Category: Nem Nem Niamh

This morning I was at our main computer transferring stuff to set up my new writer’s validation toy, and I hear from behind me and to the left –

“Hiiiiii.”

– in a small but confident voice so mild and sweet it is disarming, and doubly so because as I turn to see the source of the sound, there is Nem-nem, sitting up on the bed with Tia’s assistance, smiling affectionately at me.

She will slay the young men when she is a young woman.

Mago did the same thing as an infant. He also did her greeting yell of sorts. I wish I remembered the sound now, but I’m glad I wrote down that he made it – at that entry he was a month and a half old. He was about 4 months old when I wrote down he’d said “Hiiii.” I’m still in denial of the little tiny baby not being around, and maybe I always will be, but how I enjoy his company now, and I’m sure that will continue. Nem-nem a.k.a. Nemmy a.k.a. Milkbarf a.k.a. McCuddles is about 5 months now. I also wrote down Mago saying “Hiiii” to mama and dada by their proper names at 1 year.

Mago woke up twice early in the morning to go to the bathroom and I put him back to bed both times, informing him it was still “sleepy time”. Shortly after Nem-nem’s greeting this morning, we heard Mago in his room through our monitor, revising one of these encounters:

“No, it’s night time.”
“No it isn’t, it’s morning time.”
“Oh, okay.”

Gotta have the happy ending.

Mago has this word he’s come up with, which he will use as an exclamation meaning nothing other than that “I am exclaiming this word.” He seems to have transformed it into a noun though, or we just never knew it was. .. seems like it might be used as a verb too, though I’m foggy on that.

This word is “Paamp!”

I was teaching him to pray at bed time one night, kneeling with him at the head of his bed:

Me: What do you want to say thank you for?
Mago: Thank you far PAamp.. .. and thank you for kaank.
Me: .. Thank you for silly words?
Mago: And thank you for baamp.

Now probably many weeks ago I took him for a morning walk, carrying him wrapped up in blankets (I don’t believe it was yet very cold – just starting to get cold). I told him some story I made up and don’t remember, and asked him if he wanted to tell me a story. He did, and at each turn of it I prompted him with “Then what?” –

Mago: Once there was a little Paamp. And there was a big lion. And the lion ate the little Paamp. And the Paamp died. And the lion hung him up on a tree. And the lion hung him up on a hanger.

I’d forgotten all about this for a week or so until at bed time one evening he spontaneously relayed exactly the same story, without variation, to Tia. This called for a line from this Love and Logic audiobook series that I’ve learned.

Me: I noticed you like to tell stories.

This audiobook said that kids will light up when you notice they like doing something, because it brings awareness to themselves that in fact they do like something, and gives them a place to consciously choose whether to pursue that. Mago did light up – his eyes grew wide and his face almost frantic with eagerness. He quickly retold and elaborated on the story, listing everything he could see in the closet in his room.

Mago: Once there was a little Paamp. And there was a big lion. And the lion ate the little Paamp. And the Paamp died. And the lion hung him up on a tree. And the lion hung him up on a hanger. And the lion hung him up on a clothes. And the lion hung him up on a shelf. And the lion hung him up on a box..

I don’t remember everywhere he went with it.

A few weeks ago he climbed up on the table while I was getting him dinner alone (Tia was probably getting Nem-nem to sleep). I asked him to get down; he ignored me. I headed into the room to take him off the table and set him on a chair for time out, and let him know it’s sad – don’t warn, just set the limit once and then take action, this audiobook says (I want to emphasize, if this isn’t obvious by now, that I find the advice of this audiobook very useful – I think it is a must read and can save so many headaches and needless pain for parents and kids – I’m only starting to learn it.) He knew when he saw me coming that I wasn’t going to let him push this limit (he’s not always so compliant – I’m still figuring out how to lovingly enforce limits), so he hastily got down. I let off – he’s going to comply – and I went back into the kitchen to keep fixing his meal. I think he asked me if he was in time out, and I think I replied no, but maybe I should put him in time out for not listening when I first asked him to get off the table. He came in to the room with a very conscious, deliberate scowl, looking up at me.

Mago: But you can’t put me in time out. Because I’m angry.

At this I just laughed – what else can I do? This is hilarious. I told him maybe he needs a time out anyway if he’s angry at me, but by this time he was laughing too, and very deliberately scowling at me even though he no longer felt any trace of the only trace of anger he had been mostly mocking up anyway (though I think some of it was genuine) – so I figured he didn’t need any time out at all.

Here are some things from the past while, that I’ve been writing down.

Tia: (to Nem-Nem, while they play peek-a-boo) You’re going to be Superwoman in just three years. You’ll be flying around doing mathematics.

Tia made a red cape and eye mask costume for Mago (just for play, she says, not Halloween). He stood on our bed one morning to show it off.

Mago: I’m a bad guy! .. wait, I have to put down my sipee cup.

..

(Attempting over and over to place a star shape in a wooden puzzle, *sighs*) Too work.

..

(At random during the day) This is my treasure-hunting thumb.

Tia says he made that last up partly from a Blue’s Clues episode.

He calls very thickly frosted [me: disgusting!] cookies “Cookies on each tuver” (Cookies on each other) because it looks to him like two stacked cookies.

Tia has introduced me to Love and Logic (this sentence may be taken out of context), an audio program delineating so much wisdom on child rearing. Incidentally, what I have tried of it is positive and works and I’ll be listening to the whole thing. She checks these out from the Parent Education Resource Center at the Orem Library. The cover of the set for early childhood has a cartoon of an exhausted, bedraggled woman with two infants in tow. The library case for it opened and spilled the CD case out one day, and Mago looked at it.

