The Daily Hailey

My boy is such a smarty-pants.

I was never concerned about trying to teach him a whole ton of stuff his first year. He should be playing!!! Right? Right. He has picked up a few things on his own though. Most of the day, he babbles “dadadada,” like pretty much every other baby. But if I enter a room and catch him off guard, or if he’s in his high chair and I’m getting his food, he babbles “mamamama.” So I think he’s starting to understand that, which I find really exciting! Also, a couple of months ago already, he picked up high fiving. Well, low fiving really, but still. Anyone who knows Dekker knows that he likes to pat/hit most anything thats nearby. I think thats where it started. When he would hit our hands, we would say “Oh, Dekker, are you giving a high five?” It was sort of an unconscious effort, but when we asked him for a high five and he gave it, we were thrilled!

The same thing happened with clapping. We learned how to clap by himself, but as soon as we would ask him for it, or clap along with him, he would stop. So we decided not to push it at all and just celebrated every time he clapped . Then one day, while he was playing on the floor, I just said to him “Dekker, can you clap?” BIG smile and lots of clapping! I was so excited, I called Brady right away. Those of you who are parents can understand celebrating silly little things 🙂

After all of this had happened, I made the mistake of reading something online that said how “developed” my son should be in certain areas. Apparently he was supposed to be waving at ten months. I laughed that off right away, thinking that clearly my son was developed fine, and just because he hadn’t learned to wave didn’t mean he hadn’t learned other things. Right? I mean, how often do we leave him, and wave goodbye to him? Not often! Either way, I forgot about it. For a few days.

Everywhere we go, Dekker is very popular. You’ll know this if you’ve ever ran errands with us, or went on a road trip. He seems to really charm pretty much everyone. I’m always so proud of him. However, people are starting to wave bye-bye to him, expecting a response, and more often than not, that just gets a deadpan stare from him. So I’ve been thinking he needs to learn to wave.

About a week ago, we had some family out, and we all started waving at Dekker when he would go to bed. Just a couple days of that, but he was always really happy to have a crowd waving at him. Over the last few days, I’ve been waving at him when Brady carries him off to bed at night. Its taken convincing, but already a couple of days ago, he’s been waving at me at nighttime!!! He learned how to wave in less than a week! He’s getting way to smart. I’m not sure I’m ready for this!

I only have one picture of him clapping, but you can’t really tell. He’s going in for a clap anyway. Just true me ok? These events are hard to capture on camera.