blabbermouth

Zekey talks - a lot. He basically tries to repeat almost everything we say. And while some of it is unintelligible, much of it is clear to us. Early on, he would only say the beginnings of words - "duh" for duck and dog, "cah" for cat and car, etc. But his speech is becoming clearer now, and if we say things carefully, he'll repeat simple words almost exactly. It's a flood of language every day.

Here's a partial list at 16 months, Z's favorite words first:

no (his new favorite)
car (almost anything with wheels)
plane (anything that makes a loud engine noise)
boat
ball
football (said "fooFALL!")
baseball
kick IT!
hike hike! (the football)
throw
dog
pancake (said "panCAKE!")
waffle (said "waFFLE!")
apple
peaches (said "peaCHES")
chicken (said "chiCHIN!")
bird (pretty much anything with wings)
duck
fly (any insect with wings, and what the bird does)
flower
bug (usually meaning lady bug)
more (always said "more MORE!")
done done
water (wawa)
bottle (baba)
bubbles
book
shoes
socks
dada
mama
hi
bye bye
night night
moon
sun
shark
turtle (tuhtuh)
frog
tissue
door
sauce
please (which sounds like "peece")
help (said "helpooo" which must come from us asking "Can I help you?)
poo poo (pretty funny)
toot toot (hilarious)
choo choo
bellybutton (this one is garbled a bit, but we always know what he's talking about)

He does all kinds of animal sounds:
foo foo (for woof woof, my personal favorite)
meow
moo (which sounds like boo right now)
monkey cackle
snake hiss
rhinoceros snort and snuff (from Moo, Baa, La La La)
pig snort (sort of, he's still working on that one a bit)
chicken (another favorite of mine - bock bock bock)
wolf ooowwww
owl whoo whoo
fish pucker
goose honk
sheep baa
horse whinney
lion, tiger and bear growl (all sound the same)

Oh - he also can identify a number of birds in our Birds of NY book. We show him a picture and he says the name of the bird. He can do:
hawk
owl
duck
woodpecker (said something like "peckpeck")
cardinal (just the "car" part)
crow
turkey

Okay - I'll stop there for now, but I have to remember to keep writing these down before it seems commonplace for him to open his mouth and communicate with us. Right now, it's amazing, and hilarious.

first bruise

Z started walking about three weeks ago. He had been "walking" with our hands for months (even before he started crawling) but he just didn't want to let go. We've certainly learned that Z does everything in his own time, and we weren't trying to rush him (though our backs were starting to suffer). And then he accidentally took a couple steps on his own. And three days later he took a few more. And a few days after that, he started doing laps between me and my mom. And after that it was all over. He now paces up and down the hallway, going in an out of rooms along the way. He practically runs circles around the little island in our kitchen, climbing through the legs of anyone he meets along the way. And he does it with the most adorable grin on his face - he is clearly soooo happy to be mobile.

After only three weeks, though, he's still a little wobbly and he's totally oblivious to changes in terrain. So when he batted my hand away on some uneven sidewalk in Rhinebeck this afternoon, he did his first full-on face plant. Now Z cries a lot, and even some of his tears of frustration are pretty real. But this was different. He was clearly scared and a little banged up and it was all I could do to not start crying myself. Poor baby.

Side note: I'm often amazed at how quickly my frustration with him disappears when he really needs me. He'd been fussing and complaining for a good part of the afternoon and I was about ready to drop him at the local firehouse. And then this happened and all I wanted to do was snuggle him and make it all better. I feel the same way after he goes to sleep each night. I often long for the end of the day so I can get a break from him, and then as soon as he's asleep I kind of miss him.

So Z was fine after a few minutes and was back to toddling around the streets of Rhinebeck. But an hour or so later this little red bruise showed up on his left cheek. He's had a couple little bruises on his knees (and the crazy self-inflicted hickey when he was just a few months old), but this was the first time the big bad world left its mark on my baby. I know I have to brace myself for much more serious incidents - he is a crazy boy, after all, bound for trouble. But I'll be holding his hand a little tighter for awhile, ready to scoop him up the moment he starts to totter.

15 months

It's been awhile. I know it's not possible to accurately summarize the past four months in a single entry, so I'll focus on the highlights and try to fill in the details later on.

Our boy is 15 months old today. He walks. He talks. He makes animal sounds and he makes us laugh. He loves to watch the birds in the feeder outside our front window. He often spots deer before we do. He loves cars. He REALLY loves cars. (Anything with wheels is a car.) He LOVES to be outside and he insists on going outside by yelling "HAAAA" and pointing at the door multiple times every day. He's hungry all the time (a VERY welcome change). He still doesn't eat dairy but he eats almost everything else, especially chicken. He regularly takes one nap a day (between 1 and 3 hours) and usually makes it through the night without us.

