Ussins

Trying to keep up with the lad..

I vacationed for a few days and came back and his voice was deeper and his features more developed. The morphing that takes place right before my eyes but I don’t see it unless I don’t.. amazing.

This morning I opened the door to look outside, he pointed outdoors and said “Da”, I suppose because he associates outdoors with me since I walk him occasionally, and when I closed the door he cried. He wouldn’t have staying inside (not that I necessarily wanted him to), so I took him for a walk – that made him happy again.

If you set him in front of a clip from LADY AND THE TRAMP of the doggie being introduced to a newborn babe in a crib (thanks to my sister-in-law for sending that clip), at the sight of the dog he squeals a high pitch of joy, says “Da! Da!.. ” repeatedly, and makes the sign for dog (patting his thigh as to beckon a dog). Unless you’re trying to videotape him doing this and he senses the performance pressure. I’ll make another attempt at taping this without pressure, just all candid-like..

Mom holds him above obstructions to look at me and he beams and giggles.

This past month or so he crawls up to the Spider Man Ride-On toy (a little push-car he can sit on – a Christmas find from a sibling), hoists himself up to stand alongside it, presses the button on the steering wheel to play the gingle: “SPIDER MAN, SPIDER MAN.. nothing can stop the amazing wall-crawler!” – smiles, and wiggles his knees and bum up and down in a dance. He does the same for the other steering wheel button which says “My spidey sense is tingling!” – and presses either over and over.

For the sound of a bear, gorrilla, aligator, or monster he’ll do a chest-growled but rhaspy “RRaah!” – so bear is both just a chest grunt and that.

He does a car sound: BVVVVVVBBBBVVV. He picked that up after just one demonstration from me.

He says dog (da) ball (ba), dada, mama, banana (nana), cheerios (dcheess) this (deez) that (dat), grandpa (bapa), SPIDER MAN (bai-man!), and dam, the last of which we properly don’t know what it applies to.. yeah, maybe it’s one of those first things they pick up from you and shouldn’t have.

He signs music, light, dog, elephant, baby, bed (rarely), and waves bye-bye. To sign music he’ll sometimes use one arm like conducting, and at other times hold both hands together and wiggle his arms abruptly back and forth and all around, with this open-eyed, concerted look on his face.. funny.

He’s been pointing for maybe a month. If you amuse him he might point at you and laugh. That’s rather culturally taboo isn’t it? I like it though.

He’s had four teeth in for some time.

Tia pulled me into his room while he was sleeping yesterday and indicated his crib. There in the dark, bunched up on his fours with his limbs curled under him, he slept on the breast of the Lioness.

He has learned to respond to many words in the past month — He’ll make the correct sounds for book, ball, Mamma, Dadda, and Grampa! [Alex’s inserted comment: for Grandpa, he’ll say in a sharp, short, urgent, agitated voice, “Hey!” No, there is no sound for book, Grandpa, or ball. But he tries to say the words]. He likes to make lion, elephant, cat, and monkey noises when you talk to him about those animals. His lion noise is a french gutteral RRRR, modeled after Alex’s Tigger impression. His stuffed lioness toy inspired this.

[Alex: He also makes these sounds when he sees depictions of these animals or stuffed animals. This morning I took him out and he saw a neighbor walking a dog. He flapped his arms and went “Da!” and started making something between a little and barking sound over and over again. – “Hmm! Hmm! Hmm! Hmm!”]

If I play the song I mentioned last entry, I get a hug. The hug lasts a while but ends too soon (most of them do), so I stop the song, start it over again, and I get another hug. I could do this over and over again.

Yesterday morning I played “I have a song” (one of me and Tia’s songs in the sense of “our song”), from the album Sesame Street: In Harmony and he lay his head on my shoulder, and I sang to him, and we danced.

This is heaven on earth.

