Some Baby Boy Anecdotes

See that kid? I spend about 28 hours a day with him, and he still amazes me.

His vocabulary is expanding, but even when he doesn't know or use the right word, his communication is pretty successful. Just like when he was a newborn, man, does he have opinions. And he expresses them all of the time.

Yesterday, when we were changing his diaper, he said, "Bye bye, poop!" and that was the first multi-word sentence he's ever said. If you prefer "Bye-bye, poop!" then it was his third or so two-word sentence. The one that he uses most frequently, almost as much as he used to say "babum" (praise all the sweet goodness in the universe that the Year of Babum has passed) is "habeet," which is to say, "Have it." This is how he lets us know he wants things, and he wants all of the things.

I'm pretty sure last weekend he said "my daddy," but that was one time and it might have been a stammer or something. Still, it was cute.

Mal is really big on possessions. He fiercely needs people to "habeet" if it belongs to them, to the point that he will cry and yell, "Bobby! Bobbby!" over and over if James uses my (I'm still Bobby) phone. This is one reason I couldn't let him see our van being permanently towed away this week. He got upset enough when the oil change dude drove it into the garage a month or so ago, and he really didn't like it when the tow guy hoisted it to take us all to Walmart to get the tire fixed a couple of weeks ago. So I knew he couldn't handle seeing Barney leave forever.

We've been driving James' old car all week, and still when we go outside and see it, he says, "Daddy." Yesterday I reminded him, "Well, yeah, but we're driving it now and Daddy's driving the new car." This morning, when we went out, he said, "Daddy," but then squatted down and pointed to the tire, saying, "Bobby." I guess he's giving it to me one piece at a time?

He knows which computer is whose. His Chromebook died last week (might have something to do with the fact that he took a cup of water from his water table and sprinkled it all over the keyboard), so we got the Macbook that I bought about six years ago and that D used when I switched over to a PC so I could work from home. D hasn't used the laptop in a couple of years, maybe almost three. But she did recently get her own Macbook, and as little time as Mal spends in her room, he figured that out, too.

I got the old Macbook out and he said, "D." I said, "Well, yes, D has one like it, but this is a different one." Then he said, "Daddy." I started to correct him, because James has a Dell. Then I remembered that James' work laptop is a Mac, and he's brought it home a few times. Mal's pretty observant.

He was upset enough about the Chromebook that I finally hid it yesterday. We've been waiting to see if it will dry out and work, but it's quirky. So now, he makes sure before he asks to use the Mac. "Works," he'll nod. Yes, that one works.

We went to the park today, and he was talking about everything. His swing was yellow. The other swings were blue. "Push." Oh, my goodness, he says "push" a billion times when we're at the park. Like even while I'm pushing him. I'd forgotten what demanding little boogers kids are before they can pump themselves.

Mal has used the potty several times lately, when he's asked to sit down or we've just sat him on it. He strains like he wants to poop, but never has (according to a blog post I read yesterday, D did for the first time the day after her second birthday). He knows when he's getting ready to go/going/gone, though. He will still say, "Poop!" or sign it right after, and increasingly he doesn't fight when we want to change his diaper. He's ready to get out of that, unless he's having a lot of fun.

The other day, I was making dinner while he was watching videos, and he'd pulled his diaper down around his knees. Thank goodness he didn't decide to sit anywhere.

It would seem that Mal might be leaving his nap behind, which will be fine if he can hold it together the second half of the day, but is sometimes being quite the challenge.

First of all, I have to say: We bought a car on Saturday, and he held tough the whole three hours we were there. Oh! We were treated so well at Onion Creek Volkswagen, too, I should give them a shout-out. It was taking the financing stuff a while to process, so I asked James if there was any reason we couldn't go get lunch and come back. He asked the finance guy, who then invited us to their staff break room to eat Chicken Express with them. It was awkward but delicious.

Anyway, Mal kind of napped on the way home, but that was it for Saturday. He didn't nap much last week, which tends to put his bedtime to 7-7:30 PM. It's better than him being awake until 10:30 (which can happen if he gets a long nap... and he is HARD to wake up, ironically), but, again, only if he's not spending the hours from about 4:30 PM until then crying about everything.

Yesterday was sort of perfect. We had a nice quiet morning, we went to the store to get him some watermelon, then to the gym, then to Trader Joe's for all things pumpkin, and he fell asleep on the way home. He ended up napping for a couple of hours, and we went to the park for a bit after his nap. He didn't even think of asking for videos until after dinner, then he watched for about an hour, and at 9:25 asked me to come lie down with him and "shushies," which is how he's saying "nursies" now. He's never said anything before except "babum," doing the sign, and sometimes "lala," which tends to mean "the other one."

Anyway, he was asleep within ten minutes. Nice night.

Today, he was exhausted most of the day. We went to the park this morning, and he wasn't ready to go after an hour and a half, but it was starting to get hot (again. Thanks, ATX, you big tease). He asked for French fries, so we went to McDonald's and hung out a while so he could eat. I realized that if he's focused on fries, he'll sit still a long time.

Here he is, waving because I was taking the picture to send James and told him, "Tell Daddy, 'hi!'"

Of course, later he got up, then sat back down, the wanted me to get him, and he put his foot into the ketchup and it was a big mess and ketchup smells AWFUL when it gets on skin but whatever. We lived.

After that, he wanted to go to the gym. Actually, I think he wanted to go to the trampoline park, for which my sister gave him a gift card but James happened to have it at that moment. Then when we got to the gym and he realized we weren't back at a place where he could swing ("deem"), he cried and cried and cried. I got him out of the car, anyway, but he wanted me to hold him. I put him down to get his bag out of the car, and he was so distraught, I decided, "Nope," packed him back in, and just came home.

He wound down a little here, nursing often and watching about an hour's worth of videos. Then we played in his room, and he would get so upset about... well, everything. Then nurse some more. Ad infinitum from about 1:30 until 6. Fortunately, he got a second wind about 6, and was in a pretty good mood for James when James got home from work.

Mal ended up going to bed a bit before 8, not as a basket case, but just a tired little boy. He still needs that midday nap, but I don't have the tools to help him unwind, so he'll start to nod off, then get up and re-energize, even when he's weepy and clumsy and miserable.

One more exciting thing: Mal is starting to eat more, in terms of quantity and of variety. When we went to Trader Joe's yesterday, they were sampling pumpkin waffles (we knew he liked frozen waffles: one day I walked into my bedroom and he was sitting on the bed chomping on a waffle he'd pulled out of the box he'd just taken out of the freezer without my noticing) with pumpkin cream cheese, and he loved those, so I bought them. They were also sampling their ghost and bat potato crisps with spinach cream cheese dip, and he liked THAT, so it was a sale, too.

Tonight, he ate some pumpkin ravioli, an orange, and chips and dip for dinner. Before that, he'd had a Mamma Chia pouch, half an apple, a few veggie nuggets, French fries, some goldfish, and a few M&Ms for lunch and snack. And he had a pumpkin waffle with cream cheese and a slice of Dave's Killer Bread with butter for breakfast. This is in addition to "shushies" allllll dang day.

Oh, yeah... I was so excited about the awesome hoodie I got Mal at the Hanna Andersson opening. Then I went to hang it up after I'd washed it and realized: I'd bought him two hoodies at Once Upon a Child already! Oh well, the one from HA is lined and much warmer, almost like a proper coat. Maybe he can wear it at least once or twice here in Austin.