Dorian's World

It's been awhile since I posted pictures of Dorian's "things." I bought some lovely African things for his room in London at Camden Market. We bought a lot of new items for him at the White Elephant Sale last month. You may recall we bought most of our baby items there last year. It's this awesome sale the Oakland Museum puts on every year - incredible secondhand items for dirt cheap. This year's finds for Dorian included:

wooden table & chair
easle/chalkboard
legos
art supplies
magnets for the fridge
wooden ABC tool & math tool
books, lots of books
potty training toilet (we plan to train him in May when James returns from tour, right before I hopefully start school and when Dori is 18 months old)

We moved his room around when we returned from England. We broke down the crib and he now sleeps on the mattress on the floor. We put up the tent set his Nanna and Granta bought him for Christmas. We made sure everything was at this level. The whole room is completely safe for him. Actually, the whole house is. We were inspired by our friends Kate and Nathalie who did the same for their children (it's the Montessori way), so we've pretty much had it completely safe for him since he started crawling around.

We have started "locking" him in his room for naps and nighttime (only done this at night tonight). We're trying to get him to fall asleep on his own in his room. He now naps for 3 hours in his room! He sometimes plays a bit first, and turns his music machine on and off quite frequently. We're going to buy him his own little CD/radio player soon so he can learn how to use a real one. He loves music so much. He does cry himself to sleep quite often, but he can do it. Today for his nap, he fell asleep curled up in a ball by the door. It was very sweet. But tonight, he managed to get himself into his bed! He cried for almost an hour and was at the door for much of that hour, but he got into bed to sleep!!! He is getting so much better at sleeping! We're going to be there really soon. And his development has been amazing the past month. He is so grown-up.

Have a look at his world (the tidiness is not just me - he does put his books, crayons and blocks away and we're working on the rest).










A trip around his room...