---

I have song
I think it’s a song that’s about you
I have a song
I think it’s a song about somebody who
Can see a cloud go drifting by
Feel the very same as I

I have song
I think it’s a song that’s about you

I have a dream
I think it’s a dream maybe you have too
I have a dream
A wonderful dream about somebody who
I think would really like to know
The part of me I’m scared to show

I have a dream
I think it’s a dream maybe you have too

I have a hope
I think it’s a hope that I share with you
I have a hope
A wonderful hope about somebody who
Believes in love, believes in me
Believes in how good life can be

I have a hope
I think it’s a hope that I share with you

---

Tia recently told me he was “eating it up” as he and I were dancing cheek to cheek to “You’ll be in my Heart” (Phil Collins – the rock version), another of our songs.

In Harmony has a mix of very weird songs with great ones, and I recomment it. I don’t recommend the second album I linked, just the single from it.

Last entry I’d forgotten to say a few days before I was reading Good Morning P.B Bear to Mago. This has pictures of a large teddy bear/kid. In the middle of my reading Mago put out his little index finger and placed it on a teensy teddy bear, much smaller than the little boy bear, hiding in the image. I forgot that tiny bear hid in each image. Mago is smarter than me in some ways already.

I have a little bear I read a story of a little bear to and the little bear in the story has a little bear. The kids’ kids’ kid effect makes me think too soon of being a great-grandfather, let alone a grandfather.

Tia said two days ago that Mago was petting the lioness stuffed animal in his crib after he woke up, and that when she put him down for one nap he lay on his back, well awake and contended, and said “Ma-mu” and that was that.

He frequently tries to make the rolling “g” sound I sometimes make for a lion growl and it comes out a more breathy “hhhhhhhhh.”

Here are some audio files (plus some other ones) of him I recently said I’d post.

First here he is ooing and cooing I think a month or so ago.. at mabye 7 or 8 months old (~ 1 minute).

And here he is with me bearing zurbets, and growling and grunting back and forth with me (~ 2.5 minutes). In one part you can hear him make a very low repeated chest grunt in a duet with me. This and the following are all at 9 months old –

Singing (~ 2 minutes), bouncing (~ 1.5 minutes), and exhuberantly bearing my tickling (~ 1 minute).

He has four front teeth – two top and bottom. He has had the extra two since.. two weeks or so? We thought just a third was coming in and the fourth came really fast.

Yesterday he bit my nose and cheek affectionately. When he wakes up sometimes he’ll go for the stuffed animals just out of reach on the shelf beside his crib (we’re going to try to get them in reach) – recently he was pulling at a stuffed frog between the bars, clacking it’s hard plastic eyeball against the crib repeatedly.

He called for me today saying “da-da.” “Ma-ma” is very frequent. When Tia brings him to me on mornings that I sleep in a bit later he grins and pants like a puppy and sometimes wrestles my head. He does the same to Tia when I bring him to her in the morning.

.. he kicks his legs a lot and wiggles all his limbs when he’s very excited.

He enjoys walks in the stroller – just contentedly looks at everything.

The day before yesterday Tia called me at work and related this. He was on the kitchen floor – which my siblings-in-law very charitably changed from an old olive green carpet (in a kitchen?!) to a marbled brown-grey vinyl floor last Christmas – fussing from boredom and wanting to be held and played with while she cleaned it with a swiffer. When she was done she turned around to do something else and the fussing stopped. She turned back around and his face was planted on the floor, contentedly licking the sweet swiffer flavor on the floor. She stopped him from this and went back to what she was doing and it happened again.

She relates that yesterday she was Christmas shopping and picked out a large lion stuffed animal for him to play with. Usually he’s happy to play with things in the store and put them back, but when she put this back he made some dispondent babble, so she gave it back for keeps (to buy). He then nuzzled and slept on the lion, sleeping while she was shopping, which is a first.

I haven’t said this, but I can no longer withhold it: He is so cute! I want him to freeze for ten years so I can have him just as he is now. .. in an Eden where he never learns or grows. Every time I despair that his cuteness has reached the apex and it will go downhill from here, he defies expectation!

The last two nights I came home too late to see him to bed, and I can tell he misses me – the usual morning happiness was mingled with cathartic babble and fussing. Tia was preening in the bathroom while I slept in in the bed, and he wandered from his toys in his room to the bathroom with alternate happy and fussy babble and calls. I came to him and he beamed and laughed, but when I picked him up he leaned for his mother, then pled for us both: “Ma-ma.. Pba-pba.”