Monday, May 17, 2010

18 months


I can't believe it, but the dink is already 18 months old. I took him in to the doctor for his well visit, and while the doctor was asking me all of his milestone questions like Does he know five of his body parts? and Does he mimic things that you do?, I was marveling that this time a year ago, we were concerned with "Does he still spit up a lot?" and "Can he crawl?"

According to the doctor, the dink should be starting to speak in sentences now, like "Mommy go." I nodded along politely as the doctor explained that I am 100% responsible for the way he learns to talk, and then carefully mentioned that, although the dink does say about 30-40 words, he has never spoken in such complex language as "Mommy go." What I didn't have the heart to tell the doctor is that sometimes, actually often, he still refers to me as "Da" instead of "mommy." Or maybe I just didn't want to admit it out loud--that my son has more interest in properly naming his blocks, his pants, his shoes and socks, and his juice more than he cares to learn his mother's name.

But the good news is that when he does learn a new word these days, he's not afraid to say it over and over again to make sure he commits it to memory. This evening, while we watched his bubble bath water go down the drain, he pointed to the remaining bubbles in the tub with his two little pointer fingers and said "bye-bye bubbles" no less than 45 times in a row.

Probably the dink doesn't really have a need to use sentences to communicate just yet, since I usually interpret what he wants before he has a chance to speak up. But when the kid is reaching up to the doorknob and trying to turn it with all his might, and he looks back at me and says "uh, uh"...who has time to wait for him to explain that he wants me to open the door for him? We don't have that kind of time in our life. But I guess that's probably the wrong approach. At least it's a family approach, though, shared by the dink even (photo above). Why sit around trying to explain to someone at the crawfish boil that you would please like more Doritos when you can just march on over there and get them for your darn self?

Monday, May 10, 2010

Learning

I can hardly keep up with the dink lately. Every day he demonstrates to me something that he knows that I am 90% confident I did not teach him. I don't know if that means that I am slacking as a parent in my daily instructionals ("you have peas, tomatoes, rice, and chicken for dinner")...or if I'm really just as oblivious as my loving husband always says I am to what's going on around me...

Although I try to refrain from gagging or saying "yucky" every time I change a poopy diaper, I guess I've said poo-poo at just the right time enough for the dink to finally make the connection. Although he doesn't need to announce when he's pooping because it's written all over the awkward grimace on his face, he now grabs the front of his diaper and says "pah-poo" with great seriousness. And the other day, J told me that he had to get down on all fours to retrieve something that the dink had thrown under the bed, and when his butt was up in the air, the dink came over and patted his daddy's lower back and said "night-night."

There are still some things he does that must be the result of original thinking because I know that I would never, ever teach my son to do them. Like shoving handfuls of catfood in his mouth when he sees me coming at him to take it away, or spending large chunks of time in the bathtub trying to carefully place a Mardi Gras cup over all of his genitalia. Or laughing hysterically every time I say the word "rough." I hope he never stops showing me all of the things he's learned each day.