Ussins

Tia reports that one recent day he came to her, stared intently into her eyes, and said his own name, emphatically. Twice.

At another time (another day?), he came to her doe-eyed, looked into her eyes dreamily, and wistfully said “Mommy.” And then took her face in his hands. And clawed. Into her cheeks. Fiercly.

He used to bite affectionately as a small infant. Now approaching toddler size, and with many more teeth (including molars, but that doesn’t factor into what I’m relating), he still does this. He bites HARD with those little perfect incisors. Unlearning that, and to simply kiss, has been very hard but he’s doing it well.

He’s kinda a little actor. He does two faces on purpose at least, happy and angry; for the latter he squints his face and curls his lips into an angry face, and holds out his arms and clenches his fists and shakes both – well his whole body really. He does this on command. This busted up his aunt when she saw it. For the former he does a cheesy little deliberate squinted face and grin and says “happy.”

Oh man, I really should get videos of those.

This evening he took a red marker and drew stigmata on the top of his hands and inside of his palms (yes, both sides of both), and also mine. Of course he doesn’t know that’s what they are. But it made me think.

I’m somewhat embarrased to mention to people, who ask, that he really knows and says A LOT of words. Unusually very many much. More than 170. Tia wrote a list. She keeps adding to it. Apparently 20 words is a lot for kids his age. So that’s like, more than eight times more. I think it’s signing and reading a lot that does it.

And he’ll understand most of any basic request or communication you make. Where did my infant go? – but he is still WILD. Today Tia was playing tug-of-war with him, with a yarn (I played this a few weeks ago in the backyard with him myself). He has a rollicking belly laugh if you play that he pulled you down. And he just babbles and tumbles and giggles and dances and is WILD. He is just as free and boundless with his enthusiasms as he was with the gods, nothing was filtered out. That’s the only way I can think of it.

He imitates phrases and words he doesn’t know the meaning of, very well, all the time. But often, when he isn’t just babbling either real or apparent nonsense – and by “apparent” I mean it could have some other than purely phonetic meaning which we simply don’t know (maybe all baby talk has such meanings?) – often he does know what he’s saying.

The other day he was holding some Barbie dolls together, and said “Help? Hug?”

He’ll say very briskly, in transition, “Okay” – and with the same briskness if he’s hurt or has a spill he’ll say “Oops – sorry”.

Sometimes he’ll withhold objects from mommy and coach her to say “Please?” if she forgets to.

He remembers objects in places he has seldom or only once been, and calls for them before he sees them on returning.

He also recently came to me sleeping in, and from the side of the bed tugged at my sleeve and said “Pull? Pull?” – then trying to push me up – “Up? Up?” – and I got up and he took my finger in his hand and said “Hand? Hand?” – and led me out of the room to play.

And best of all if you ask me, he often exlaims, often when running to me -“Dad-dy dad-dy dad-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee!”

When I stopped at the nursery after church to pick up Mago, he had me pick him up, and after a while I handed him to Tia, when he suddenly puled “Daddy hold mee!” I think this may have meant, no keep holding me, but then he was so clingy he wouldn’t let go of Tia so I could meet his request.

I’m pretty happy about that – on top of his first sentence being “Hii da-da.”

He’s often joined together three words into utterances like “hat off dog” and the like, or signing “cold, you, hat” (outside you go, and put a hat on me).

This morning he declared it. I went to wipe a booger from his nose with a tissue and he said:

No dada.

Also, this afternoon my family had a barbecue at my brother-in-law’s. Many of us gathered in the basement to play video games (Super Smash Bros. on GameCube). As Mago watched the battle proceed on the projection screen, he said, in a low, raspy, demonic voice:

Diiie.

Tia insists I taught him this. I don’t remember it. I don’t doubt she’s right though. Or maybe an angel of darkness taught him. It didn’t get its wish if it did – it’s just amusing. It’s also specifically associated with video games. I took him upstairs and he said it less – but when I went downstairs to the game room and stepped in, he said it again.

Yesterday morning I put a baseball cap on him backwards and said “Hey dude!” – shaking my head to the side and snapping it back. He thought this was very funny and laughed every time I did it (like in this recording, noted this entry – sheesh, listening to that again I was almost torturing him and not tickling). He picked up the word right away and started doing the same thing, saying “Dude!” clearly with a jerk of his head to the side, waiting for me to either do it in turn or laugh.

Tia said he was doing it again later that day, but when she did it back the novelty had worn for him (as with other new amusements).

This was more than a week ago and I haven’t written it –

He choked on a bagel chip bite that got caught in his throught, blocking his airway off a great deal and it was hard for him to breathe. We used rescue techniques to get it out of him, and saved him. It was very sobering for me, and for him very frightening. We used a mix of techniques – if you’ve got an infant or kid, learn them. Here’s a page detailing some rescue techniques for choking, and breathing and heart arrest. He’s I suppose small for his age (percentile – funny, he used to be large for his age), and while he’s more than a year old I think the techniques for infants worked better for him; it’s not just age to factor but size also. The back blows face down with the head lower I think are what worked best – but it’s probably different each situation. I struck between his shoulder blades a little lower. He was having a vomit reflex to get the thing moved up his throught which didn’t seem to do it, but the back blows brought it all up with vomit. Apparently you’re supposed to mix this with turning the infant face-up and using small thrusts at the mid-sternum if back blows alone don’t do it.

We’d have been wiser to call for an ambulance at the same time we tried to get him out of it ourselves. I think it’s very lucky we knew how to handle it just from what minimal memory we had of infant first aid.