Side note: all around 1 year, Z started crawling (a crazy one knee, one foot shuffle), stopped breastfeeding, started sleeping through the night, dropped his second nap, and started talking. (I think his first word was "duck" but he picked up so many words soon after that it's a little hard to say. The complete list in another post.)

Z's baby cousin will be born any day now and I'm so excited to be an aunt.

And finally, we are home owners - of a three-bedroom house on an acre of land in Red Hook, NY, halfway between Albany and NYC.

We did our best to get settled quickly, to create a new routine for Z that feels normal and consistent, and I think we achieved that. He's still Z - passionate and headstrong and emotional and yes, fussy or temperamental or whatever you want to call it. But he does seem happy here.

For our part, we miss Oakland every single day and I think it will be a long time before that wears off. I think of the Bay Area as the best time of my life - the place where I really became an adult, figured a few things out, made some wonderful friends, and had a hell of a lot of fun. Oddly enough, moving back here doesn't feel like giving that all up. It feels like locking it away with all the other wonderful memories - camp, parts of high school, college - all great experiences that naturally must come to an end. And it feels like we are doing what we need to do to allow Zekey to begin his own wonderful memories, in a place where he has room to run, where we don't have to lock the doors, where he can go to public school, where he can spend lots of time with his grandparents, and where he can escape from and come back to one day when the time feels right. And that's what we have done. And I have no regrets.

baby eater

Mmmmm.... tasty baby.

Trader Joe's

I went to Trader Joe's without Z this afternoon. It felt strange. Strangely relaxing first of all, especially since I normally hate grocery shopping. But I got myself a chai latte, got a cart even though I probably could have fit everything in a basket, and took my time strolling down each aisle, no list, no hurry, no little hands grabbing for everything on the shelves, and no one paying me any mind. I felt invisible - like without Zeke I'm not really there.

There was a woman in line in front of me who had an adorable little dog in her cart. And she was talking to everyone, smiling and answering questions and petting his little head. And I suddenly wanted to shout to everyone that I have a little boy who is unbelievably cute and if he were with me he would be smiling and waving at you all right now! But instead I just blended in with all the pet-less, baby-less people in line and quietly paid for my groceries (no balloon for me) and walked out. And it struck me that in less than a year I've gone from being Mia, to being Zeke's mom, even when he's not with me.

PS: This is what happens when we're careless with the boy at Trader Joe's.

two teeth - he crunches!

Z finally, FINALLY is getting a second tooth - the upper level partner of his first one. This looks a little strange since most babies get two on the bottom, then two on the top, not one on top of the other, but we know our boy is special in many ways. In any case, this new tooth allows him to really bite things, and today we heard his first crunch - on a Cheerio, of course. I never knew a crunch could be so cute. It's funny, too, because Z knows something is different in his mouth. Before he would just pop the whole Cheerio and suck on until it melted. Now he's holding it between his two teeth and biting off tiny little pieces. Very hamster-like.

I'll just add that I really wish we could get him to eat something else as consistently as he eats Cheerios. The problem is something we call the grab and squish. Basically, anything else we've tried to give him that he's capable of picking up with his hands but soft enough that he can chew without choking gets completely pulverized the minute he gets it in his little mitts. And it's not like he squishes it and then puts it in his mouth. Maybe we should call it the grab, squish and toss across the room (or into mama's face, or at the wall, or in his hair, eyes, ears, etc..) Or, he'll grab, squish, and smear it all over his high chair tray so the only way he could actually eat it is if he would lick the tray. (He does try to eat the tray occasionally, but not in the places he's smeared food. He seems to like the taste of pure plastic.)

Oh yeah, and he's also discovered that if you put food in your mouth, put your lips together and blow, you get a really strong reaction from your parents. Oh dear.

10 months - he waves and the world is his

I finally know what Dave's mom is talking about when she says it was impossible to take baby Dave to the supermarket. Z started waving last week, an adorable opening and closing of his little hand that just kills me (and everyone else). Combine that with his ridiculous one-toothed grin, his giant blue eyes, and his incessant babbling and we can't go anywhere without people stopping to coo and fuss. All this is tempered by the occasional head-turning, nerve-rattling shriek that makes me want to hide. But on the whole, Z is just off the charts with charm and adorableness.

The waving is just one of the many big changes we've seen over the past few weeks. Z is finally rolling - something most babies do around 4 months. He'll actually choose to roll onto his belly to check out a particular toy, and he's even napped belly down a handful of times. He's still made no move toward crawling, but he will lurch forward onto his belly from a sitting position in order to reach something and occasionally do that swimming thing where he flails his arms and legs but doesn't actually go anywhere.

His absolute favorite thing to do now, though, is to pull himself up on our fingers and "walk" around. Oddly enough, he won't pull himself up on anything else - even though we encourage it. I think he likes the little extra pull we can't help but give him. But once he's up, he walks, jumps, bounces, kicks, and generally acts like a maniac all over the house. I'm not sure how this crazy legs maneuvering will translate into actual walking, but it's pretty cute.