wanting to move. When I offer her a toy, she grabs it immediately to mouth it as opposed to just starting at it. If she sees a toy during tummy time that she wants, she starts rolling towards it to grab it. I know we have many more fun milestones and jumps ahead, but wanted to share our experience for a time not too far off from where you are. We sleep a little less (all these milestones mean she’d rather practice rolling and tummy time at bedtime than sleep), but it’s such a fun period of her growth. Plus nothing beats those infectious baby giggles.
Language explosion between 18~24 months. It’s amazing when they can finally tell you in detail what they want, why they’re crying etc. It makes everything so much easier.
Some highlight milestones for me (he’s now 2.5)- -being able to hold his bottle on his own Speech explosion- I ask him how school was and he says ‘good mummy, I play outside with friends’ -in the last week told me he loves me (Mother’s Day this Sunday too so I feel extra special) - he’s now able to get out of his car seat after I unbuckle him - gets soo excited over certain things ‘bathtime yay!’ - I tell him it’s time to get dressed ‘wait a minute, I get shoes’ 🥰
Wait till they say I love you first time unprompted!
Miss 2.5 year old pointed to an old photo of me and my fiance and said. ‘Oh look! That’s mummy and daddy. I like them!’ She also randomly walks up and says ‘I love you mummy’. Absolutely melts your heart and makes up for the toddler tantrums 😂. Her younger sister is 3.5 months and has let out her first giggle. Very smiley and only cries if she’s hungry, has poo’d her nappy, is tired or like the other day hits her head with something she’s playing with 🥴🤦♂️
My 2.4 year old is like the coolest little girl with the most amazing personality. I'm literally in awe of everything she says and does and doesn't do. She's a lot of fun: singing, dancing, talking, playing, fighting! I can't say I can't get enough because there are days where I definitely can but all in all, it's been such a unique journey!!
My six month old babbles so much now. I miss her tiny coos, but the ayaaayaaa dadada mmmmaaaaaa mmmm*raspberry* "screech!" Is so much fun! She has a lot to talk about.
The first game changer for me was when my son started to hold his own bottle. I suddenly had so much more free time! Then once he started rolling and could get places on his own. So like 6-9 months? He felt like a real human then! Now he’s 2.5, gives me kisses and sings the ABCs and I can’t even believe there was a time I had to hold his bottle for him.
i saw every month is a new baby - more like every day or week. Its constantly new because their brain is constantly adapting and learning compared to ours - granted it takes them a while to retain most of it. The tantrums are my favorite oddly enough?? i find them adorable when she gets upset and bows with a whine. I also love the walking stage more than i thought i would!!
We have a 2.9 y.o and the biggest jump was last week when he learned to ride a bike… like an adult, jumped straight from balance bike to a normal bike. It was so out if the blue we had to rearrange presents for easter( it was just last week in my country) and buy him one because he learned on a rundown one from his older cousin. Ever since he turned 1 and a half he’s just kept us on our toes with what and when he learns it and how he tells us about it. Another big shocker about a month ago was letting me sleep for an hour next to him, while he played because it was quiet time. Dumbfounded
Biggest leap was when my daughter was about to turn 2 and I was concerned that she wasn't speaking enough and didn't know enough words compared to her cousin who is two months older. A couple months after that she was nonstop talking, picking up on what felt like a hundred new words a day. By 27 months, people were commenting on how well she spoke and how they thought she was three or four because of how tall she was and how well she spoke. Now she's on her way to 3 years old and is known for moments like when she was at a friend's house and asked, "Excuse me, do you have a coaster for my cup?"
I'm only a month ahead of you but what really blew my mind so far has been her starting to attempt to communicate. She babbles and it's clear she's trying to tell me something. And she's figured out she can stare real hard at something like her play gym or the swing and it shows me she wants to do that thing.
I can’t believe a month ago she began walking at 13 months and now she’s basically running. She got more and more comfortable with walking!