Mago: Mama, is that ‘care for me’?,

A few days ago:

Mago: Daddy?
Me: Yes.
Mago: Feed to me.
Me: Feed to you? Do you mean read to you?
Mago: Read to me. .. (smiles) Feed and read!

Nem-nem beams at us and at people all the time. When she first sees me in the morning or coming home from work and I smile at her broadly (as I can only help myself to do with a baby who is my daughter), she beams and coyly tucks her head down and her arms up to her chest. Things she says:

Ppphhhhbt! Pppbbbbhht! Heh-pubbbbbppt!

Gggh!

Hoo!

(Laughing) Heh.

Hii.

Eeh!

Eeeyoo!

Nem-nem is also frequently rolling from her back to her side and tummy, less often from her tummy to her back, and sometimes does a swimming motion on her tummy, trying to start to crawl.

Mago loves My Neighbor Totoro. I watched it with him. This film is one of my favorites. It cracks me up when Totoro roars, and I’m wowed by the magic he uses to grow forests. The music is also fantastic – listening to it again, I realize it’s actually New Age – but, forgive me, New Age with soul, even the most infamous music styles can have that! – and I don’t mean as in “soul music”, just.. not rambling fluff.. however it can get a bit weird. Mago mistakes the little girl in the film for a boy (I think for wanting to identify).

Mago: “He followed him into the forest. Now the hole where he went is gone. There’s no Totoro now.” .. (whispers, when Totoro and the children are sitting on top of the giant tree playing flutes at night) “I saw Totoro!” .. “Totoro is a bear, and he has a littler bear and a littler, and he has big eyes, and a little tiny mouth.” (puckers his lips small).

These are some other things he said recently –

After I ran up a ladder and down a slide with him many times at his cousins’ house in Arizona:

Me: “I’m pooped.”
Mago: “Are you trained?”

At bed time as Mago built a fort out of pillows and Tia sat on his bed reading to Nem-nem:

Mago: (to Tia) “Say: look, big brother is building a house!”
Tia: “Look, big brother is building a house!”
Mago: “Is that brilliant?”

He talks to Tia’s feet like little friends when she relaxes with them raised. She named one of them footy-foot. Recently when she was relaxing he came to one of her feet.

Mago: (to her left foot, hugging it) “I love you, footy-foot.”
(then to her right foot, hugging it) “I love you, friend.”
(takes both feet and hugs them) “I love you, friends.”
(lets go of both feet) “Did you see that, mama? It was a team hug.”

Yesterday, with me:

Mago: “Say, ‘what is it?'”
Me: “What is it?”
Mago: (flaps his lips)
Me (I laugh)
Mago: “Say, ‘what is it?'”
Me: “What is it?”
Mago: (flaps his lips..)

We decided Nem-nem looks like a little marsupial or possum. A few days after we did her aunt decided the same thing – dubbing her “Meinschen” (sp? Correct word?), little mouse.

Seven days ago Nem-nem rolled over from her tummy onto her back. Now she does this at tummy-time: she doesn’t enjoy being on her tummy, and grunts, lifts her head up high, pushes and wrestles with her arms until she flops over onto her back.

A week or so ago Tia reported that Nem-nem was gazing at a photographic portrait on the kitchen wall of her family, all the new step-siblings and everyone’s children. Tia said to her “That’s your family!” and Nem-nem smiled. Tia thought this was coincidence but later when Nem-nem was looking at it again, she repeated to her “That’s your family!” and again Nem-nem smiled.

Last evening Mago went down for bed while playing with a toy drill as an evasion tactic, Tia persuading him that play time was over and he has to put the drill away, which he resisted.

Tia: “Say bye-bye to the drill.”
Mago: (Crying) “Goodbye, drill! I love you!”
Tia: (Laughs) “That’s kinda funny.”
Mago: (Cries harder)

Tia then tickled him with the drill and he laughed and felt better.

The latest thing I’ve found that makes Mago laugh, and which he’s usually been requesting the moment I come home from work, is to murmur in an almost whispering, sort of high nerdy voice in his ear “Ba-duba-da buh? Be-de-bee-da-baa-duh? Is it-a-my-baby? Is it-a-ma-baby?” Or again to murmur in a low growl while approaching his tummy with my head saying: “Wha’d da baby do? .. wha’d da baby doo? ..wha’d da baby doooo? HE GOT TICKLED!” – and burrow my head hard into his tummy.

Tia, the other day, talking about Nem-nem:

(alarm) “Whooooooooa! Her eyes are going up and in different directions. .. now she’s smiling. .. now she’s drooling milk.”

Today I was holding her and saying “Aaaaah?” while she did her darndest to imitate it and mostly grunted, smiling between attempts, and at one point she got her lips into the same shape for the sound, and uttered a short “Aaah”. I said “Yeah!” and she appeared pleased. She did the same thing for “Oh”, only never managing the sound.

I discovered a game with Mago recently, where if I make him laugh, I squeeze him hard in a panicked way, and in a desperate voice say “No I’m sorry!” – as if to say “I didn’t mean to make you laugh!” or “I said I’m sorry, please stop laughing!” – that kind of thing – which makes him laugh harder, which is a prompt for me to say it again, which makes him laugh again..

The hilarity lasted several days for him. Seems to have worn off some now, but he still tells me: “Say I’m sorry.”

Still meaning to post video of her at birth, and we’ve taken no new pictures of her because Tia’s camera has been in the shop; they said they’d call by now and haven’t 🙁