17-month milestones

Do you feel like I mostly write about two topics: sleep and language development? Yes, I am tired and therefore understandably obsessed with sleep, and I find Isaac's constant acquisition of new words particularly fascinating (today he said ladder for the first time), but perhaps I should make more of an effort to write about his many other facets. Here, then, to celebrate his 17-month birthday, are some of Izzy's recent milestones unrelated to my most common themes:

• Today he got his first cut. He was digging in a flower bed in our garden, and he scratched the back of his hand on some pointy object (probably a stick or a rose thorn). He's had a few minor scrapes before, but this one bled enough that it required antibiotic cream and a bandage. (It's his first bandage, too, besides the ones he's gotten after his vaccinations.) He showed the cut to me right away, not exactly crying but whimpering a little bit. Later, whenever he remembered the injury, he'd frown and point to the back of his hand with his index finger -- except most of the time he pointed to the wrong hand, so I think any lingering trauma is emotional rather than physical.

• Today Isaac successfully stepped off the edge of our raised patio. Just yesterday he still dropped to his knees (usually a good 18 inches shy of the edge -- his motto must be safety first), swung his feet around, and crawled down backwards. (He also crawled back up again afterwards.) Today he began to experiment with stepping on and off the edge -- he would squat, then put out one hand to support himself as he cautiously took one foot off the ground, then lowered it over the edge. After he'd done that about 15 times, he tried it without putting his hand down first, and it worked! I congratulated him, and I could tell that he was pleased with himself.
  

• Yesterday we had an errand to run at the vet's office, and I had Izzy stand on the big scale in the waiting room. With his shoes and clothes on, he weighs 24.6 pounds. I'm too lazy to convert that 0.6 pound into ounces, but if I round it off to eight ounces that means he's gained at least 13 ounces in the seven weeks since his last doctor's visit on December 19. No wonder he feels heavier.
  

P.S. Did you notice that I snuck language acquisition into this post anyway?