DumbFunnery

15th month, or How I Learned to Self-Pep-Talk Like a Pro

It’s a few days past 15 months and I am feeling a little bummed. I had a poor end of my work day. (Turns out I caused a bug in some code – NUTS, that really bothers me; and I recently took some steps to file for a patent and I got responses from committee members who review that and they all stated things like ‘how is this novel?’ And I want to respond saying YOU’RE NOT NOVEL! Your whole family’s not novel! But … they’re right, it’s not.)

Here’s the thing about the kiddo. He can really take your mind off things. For example, I got home and ran a few errands and was distracted with entertaining him. And then, I read to him and put him down to bed (my wife is off getting us dinner so we can eat our feelings). And it’s so nice to just hold his tiny hands and look at his tiny, crazy, adorable face.

Speaking of his crazy face, he is really into perspective shifts these days. That sounds highfalutin and fancy but all this means is he tilts his head to the side and finds this very amusing. He also shakes his head no at a very fast rate, probably mimicking the high of getting dizzy. Like a low-grade dizzy buzz. Recently I have taken to putting things on his head, trying to balance them just so. He’ll set still for a moment, then SMACK it off with a vengeance. I started putting things on my head and he would pull himself up, knock the item off my head, then tilt his head sideways while standing right in front of me. Face about 2 inches from mine, but sideways. This gives him such a big, goofy grin it’s unbearably delightful.

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Ok now we’re about halfway through month 15 and I clearly should’ve kept writing when I sat down before. I got distracted by dinner on that night and then I never got back to this. And hey, guess what, the patent is now officially dead and there’s talk of us considering our latest release not good (as in advise customers not to use it) so things in my work world are coming up Milhouse. What do we do, gang? We distract!

The kiddo has not just been into nodding his head no aggressively, he is also nodding yes now! This is definitely new this month and a lot of fun. He is so deliberate with his movements when he nods yes it is very fun to see. And my wife and I debated for a while if he knew what he was doing when nodding yes … Because he would seem to nod yes at just about any question asked of him. But it has been quite handy with food (and adorable) because we’ll say, ‘more raspberries?’ … Well, that’s a bad example. The answer there is almost ALWAYS yes. But this morning he actually nodded no pretty quickly into a few raspberries which shocked me. The yes is still slow, and thoughtful, but it is coming along nicely and really helps a ton with communication.

Speaking of communication, the kiddo’s vocabulary is flourishing! My wife and I like to reassure ourselves by saying he is just so focused on language he doesn’t have time for physical stuff (more on that later). We have a very poor attempt at a running list of words that are maybe, possibly, sorta, but probably not, in the order the words arrived and so far that list is …

Dog, dad, mom, ball, bye, book, car, banana, airplane, high five, outside (?), bird, cracker, bowl, uh oh, water (agua)

I have 0% confidence that this list is right. But there it is, in all its incorrect glory. It is also a pretty odd list.

Bird is trying its best but failing to compete with airplane. When we first got him saying bird anything above him temporarily shifted to bird (for maybe a day) but now things are back to airplane. The kid is also, I think, catching on to adoration and he knows we get a kick out of ‘airplane’ so that has probably led to more than a few street lights, fans, and you name it being called out as ‘airplane.’

High five I talked about last month, which was a bit of a shocker and a lot of fun. One funny thing there is that a neighbor kid is a 14 year old boy who would without fail see our son, come up and say hi to us and then to the kiddo, ‘high five?’ This starting when our son was all of about 2 months. We’d explain, ‘he can’t even control his neck so uh … a high five is a tall order.’ And what do you know, now that he can actually high five, the neighbor kid hasn’t been seen in a while (less hanging out in the front yard for all of us now that it’s cold out).

A favorite new language is ‘uh oh.’ This has been accompanied with many, many, many deliberate drops of things. He will grab some food, reach his arm out, drop it, and then look over his chair at the kitchen floor to see where his food has landed. This is admittedly a much more fun game for him when the dog is underfoot, and for her sake and ours we have taken to putting her up. Uh oh has not yet lost its shine for any of us, and I am still willing to squat the day away picking up that just dropped (uh oh) item to retrieve it and do it all over again.

The zebra walker, our on-again-off-again friend.

Ok ok, last language thing. I mean that’s all we’ve got right? (Foreshadowing!) The kiddo also seems to be doing more of … I don’t know. Maybe an impression of English? It’s like when you know a tiny, tiny bit of Spanish and you think ok sure I’ll just say a bunch of noises that sound sorta Spanish-ish … He does that occasionally? Good luck even trying to understand what I’m going for here, future self.