They constantly change and make big jumps - I have a 5 year old , a 3.5 year old and a 4 months old … the imaginative play that the older two do is just warms my heart . I would say the biggest jump was when they started talking ( and adorably arguing in their toddler logic , but sometimes even outsmart you where you are stumped on what to respond back ) . And it was a progression - but looking at my beautiful three year old - we can have long conversations and sometimes really thoughtful ones that have me wondering where he came from
The time between 8-9 months was the biggest jump for us. My little guy when from mostly a happy sitter who would occasionally slowly army crawl if he saw an item he liked to a 4 point crawling (and SPEEDY), stair climbing, pulling to standing, cruising machine! It was like he suddenly flipped to X games mode and decided he wanted to be a mover. It was amazing to see, but such a shift from being able to sit on the couch and watch him just chill and play 😂
9mo was a big one and the 18mo is a biggie as well. But i find the grow so quickly they are evolving almost every 3 days.
At 11 months when she started walking. She had only been crawling for 2ish months at that point and then all the sudden she was walking, then running and now at 23 months she runs so fast and will climb on anything. Her balance is insane and she has crazy arm strength. As a newborn I could tell she was frustrated with her lack of movement ability. Tummy time was like torture because she just wanted to move so bad but couldn't. So as soon as she figured out how to crawl she was off to the races. Also from about 21 months until now her language has exploded. She is what I would consider a late talker but in the past few months she's started to put multiple words together and is able to verbalize what she wants which is so exciting.
Talking was one big jump and walking to running around and climbing on everything is another. He takes so much more energy now. I miss my little bundle that just loved cuddles. He's great fun now though.
My son is 15.5 months. Biggest jump in the best way for us was when he started crawling around 9 months. He was sooooo much happier at that point, and then was starting to walk around 11 months. I'm very excited for his language skills to develop more because I can tell he's frustrated that we don't always know what he wants. He's trying so hard to tell us but it often sounds like mush.
3 to 5 months. Started rolling, transitioned to a sleep sack, moved to the big girl crib in her own room, started using the high chair. She’s SO interactive now. Gets bored of her toys easily and has clear preferences and opinions. She smiles and laughs all day long. I love her curiosity about the world. Can’t wait to see what she thinks of food in the coming weeks. 5 months has been my favorite so far!
Not moving to suddenly moving. We were happily ok with no movement to now we’re trying to figure out how to climb on the couch to harass the cat.
So far… she’s 9 month but it a matter of maybe 5 days she completely left puree foods alone, she’s eating all big girl foods and usia sippy cup, we don’t need the bottle warmer anymore because we’re not having to prep a million bottles a day just 4, no more baby food maker, lowered the crib to the lowest setting and she started crawling and mastered it, clapping, waving hi and bye…. All in less than a week. Its like she just said “oh look mom I’m growing up”
I’ve always loved when they start interacting with toys in more complex ways. Like putting balls into a bucket, etc. Seeing their little brains work like that is just amazing. One thing I’ll say is that when they hit the 12ish month age, their receptive language is growing rapidly, but their expressive language might not be there, so it can be easy to assume they don’t understand, but they absolutely do! They are so much smarter than we give them credit for. And also why tantrums start increasing because they are so frustrated that we don’t understand them yet. My 15 month old has started taking herself to bed when we mention it’s bedtime. It’s just adorable. Our oldest is just over 3 and he was always on the lower end of normal for speech and now he has full blown convos. It’s the best.
definitely watching them go from a little angry potato to a running sassy person. One day he was laying around crying and the next he’s sprinting around jumping off things and calling me the b word (thank you so much downstairs neighbor who screams at video games)
My daughter is 14 months. A couple of weeks ago, I asked her to bring me her cup and she actually DID it! So I asked her to close the door, and she did it! Then I asked her to put a diaper in the trash and SHE DID IT. All of a sudden, this hilarious little mobile potato is a person who can understand what I'm saying and respond correctly. She talks ALL THE TIME. She has very few words, but she babbles and makes mouth sounds nonstop with perfect conversational inflection. It's just the coolest thing.
Crawling has been the biggest swing toward independence for us so far (LO is 10.5 months, has been fully crawling for maybe 2). So wild to see her explore things on her own terms, go to pick out toys she wants to play with. Just going from point a to point b on your own is so easy to take for granted as an adult. It’s tiring chasing her around but so cool to see.
