...when should I get worried enough to take him to the doc, as there's no mandatory 12month check where I am.
So my little boy is 12 months old and a few days, and I'm a bit worried about the way his development is tracking; if you gave me a list of milestones that I had to tick for his age he'd hit all of them, but it all seems so inconsistent - he seems to do something one day, and is then unable or unwilling to do the same thing the next day.
Overall, he's been crawling like a demon since 9months, and pulling up to stand since 9months and a day although he can only walk with his block trolley; babbling consonants since about 4months and in the last two weeks has been able to say 'DaddaDaddaDadda' when I'm around, 'Mammy' less regularly, and can sign for 'milk' consistently, as well as making clicking sounds with his tongue when he anticipates food.
He'll raise his arms to be picked up, and this morning fetched his own cup out of the cupboard and gave it to me to fill it because he was thirsty. He can stick two blocks of lego together and feed himself (inefficiently) with a spoon - although he'd prefer to offer it to us to eat. He's more likely to just go get something he wants than point to it though, although he pointed at his mum's privates when she was getting dressed this morning...
But here's the rub - when he was born he would avoid eye-contact at all costs after the first day, just was not interested in locking gazes at all. This resolved after maybe two and a half months, although I'd still describe his eye contact as 'fair' rather than good - although he seems better with strangers than me.
Secondly, the number of phases we've been through of him taking a week where he refuses to respond to his name, followed by a week of complete attention to our every word must be up to half a dozen now. He has become obsessed with clapping and then 'put it away' again on two or three occasions since he was six months old, and goes through similar phases with waving and so forth.
I know he understands words, and he generally responds to direction quite well, or at least appropriately (i.e, I'll ask him for a kiss, and he'll shake his head no, or turn it away before I even get close because he knows what's coming.) But again, whether he actually carries out the action prescribed ('give teddy a cuddle') or not seems completely random day to day.
Lastly (I promise) his emotional reaction to his mother (with whom he's spent every day of the last year with) is up and down - yesterday she arrived to pick him up from his third day at nursery and was blanked for ten minutes, whilst today apparently he had to be torn away from her screaming his little heart out.
So is he a normal, albeit independently minded little boy; or should we be more worried that his behaviour isn't on a more steady developmental trajectory... I have a nagging feeling that something's 'not quite right', you know?