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Now I’ll explain my vague statements. We had his fifteenth month doctor visit where we learned a few shocking things. One, he is still tiny when it comes to length. This doesn’t really matter but everything makes you worry. I have this sort of internal tango where I think logically, each kid goes at their own pace and blah blah blah but then I counter it with, but what if I’m doing something wrong or what if something is actually wrong? And you know, when it’s some conjectured hypothetical like that it’s hard to respond rationally. So the internal tango rages on and I suspect I’ll just grow more and more practiced at this dance rather than ever getting to leave the dance floor. PARENTHOOD.

Anywho. He’s tiny. You also fill out these questionnaire’s at these doc visits where they ask strange questions like, ‘can he take a cheerio and pretend it’s more than just a cheerio?’ (Not a real question.) And you think … well I don’t know … I don’t think we’ve ever tried that? After you answer all the questions they look and say, you’re in the white zone, grey zone, or black zone (talk about a racist form) and you want to be white. For language he was good, but for gross and fine motor both he was in the black! Fine totally surprised us because we think he is doing great! But gross was no shock since he’s still not walking. The doc suggested we talk to early intervention about his not walking and we said yes, anything and everything to help.

It was a harsh visit because we both thought the kiddo was bigger and doing so well, and then to have our doc say, ‘doing so well, huh? Hmm’ really threw both my wife and I. You just start questioning if you could or should be doing any number of things differently. Before the appointment I could’ve named any of a number of things where I felt like my son was excelling, after all I saw was what he wasn’t yet doing that others were. It was certainly a day of reminding myself that my son is who he is, he is bathed daily in the intense love my wife and I have for him, and we are doing are very best to create the best life we can for him.

Ok. Enough of that, eh? See, that’s another thing, you get into these little self pep-talks, too. Love, eh? What nonsense it generates.

This month he DID take a renewed interest in his zebra walker which has been good to see. (Oh and P.S. the early intervention people said don’t worry … he’s a premie and we don’t worry about not walking till 18 months anyway so take that, doc.)

(Oh and P.P.S. I actually really like our doc.)

Ok now for a the last few things, I promise.

Say friend, you look like a savvy shopper!

One of the most fun things the kiddo is into now is hats. He LOVES putting on hats. You hand him a beanie, a ball cap, whatever? He’s going to put it on. And pretty darn well actually (take that, fine motor skills). I have had him put on his winter cap a number of times and just adjust it barely for it to be on right. He also has a sort of fedora type hat that makes him look like an old time salesman when he wears it. I like to talk about the miracle elixir he’s hawking that makes you poop diapers and pee out baby wipes. It’s a good thing we don’t have Alexa because God knows what Amazon would have to take away from its spying on us.

He has also figured out his nose! ‘Where’s your nose?’ is now answered with a point, a smash of the nose, and the phrase, ‘nose, nose, nose’ (said nasally because of him pushing on his nose). We’ve even got ‘where’s dada’s nose?’ and some aggressive nose smashing too. It’s fun (is it?) for everyone.

My wife and I have made a habit of pointing at characters in books when we read to him. That’s the Little Blue Truck! That’s a horse! That’s a cow! You get the drill. Now he will occasionally point too … quite aggressively, and 40% of the time at something that makes sense. That’s the Pout Pout fish, yes right there! Exactly! Wow so smart! (And as you’re saying so smart he begins smashing his tiny little pointer finger into some other random part of the page and you think, well … partial credit?)

I think my son was playing with my wife one day when I got the idea to tickle his back to see if he’d react. Not a proper tickle, but one of those lightly trace your fingers to give you the heebie jeebies. It worked perfectly. He sat up straight, got a goofy look on his face, and shivered. I don’t know if he enjoys it or not, but boy is it ever adorable. (Sorry, dear son.)

Ok last one!

We took the kiddo for his third haircut this month. First haircut all three of us went and he seemed unfazed. Great. Second time it was just he and my wife and he was NOT happy the whole time, so my wife strongly suggested I go. The tears hit pretty quickly into the haircut so out come our pacifier and I reached under his little haircut apron and held his hand. He responded by grabbing onto my pointer finger and holding that for the duration of the haircut. I had to dance around the girl cutting his hair a tiny bit, but it was just about one of my favorite and most adorable things to have happen in my life.

Kid, I’ll hold your hand anytime.

Rambly dad, OUT!