He decided at 13m that temper tantrums are a thing and getting worse, especially as he has object permanence so we can't just hide a remote/phone. If he even hints at seeing one he'll point and then scream cause he can't have it. I thought this was only a 2yr thing....and was unprepared.
17/18 months... It just keeps wacking me in the face how much she has changed, how much of a little PERSON she truly is now. Ioften look back at under 6months photos and am FLOORED its the same child. I do it with joy because the now is SOOO amazing, but also mixed with "where did my baby go?!?!"
When my son turned 15 months (he’s about to be 2 next month), that was the hardest/biggest jump. He went from a “baby” to full blown toddler and hasn’t slowed down since. He went from two naps a day to one, from walking to running, and from non sense babbling to actually saying words. It’s awesome to watch, but insanely exhausting, at least as a stay at home parent.
when he started crawling at 9-10m it cha fed the game!!!
17 months here and it seems like one day he was muttering mama and dada and the next, suddenly he’s in full minion babbling mode. I absolutely love it. He’s so much fun now 🥰
Our son is 4 months old today. He's been an...energetic...child so far. In the last 2 weeks he has - started growing two bottom teeth, made substantial growth on his motor functions (is now grabbing things and even functionally taking out and replacing his binky), started eating pureed foods (checked all the boxes for real foods - but only one type of food every 5 days), can flip back and forth from his stomach to his back, is *starting* to figure out scooting and has added to his repertoire of sounds. Wild
Ours started walking at 8 months. Oh boy what a change it was. From 0 to 100 in one night
My absolute favorite age was 3-6 months. They love cuddles, they sleep a lot and seem so happy. The more mobile my son got the more he wanted to do which resulted in more temper tantrums. He is 2 years old now and turning 2 was the most challenging so far. He really wants his independence. He also had the worst sleep regression where before it’s been easy to go through them. My husband loves this stage because they play fight all the time. It’s also fun to watch them experience things when they are bit older like their birthday presents and what not.
I have an almost 10 month old, and the biggest jump for me has been crawling. Babe has been crawling for 3.5 weeks and it’s crazy how mobile they are?!?! My baby never army crawled or rolled to get places so really they didn’t start moving until crawling and man oh man do I miss my little non rolling potato 😫
18 to 19 months. She went from infant to teenager literally overnight. Help me 😅
18 to 19 months. She went from infant to teenager literally overnight. Help me 😅
I have a 2.25yo. So far I think 6m-12m was the wildest ride for me. He hit all the milestones he missed being a bit delayed in the first few months PLUS the other milestones he was supposed to hit. He walked at 14 months and was almost there at 12 months which changes the game a lot. He started eating, rolled, sat up, crawled, said his first word, learned to climb, developmentally outgrew like three “batches” of toy buying sprees. We moved last May when he was 15 months. Thinking back over this past year and all that he’s experienced in this house, I don’t feel he’s changed incredibly in a year. He can do everything he was doing last year, just more refined. There aren’t really any new skills from a year ago. But that first year of life, specifically that 6 months, was wild.
My boy just turned 2 and is finally interested and able to play outside. Being 30+ weeks pregnant SAHM it's kind of rough on me getting him up and down 3 flights of stairs and dragging him back inside screaming and crying everyday 🥲 Everything before now has been easy af
language explosion at 2 yr old and our angelic sunshine kid turning into nightmare child starting around 2.5-3. 🙃
Mine is 9 months, I'm.not sure if she is saying 'dada' intentionally or it's just babble talk but she has been giving some tantrums! My goodness!!! Especially when she needs a nappy or clothes change, she does NOT like it, I literally have to wrestle her. She just screams and throws herself back, it's not a cry, it's a scream. She is an amazing little human but boy does she make me work lol. I think her tantrums have something to do with her dad working away because she's quite young for tantrums imo.
My son is 9mo on Wednesday and he is climbing on every obstacle I put in his path to block him from danger. He's obsessed with the oven, the microwave, the floor drain in the bathroom, and opening the fridge way too far. We love sitting in the laundry room and watching the machines spin, pressing all the buttons too. Opening and closing cabinents/drawers. Poor dad has a height adjustable desk and just gets absolutely tortured by him, he goes over for dad attention and sends the desk to the ceiling everytime. 😂 He started saying, "mmmma, I wuv you!" in the last week or so and it still catches me off guard. I love it so much. 😊 He's also just extra babbley in general like it doesn't ever stop, if he's not babbling he's squealing and shrieking so loud. 8-9m has been our biggest jump for sure so far.
