Squidbits
Sixteen months.
Reading material the Squid has lifted off shelves (at our house or at the bookstore) and offered to me this month:
He plays peek-a-boo properly now, hands over eyes and a timed reveal. The joys of the chase have also manifested, and he loves to run away and be found, or to chase after me and find me. His current favorite form of self-entertainment (and yes, he self-entertains, and for long periods at a time, too) involves toddling laps areound the living room, waving various toys (spatula, pajama pants, blocks, remote control). Around and around and around, with occasional pit stops to come sit on my lap or hand me something, then off again.
He mimics faces - if we blink at him, he'll blink back, and he has a particularly awesome scrunchy face we can get him to make sometimes too. He loves to go outside, and, um, carry the rake around. Go figure. The great outdoors is the ultimate baby draw; he wants to go outside as soon as he wakes up, and he wants to stay out there until dinnertime. We have finally found easy-to-slip-on shoes for him, so we mostly just let him go to town. With the rake. Himself makes music videos of him doing this stuff, but has asked me to stop posting them, more's the pity; we had some particularly excellent rake-carrying and dancing movies this month.
The dancing is still going strong, with more refinement (some upper body movement, etc.) and expanded musical taste - it used to be just bhangra music and the Blues Brothers, but I have caught him rocking out, in the past few weeks, to the Ramones, the Beastie Boys, Kristin Hersh, The Academy Is..., and Edith Piaf, among other things. Awesome. Baby has rhythm - he sure as hell didn't get it from me, so all hail the contributor of the other half of his genetic makeup.
Of course, his musical taste is a bit like his reading taste, in terms of the CDs he offers me. Our CD shelf is seven feet tall and alphabetized, so right now he's mostly digging artists S-Z. Sterolab, Tom Waits, Wilco, Lucinda Williams, Cassandra Wilson, Voice of the Beehive, and XTC were all recent CD choices, proffered up with a toothy grin. I'm sure, however, that as he getstaller older his tastes will mature into the M-R range, and eventually comprise the whole of the alphabet.
June 16: So fucking gross - I picked him up out of his crib this morning - he was cheerful and sunny, but covered in crusted puke. His bed, his blanky, his sleeper - they all had to be changed, and he had to be showered to get the dried chunks out of his hair. None of the adults in this house will ever eat mango again, I think. Gah. My life (have I mentioned?) is very glamorous. Aaaaand...I typed that while he was sitting on my lap, and picked him up to go do something, and we had baby's first projectile vomit, all over me and the kitchen! Oh, milestones are so exciting. I think I win partner of the month award for not calling Himself, who had just escaped to the gym, and making him come back and help clean up. Happy Father's Day, honey.
...and I ended up getting that stomach bug, which lasted for a week and made me fragile all the way through my friend A's visit and my thirty-third birthday party. Stupid stomach bug. I never got sick before I had a kid! Never!
He has a charming new habit of groping me absentmidedly while I carry him around. If I wear a lightly padded bra it's mostly harmless, if socially inappropriate, fondling. But if I'm carrying him in the morning, before I put my bra on, woe is me. I yelped, "Ow! Fuck!" the other day at a particularly vicious nipple twist and Himself looked startled and then spent a very unhelpful couple of minutes doubled over wheezing with laughter while I tried to get him to hold the little reprobate for me. Very funny.
If you mess with him, he will hurt you.
I felt sure I had more to say than this, but perhaps not. All measurements perfectly normal as of last pediatrician visit - my child is perfectly average, just like me - and developmental benchmarks right on track, except the doctor wants us to encourage him to talk more. He'll get around to it, is my feeling; it's not like we don't talk to him, read to him, ask him questions - he just doesn't feel like it yet. Eh. Perhaps I am taking this low-anxiety parenting thing too far, but I don't think so.
Reading material the Squid has lifted off shelves (at our house or at the bookstore) and offered to me this month:
- A Desert Survival Manual
- Romeo and Juliet (He cried when I put it back on the shelf.)
- 100 Love Poems (This is a Neruda anthology. He dunked it in the dog water bowl.)
