What We’ve Learned: Month 18
“Book! Book!”
“Okay, Henry. One more book, but then you have to go to bed.”
What? That was new.
When did he learn that? When did he learn those words? When did he start putting nouns and adjectives together?
That happened this evening right before he went to sleep, but it’s not so unusual. Kristen wrote about Henry’s vocabulary last week, and as she said, he’s seemingly adding a word or two every day. (Yesterday, it was “shake” and “tushy”. Don’t ask.)
One of the common issues with kids Henry’s age is their frustration when they’re unable to communicate what toy they want, what is bothering them, or what they want to eat. For the most part, we’ve avoided this problem because when he wants oatmeal, he says “oatmeal.” When he wants to take a bath, he says “bass.” And when he wants his skunk puppet, he says “skunk”.
What all this talking has done is make Henry a real person. He’s no longer a baby and not really a toddler. He’s a little boy. And I like it.
So other than Henry being quite the little blabbermouth, what else have we learned this past month.
We learned that Henry can now climb up onto the sofa. This is only slightly frightening, because once he gets up there, it’s pretty easy for him to fall off it. He hasn’t yet, but we’re waiting for that thump and howl.
We learned that Henry is getting a little stir crazy. Although Chicago hasn’t had the huge blizzards that the northeast has, we’ve had our fair share of snow. Because of the snow covering all the parks and anything even remotely green and the miserable cold, Henry’s been stuck inside most of the time. Sure, he can run up and down the hallway (annoying our downstairs neighbors, I’m sure), Super-Nanny Silvia takes him to the local park district field house a couple times a week, and on weekends, we’ll head off to some mall to get him room for him to run. But it’s not enough. We need a park, damnit! One that is not frozen or full of mud. Spring can’t come soon enough.
We learned that Henry likes it when Kristen and I sing to him. “Seeng! Seeng! Song! Song!” he’ll say. There are three songs that he requests most often: “en-em-oh”, which is the alphabet song (he’s trying to say “l-m-n-o-p”); “low low”, which is “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”); and “ee-i-oh”, which is “Old MacDonald” (“ee-i-ee-i-oh”). We also bought a pig speaker (yes, a pig speaker) to hook up to Kristen’s iPod so he can listen to music while he eats. (He likes the Jackson 5 quite a bit.) Michael certainly sings better than Kristen and me.
We learned that Henry really likes scrambled eggs, beans, sausage, and cookies. My god, does that boy like cookies.
We learned that Henry’s newest favorite thing to do when we’re holding him (which is getting harder to do now that he weighs about 432 pounds) is to stick his hand down the front of your shirt and start poking you in the armpit. This is very ticklish (as one could imagine) and as I’m there trying to suppress my laughter (because, darn it, it’s time to take a nap), Henry is cracking up. It’s really difficult to get him to stop doing something like that when you’re laughing. I keep on trying to tell him that putting your hand under someone’s shirt is something he’s not allowed to do until he’s 25, but it doesn’t seem to be sinking in. Go figure.
And we learned that Henry is still taking two, 2-hour naps a day. And is sleeping 11 1/2 hours at night! Now I love to nap (I’m a big fan), but Henry has taken this to the next level. (Of course, on the weekend, when he wants to spend some extra time with mommy and daddy, he has been taking either a very short second nap or none at all.) Since your bones grow only when you’re asleep (did you know that? I sure didn’t), I reckon he’ll be about 6 feet by the time of his third birthday.
February 24th, 2010 at 8:50 am
I LOVE these photos! Oh, he sounds like so much fun. I hope we get to meet him next month.