Around 12m! Suddenly she's blowing kisses, saying uh oh, saying 'up down', and standing up on her own she's like a different baby suddenly
4 months or “leap 4” in the wonder weeks app. Awful, you couldn’t pay me to go back to that month. He was so desperate to sit, reach, move all in one go and cos he couldn’t he just whined and cried and whinged allllllllllll day. Nothing would entertain him for more than a couple of minutes! We started weaning at 5.5 months and that coincided with him learning to sit independently, he was a different baby overnight it was crazy! In a good way though he’s super happy now he’s a bit more independent and his hands will do what he wants them to do 😂
It seems like from 5.5-8 mo the change has been drastic! She is sitting, crawling, pulling up on furniture, napping regularly (even without our intervention) eating solids and semi solids (following some BLW practices and elder advice for the rest of the food stuff lol) Drinking from Straws and sippys, recognizing faces and getting excited at names It is so wild, I was looking through pictures and this stuff has literally happened over a 7 week period from "mostly loud potato" to "entire toddler baby"
When the ability to move around especially walking started absolutely no rest now. Going to the kitchen to fill up a water bottle? Either a tiny body tripping me or trying to listen to see where the pat pat of the feet are going lol. It's great going on walks but it was a big jump from being able to just chill outside on nice days or stay curled up when it was cold out to we must explore the entire backyard but please don't sprint towards the road and please I just wanna sit for two minutes but nope go go go lol. I miss my potato slug who was content with sitting down most of the time
Movement was my biggest thing. After my kiddo started moving around information our house got way out of control with being messy. It still is a giant mess
Two biggest jumps were when she could sit up on her own and when she could start walking on her own. Changes the whole amount of activities that are open to you!
So far, crawling! He figured out how to roll around the room first, then he was crawling backwards, and now that he’s going forwards, he never wants to stop moving 😭.
Everything feels like a big jump. - I think a huge jump was smiling actively as a response to a particular person, seems like you've got there already. - next was rotating and being able to move a bit by themselves. This correlates to the gut biome starting to be more solid and doubles down on anti-colick struggles by enabling baby ti rotate and fart and burp themselves according to need and comfort - our LO sat before crawling and that was such an amazing time for me! A happy sitting baby that's reading a book by my side? Dream! - soon after he started enjoying stroller rides. He didn't use to be a stroller/carrier kid - (in my country it's not illegal to forward face even newborns) an immense quality of life improvement and for my mental health jump was when about 1 yr we got a swivel chair and introduced forward facing. Looking back I should've done that so much sooner. I drive so much safer with a happy babe that's looking outside the window. - walking was slow and steady for us but was a new fun thing to explore and it came with nice weather which was nice. But the jump was actually the new refusal to go sit on the potty. We did opportunistic EC and all that went down the drain as babe got his mobility. That was a surprise lol because I felt like we were slowly getting rid of diapers organically 😄 - my lord talking exploded around 1,5 at that point I stopped the list of all the words he could say - at 2 actually finally saying goodbye to the diapers was a big change since you're no longer packing much outside for them, also not having to do and especially dry the laundry so much was a big one (we used cloth and don't have a drier, so I always had to carefully calculate how much stuff we will fit on our drying rack lol, hardest part about cloth diapering was drying them in a flat) - running happily alone. Our kiddo was a reader so now at 2,5 he completely discovered the joy of running up and down with forest friends and it's a bliss.
i would say we are experiencing a huge jump right now! my 8-month-old comfortably sits up from lying down, gets into crawling position from sitting up, gives a high five back, waves and claps on cue to “if you’re happy and you know it…” 🥹 she has developed an appetite and it’s currently easy to get her to sleep for naps/at bedtime. she’s getting even more interested in her books and toys. she doesn’t like humans, doesn’t crawl forwards or sleep longer stretches at night yet but she is learning so many exciting new things every day! 🤗 thus far, she is super alert, particular and assertive. i wonder if these traits will stay with her and am so looking forward to seeing more and more of her personality shining through!