- The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts
- Nerve: A Magazine About Sex
- Trelawney of the Wells and Other Plays
He plays peek-a-boo properly now, hands over eyes and a timed reveal. The joys of the chase have also manifested, and he loves to run away and be found, or to chase after me and find me. His current favorite form of self-entertainment (and yes, he self-entertains, and for long periods at a time, too) involves toddling laps areound the living room, waving various toys (spatula, pajama pants, blocks, remote control). Around and around and around, with occasional pit stops to come sit on my lap or hand me something, then off again.
He mimics faces - if we blink at him, he'll blink back, and he has a particularly awesome scrunchy face we can get him to make sometimes too. He loves to go outside, and, um, carry the rake around. Go figure. The great outdoors is the ultimate baby draw; he wants to go outside as soon as he wakes up, and he wants to stay out there until dinnertime. We have finally found easy-to-slip-on shoes for him, so we mostly just let him go to town. With the rake. Himself makes music videos of him doing this stuff, but has asked me to stop posting them, more's the pity; we had some particularly excellent rake-carrying and dancing movies this month.
The dancing is still going strong, with more refinement (some upper body movement, etc.) and expanded musical taste - it used to be just bhangra music and the Blues Brothers, but I have caught him rocking out, in the past few weeks, to the Ramones, the Beastie Boys, Kristin Hersh, The Academy Is..., and Edith Piaf, among other things. Awesome. Baby has rhythm - he sure as hell didn't get it from me, so all hail the contributor of the other half of his genetic makeup.
Of course, his musical taste is a bit like his reading taste, in terms of the CDs he offers me. Our CD shelf is seven feet tall and alphabetized, so right now he's mostly digging artists S-Z. Sterolab, Tom Waits, Wilco, Lucinda Williams, Cassandra Wilson, Voice of the Beehive, and XTC were all recent CD choices, proffered up with a toothy grin. I'm sure, however, that as he gets
June 16: So fucking gross - I picked him up out of his crib this morning - he was cheerful and sunny, but covered in crusted puke. His bed, his blanky, his sleeper - they all had to be changed, and he had to be showered to get the dried chunks out of his hair. None of the adults in this house will ever eat mango again, I think. Gah. My life (have I mentioned?) is very glamorous. Aaaaand...I typed that while he was sitting on my lap, and picked him up to go do something, and we had baby's first projectile vomit, all over me and the kitchen! Oh, milestones are so exciting. I think I win partner of the month award for not calling Himself, who had just escaped to the gym, and making him come back and help clean up. Happy Father's Day, honey.
...and I ended up getting that stomach bug, which lasted for a week and made me fragile all the way through my friend A's visit and my thirty-third birthday party. Stupid stomach bug. I never got sick before I had a kid! Never!
He has a charming new habit of groping me absentmidedly while I carry him around. If I wear a lightly padded bra it's mostly harmless, if socially inappropriate, fondling. But if I'm carrying him in the morning, before I put my bra on, woe is me. I yelped, "Ow! Fuck!" the other day at a particularly vicious nipple twist and Himself looked startled and then spent a very unhelpful couple of minutes doubled over wheezing with laughter while I tried to get him to hold the little reprobate for me. Very funny.
If you mess with him, he will hurt you.
I felt sure I had more to say than this, but perhaps not. All measurements perfectly normal as of last pediatrician visit - my child is perfectly average, just like me - and developmental benchmarks right on track, except the doctor wants us to encourage him to talk more. He'll get around to it, is my feeling; it's not like we don't talk to him, read to him, ask him questions - he just doesn't feel like it yet. Eh. Perhaps I am taking this low-anxiety parenting thing too far, but I don't think so.
posted by The Stute Fish at 07:54
6 Comments:
Hee, Ellison does the same thing with the broom. So cute.
Dude, look at your kid's hair! I don't know if I could bring myself to cut hair that fabulous.
He'll talk when he talks.
I love the rake picture, he looks like a garden gnome! Tee hee.
I hadn't realized, I'm almost a year older than you, well 3/4 of a year older.
--anon
This comment has been removed by the author.
Yeah, the hair stays FOREVER as far as I am concerned! And HEE, anon, garden gnome!
Are you that much older than I am? Explains our relative maturity levels! :D
I could look at that rake picture all day.
For some reason, me too. I mean, it's just his back, but I love the photo unreservedly.
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