Category: Media

Here are some pictures of him.

The other day I took him outside in the morning (he frequently asks for this – “Ouside! Ouside!”) and said good morning to the trees, the grass, the sky, the mountains, the neighboring houses. He said “Morning bird” and pointed at the mountain – there was a bird far off, very small against the mountain. He and Tia spot birds I wouldn’t notice.

He believes there is a monkey living in a gap in the bushes in front of our house. He makes a monkey sound and says “Monkey” when we pass it. We think he heard a quail in there and believed it to be a monkey.

This morning he waked with kind of a whining cry and after a while I went to him. He lay on my shoulder and I comforted him, and after a while he somewhat emphatically and sullenly said “Bed!” – and leaned for the crib, which I put him in, and he went straight back to sleep.

In the first five photographs he is holding bubble soap.

Photos 06 through 10 are a.. I don’t know what to call it. Sport he invented the other day and Tia photographed it. Over a carpet he stands tall and abreast, head high, arms and legs arched out, then lurches back and down into a seated position as fast as he can, slamming his bum on the carpet. Very Olympian, from the photos. These crack me up. I don’t know what to call this sport. Diaper slamming.

The last three are of him “removing” his own nose, like Mr. Potato head, as his aunt showed him.

He also teeters on his toes on a ledge provided at the edge of a couch, holding onto the arm rest, says “Ooooooooo -” and then jumps back and onto his bum on the ground (to a pillow we provide). He takes us both by the hand and leads us up to this same ledge and waits for us to do the same.

He is very entertained by ring-around-the-rosy.

The first and last of these (the first being my absolute favorite picture of him – he’s signing “Light”) are of him at about 9 months, the rest are where he is now – 11 months and a week. His elven ears show clearly in the fifth and sixth photos. He was unhappy with the cold in several of these.

Yesterday he was standing alongside my desk as I was in bed reading, and still holding the desk, he stepped away from it, reaching toward the bed which was just out of reach. He began to move to make a free standing step to the bed, but then skillfully dropped down onto his bum. He then crawled to me and hoisted himself up beside the bed, and looking up at me with his friendly grin, said warmly:

“Hiiii daa-daaa.”

I said: “Hi! Good job, you just spoke a sentence.” – and he got down and crawled away.

So there was his first sentence and almost his first step. He’s doing to me what I taught him to do to mom – I’ve frequently taken him to Tia in the morning, waved his little arm at her as he smiles, and said “Hii ma-ma.”

Today while I was in the shower he pushed on the bathroom door to get in and again said “Hii da-da.”

Yesterday I carried him for a walk and we passed a woman sitting on a bench at the mouth of Rock Canyon. He called accross the street to her “Da-da! Da-da!” – so I guess that also means “Friendly grown up.”

The day before yesterday, outside, he looked at our car and went “vvvvrrrrmmmm” and waved, as in waving me goodbye in the morning off to work as he often does.

The day before that he crawled accross the wooden floor in the basement where I lay on a sofa thingie (the white one for Tia’s photography), hoisted himself up to me, took my face and wrapped his mouth around my cheek, and slowly bit down.. HARD. I said “Ouch!” and lifted his teeth off, and said “No, kiss gentle.”

His word, sound, and sign vocabulary has been expanding a lot, and here’s his complete (so far as we know or remember) vocabulary with a few ones we’d left out. I don’t know whether I’ll keep tracking these if he’s starting at sentences now.. isn’t he too young to leave babyhood?

Words: Bird (buh), book (booh), dip, duck (a sharply stopped “duu”), boo (like peek-a-boo), bye (ba), doll (da), snowman (mo-man), bear (beh), hi. He had me get a painting of Jesus off the wall and hold it in front of him. He smiled at the portrait and I said “That’s Jesus. Jesus.” He imitated: “Che-seh.” Noted previously: Book, ball, ma-ma da-da, grampa (ba-pa), poop (bpoo-bpoo), bop, outside (da), this (dis/deesz), that (dat), dog (da), banana (nana), cheerios (dcheess), SPIDER MAN (bai-man!), dam (?).

Sounds: Pig (throat cluck), lamb (a baaaa without vibrato), flower/star/flare shape (a sharp nasal exhale which is a mistaken sniff), horse or zebra (a tongue clack or a niegh – he’s been doing that for months and I think we didn’t mention it; he also does this for a deer), cow (booo). Noted previously: Lion (gutteral French RRRR), elephant (also ASL sign), cat, monkey (a chimpanzee haa-haa-haa), dog (wfff!) bear/gorrilla/aligator/monster (rhaspy Rrrah! – or also for bear just a chest grunt), car (BVVVVVBBVVV)

Signs: music, light, milk, dog, elephant, baby, bed, bye-bye, pointing.

Words he understands: dance (he’ll dance), kiss (he’ll kiss you, gently or sometimes as I’ve noted with a hard bite), upstairs, walk, brush your teeth, bath.

[Here’s an update of some I missed. Also the bird he signed since posting this was a new sign for him.]

It’s apparent in these he’s having a hard time with naps, poor guy.

He has started saying and trying to say many words. His favorite, which he utters just for the phonetic pleasure, is “Bop” over and over. .. I dont remember the many words this moment – most of them are animals. He’ll let you know about a dirty diaper though, with “pboop-pboop.”

I couldn’t decide which pictures to post, so they’re ALL here. Lately, he get’s VERY excited when he sees giant toys like big stuffed animals and blow-up Christmas lawn ornaments. He gives short bursts of high-pitched screams to vent his joy.

[This is posted long after its written date and inserted here]

Following is something I wrote for an essay contest my dad sent out to his children. The prize for it was his white Chevy Blazer which he replaced with some newer and hence dandier SUV, a KIA Sorento (I think). You read that right. The whole premise of writing this, then, was completely mad. But I played a harp to the madness.

This piece is mythology – fiction which is/should be true; I’ve made it true somewhat. It is accompanied by photographs of Mago which inspired it. He’s six months old in these. I add comments after.

We always stop to look at wildlife and impressive displays of nature. We go to wilder areas in our city to find these. But we also go far beyond our city into wild and rugged terrain.

My boy especially likes ducks. He would try to eat any duck alive if he could get one in hand, and I wonder if they would know it’s because he loves them. Instead he claws at the upholstery of our Chevy Blazer and eats the little bits of it he digs out. He’s eaten grass, dirt, twigs and bugs from all of the wilderness we’ve explored. We’ve seen snakes, lizards, all kinds of birds, marsupials, jack rabbits, goats, sheep, deer, mustangs, coyotes, and moose.

If there’s not room anywhere else, I cram people into the trailer with the horses. They can get injured back there when the horses kick out of nervousness or when we take a bad turn, but that doesn’t always happen. On the horses we ride much more quickly into remote, wild places. Everything we take traveling has been a present to us – our horses, our blazer, our camp gear, our hiking and navigating equipment. Life is unfair to everyone except me.

This made my dad weepy and several commented that they loved it. Unfortunately it didn’t win the contest – I was informed that it contributed to world literature, but that my brother’s far more succinct, to the point, and amusing entry won. His was two sentences: “Ahem. White boy, gimme dat car dammit!”