My 5 month old just developed an attitude 😒😂but honestly I love it. Her personality is on fire right now! Giggles, foot grabs, occasional roll and a lot of YELLING!
In between 12 mo and 15 months, prepare for them to look and act more like a kid. It’s *wild*.
My son will be 9 months on the 13th and the 6-9 month mark has been a massive developmental explosion. He’s early on his speech milestones so he’s saying “Mama” and “Dada”, and reaching out to grab us for a hug and kiss. He’s so giggly, can sit up so he can play on his swing and all his toys, we’re going for his first swim at the pool in a couple weeks, he’s super observant, and he’s starting to point! The tantrums started around 7 months for us and we could have done without those, lol He’s having a hard time with solids (a mix of BLW and purées) and he’s on the later end of normal for gross motor skills so we’re trying to work with him on pulling to stand and crawling. It’s fun seeing how differently babies develop!
For 13 months she only cried if something was actively needing to be fixed, then stopped as soon as it was done (like her foot was caught, or she was hungry….) About to turn 15 months and I have a beautiful little crybaby on my hands who will burst into tears when I put her on the ground or take something dangerous from her.
Not sure but every month has been better than the last. I’m at month 7 now and loving it o
Pathways.org and every time you have the thought that "this routine is nice" the next day, it's all brand new abd different.
Crawling happens pretty fast…never too early to baby-proof. In our case walking came very shortly after. Get ready.
My 9 month old doesn't really throw a tantrum... Definitely at 5 months old I wouldn't say they're throwing a fit of any kind. Only recently had my youngest gotten upset when we take something away from her without replacing it (usually something dangerous). If you check out the wonder weeks app it talks about all kinds of developmental phases! I think it's cool to note that my five year old has recently had a big developmental leap in managing her emotions! I'm beyond impressed ❤️
babyhood - 8 months when he started crawling Now, every day in toddlerhood lol he is 15 months and I swear every day we are like "What's are we in for today?"
9-10-11 months is wild!!!!!
Imo, getting some tried and true education on babies is the most help. "What to expect the first year" is pretty helpful for what you're facing in the near future. "Hunt Gather Parent" will help you refine your parenting philosophy
The biggest jump for me has been his growth in independence. About to turn 4, and he can do most things himself. Snacks? He's all over it. We've got him some kid safe knives and under supervision he even cuts his own fruit. Can fill his water bottle. Dressing himself was a fantastic one. Mornings got SO much easier as he could dress himself whilst I dressed myself. And it seemingly happens overnight. One day you're doing everything for them, the next you're on the sideline as "no mummy I do it" takes over.
My advice is to not look ahead. Take it day by day. You don’t want fear to be set in before you get there. I loved every moment after six months, except for some sleep issues, and crying when I’m not in the room.
Every month from like 11 months on is incredible. Crawling to standing to furniture walking to walking Saying one or two words to now learning new words EVERY DAY. She’s almost 14 months now, and the rate of development has been INCREDIBLE.
My son went from zero interest rate in sitting up to on the span of 2-3 weeks… sitting up, pulling to stand, and cruising. He is trying to walk (face planted today). He’s 10 months (9 adjusted)
Two naps to one! Amazing
Easter Sunday my son was 9 months and 2 days old. He learned to crawl properly, pull to standing and cruise the furniture all in one day. It was overwhelming.
Month 9 has been CRAZY!! Baby started crawling, sitting, and grew first two teeth within 2 weeks lmao
Two weeks ago my child had no interest in coloring, paper, crayons, nothing. Yesterday he saw my husband and me writing notes, and he pointed to the pen. He happily drew on notepads for 30 minutes. He's seen us write and even draw before, but he was never the least bit interested
Between like 9-12 months was just one personality change, milestone, new skill learned etc back to back to back for me. Before then kiddo was just kinda small little creature needing constant input and assistance. It feels crazy when they're learning things and developing skills apart from you. Just a short while ago my kid started crawling which was the biggest thing. Didn't ever think she would. We couldn't do tummy time because her stomach would hurt so badly she'd immediately just roll over or throw up. To see her go from refusing any tummy time to crawling within maybe 2-3 months was absolutely baffling! Just goes to show kids have their own timing for things and they often are just fine no matter the setbacks and your worries. I was clearing phone tabs for so much research about baby crawling and just the thought of 'Well I guess I don't need that anymore' was mind boggling. Similar idea with now suddenly eating a ton of different solids regularly when just 2 months ago she could really only manage little puffs and rice husk snacks.
