And we are here! End of the first year of the baby’s life. Looking at it in retrospective it really did fly by. Many challenges came, many we have overcome and many are still here. There were many stressful moments but overall, it was a joyful year, full of new discoveries every day. And more and more we hear from experienced parents: “Enjoy while they are little because it will pass quickly and you will miss it.”

Article Content

1. Little Explorer – “I will point, you will follow”
2. My new favorite things
3. Listen what I say
3. Fear of the bath – gone!

We will talk here about the twelfth month of the baby’s life, and if you’re interested in some earlier month, we have covered all! You can find it in the first year of a child’s life section. If you’re just beginning your parenting role, or just waiting for the new family member, you can start with the first month of newborn’s life.

Little Explorer – “I will point, you will follow”

If someone would ask us “what is the most dreaded thing in the twelfth month of baby’s life” we would say: “Bad weather”. No, seriously. That is the worst thing that could happen. This month we became really interested in our surroundings and learned how to get what we want by pointing the finger at it. And with the nicer weather, winter nearing its end and longer days, we explore the outside world a lot!

The little finger is just pointing! This tree, this rock, this car, this… You get the picture. And we already mentioned how our baby doesn’t like to sit in wheels so we use a baby carrier. She just points at her object of interest and we must go there so she can touch it. That practically means that we must come near every second tree we see. And that is a feat when you’re walking through a park!

That is a great thing because we can use it also to our advantage for learning. First, it provides many new sensory experiences. Mostly tactile because we are touching all kind of objects with different textures (we still avoid touching trash cans although we barely manage it). And we talk already a lot about the importance of sensory stimulation in sensorimotor activities for children article. Second, it gives us the opportunity to learn the names of all those objects we are touching. Coming to an object, we say the name of that object. And later we can ask a baby to show that object. You will probably be surprised how baby already learned a lot and how little actually it takes to learn the names in our surroundings.

So back to the weather. Being outside is the best thing for our baby now. She is so focused and calm, exploring and enjoying. And when we can’t go out it can be a bit… challenging. She wants to go, points finger at the baby carrier, door, window but still can’t understand why we are not going. And the house is boring. We did already research every nook and cranny of the house so nothing new here.

My new favorite things

As we mentioned, love of the great outdoors is the thing this month. So many interesting objects to touch and see! And now that she knows how to point, she shows what interest her quite clearly. And the most interesting thing currently is… dog!

On encountering dog of any shape and size, she will excitedly announce Vauvau! (more on that later) and point in that direction. And of course, we will follow. We even let her pet some of the friendly dogs in our neighborhood and she loves it. Other living things are also pretty interesting – crows, pigeons, cats, anything goes.

But this month, she started to show special interest in children. Faces are some of the first things newborn percieves, but until now she didn’t discriminate agewise. Now, you can see a clear interest for other babies and children. She will watch them intently, point at them and try to interact if they come close. Around this time, parallel play emerges. Babies will like to play in close vicinity to one another, but mostly doing their own thing. Still, the company makes everything more fun. So it’s time to make some friends at a playground.

There is also a newfound interest in books and by that, we mean reading, not eating them. We bought tons of books already and she is even a proud member of the library, but until this month books were just not that interesting. I mean, they were good for chewing, but little else. But now things have changed! There is a whole new world inside those covers. Filled with dogs and trees and gruffalos – all the things we know and love. Especially interesting are books with little flaps, she loves to pull them up and reveal what’s under. It never gets old.

Listen what I say

So about Vauvau – that’s actually her first word! Yes, our little baby started to talk. Monumental milestone. She babbled a lot and for a long time, she produced some combinations of syllables that sounded like words. All those accidental mamas and dadas, and wondering if that is intentional. But no, you’ll know the real deal when it comes.

You can see a spark of understanding in her eyes and that excitement in connecting the word with the object. That’s VAUVAU! To be fair, everything moving is vauvau now, but real dogs get a specific high-pitch super excited tone. Of course, generalization is one of the first learning mechanisms. All animals are dogs, all round stuff is balls. Discrimination comes later.

But that’s not all. Mama and dada are also in her vocabulary now. Tada! Seems that she is in some super verbal period now, because she is developing language at a rapid speed. We tested her with pictures and yes, she recognizes mama and dada on them. It makes for a great game – “Who is this?”. It could be a fun way to learn a family tree! Another fun game we play daily is “Where is…?” Where is the tree? Where is a monkey? Where is a banana? Comprehension of a language is always much better than the expression. She understands more than 20 words now, from animals and fruits to the body parts.

It’s always amazing to see how fast babies learn. They are in the sensitive period of language acquisition now and you can really see it. So much learning happens implicitly, we are frequently surprised when we find out how much she understands. But never underestimate the importance of a supportive environment. Reinforce that natural learning with lots of storytelling, songs, funny animal sounds, and general silliness.

Fear of the bath – gone!

Last month we had a little situation with bathing. Our little one suddenly started to fear the bath so we had a hard time doing the before sleep hygiene. You can read all about it in the eleventh month of the baby’s life article.

Good news is, it’s gone! The fear of the bath is gone! Not just that it’s gone, but she can’t wait to take a bath again. So how did it go? With a lot of patience and baby steps. In total, it took around one month from first screaming in tears to sitting in the bath.

At first, we didn’t push it. For a 2 and a half weeks we just roll with it. We did the bathing above the bathtub with one hand holding the baby and other hand rubbing her. It was… Let’s just say our muscles became bigger. And then we decided to use step by step approach: First, we were casually drumming on her bathtub while we were in the bathroom. That amused her. Then, we were drumming together on the bathtub because, of course, she wants to try too! After that came the bathing over the little bathtub. We were holding her as usual but the little bathtub was under her. We tried to put her down slowly but that was a no no! The closer she was to touching the bathtub, the more agitated she became.

And then we introduced, probably the most important part – interesting toys (if we can call the plastic dish a toy)! Before she had a book with her too, but this time we used a cup, ball, and bowls that were swimming beneath her. And naturally, looking at those toys, she wanted to reach them. Then she was standing in the bathtub for 2 days and on the third day she decided to sit in the bath and it was like she never had a problem with it.

And from that day, the little finger is showing the bathroom as soon as we finish dinner. But now, we first take 2 toys and toss them into the bath before going after them. Now we have an opposite problem – we are not that happy when we need to exit the bath.

So with this month, we officially finished (and survived) the first year of child life. We know every child is different and they will reach developmental milestones at a different time and not all that we described will be applied to every child. But we hope you got some useful tips or at least, see from the eyes of some other parents.

We will continue writing about the second year of the child life, but on a bimonthly basis. Not because we think there will be less drastic changes, but because as children get older we as parents also get more experienced so we doubt our role much less. And we hope we will “see” you again in two months and until then, happy parenting!

Subscribe to our Newsletter

If you’re searching for some great STEM Activities for Kids and Child development tips, you’re in the right place! Check the Categories below to find the right activity for you.