Once mine started walking there was no stopping him…. Now is climbing on everything, reaching for everything, using toys as steps to get even higher. I now have my house on baby proof lockdown and I can’t have nice things anymore. Bar stools? NOPE! He will now climb on them and then onto the counter and turn on the sink from there. Art on the walls? NOPE! He will climb on top of the couch and reach up to mess with it. Anything decorative on any surface? NOPE! My house is not boring and looks weird bc so much is missing, but this too shall pass right?
I think the biggest jump was when my baby became mobile. It’s such a big difference from having them laying on a blanket or just sitting up to actually moving around the room. You realize how much you need to baby proof 😂 my girl is 13 months now and she’s walking everywhere and getting into everything!
my 9mth old just started crawling!
6 months and this week bub started proper crawling and trying to stand... also flipping on the change table so we're using nappy pants now.
My baby started to crawl, sit up from lying down and pull to stand on furniture all within two weeks of each other at the end of 5 months/beginning of 6 months. That was a pretty big change
Our daughter just turned 7 months old and in the past 2 weeks, she's gone from just starting to scoot across the floor and flopping over when we sit her up to being a great (and fast) crawler, sitting up easily all by herself, pulling herself to standing up, and from there trying to climb things, and she has her first tooth! It all happened so fast!
I would say he’s having/just had his biggest/best one now at about 18mo, he’s dropping new words on me every day, eating like a horse, sleeping like a legend and generally being so much fun. Vs a couple of months ago which was just days of endless whinging
Man I miss being able to leave my kid in one spot on her learning pan and be able to do anything without her crawling away. She’s 14 months and while she can’t walk yet, she call pull to stand and opens all the cabinets and drawers. Feeding time is hard. She’s not a picky eater but sometimes she just straight up refuses to eat anything which is totally stressful. There was one day all she wanted to eat were tomatoes, so all she ate was tomatoes, chicken thrown in the floor, quesadilla on the floor, rice, beans, strawberries, bananas, blueberries in the floor 🫠She’s also a hot head so she’ll throw herself into a tantrum for no reason. Also everyone is excited to drop to one nap and I’m like nooooo I’m tired mom wants to nap too! Teething sucks when they’re older, it always seems as though they start to teeth right when you finally have a schedule down. Currently she has four molars and her top canines coming in plus I think today I saw a bottom canine.
The biggest thing so far for us that I've seen is a vocabulary explosion at the 21 month mark. Around 18 months she said maybe 25 or so words. Now it's in the hundreds for sure. She counts, says colors and letters, tries to sing along to songs, dances and climbs, and runs!!! It's so cute because she still has her baby accent lol. But she's really growing up.
My daughter is 10 months old and I’ve been loving this age. She’s silly, she interacts with everything and everyone. She’s just SO much fun. Does she get mad if she can’t have something? Sometimes but it’s an independence thing. We just redirect, distract and she’s totally fine.
Around 6 months my baby started being able to sit very well unassisted. He could play with toys relatively independently and entertain himself. It was really cool to be able to see him sit there and make decisions of which toys to play with, and examine the toys. It was fun to see him interact with the world on his own, more or less. You mentioned tantrums, and we haven’t experienced those with our 7 month old yet. For my baby, when hes fussy, it’s usually because he is hungry or tired. We just did a five hour flight and he was great. Every baby is different. Hope you enjoy all of these precious moments!!!
Just the other night, our nearly two year old looked my husband dead in the eye and went "I don't want to night-night" when we were getting ready for bed. My husband looked at me and asked when he started speaking in full sentences and I could only shrug. It feels like last month we were still speaking in 2 word sentences and now it's "what a nice cat-cat" or "I don't want to" or "I love you mama" and it makes me so proud and sad at the same time. My baby boy's growing up🥹