Monday, April 09, 2007

Irregular Monthly Newsletter: 16 Months



You're 16 months old today, Big.

This last month you seem to have made incredible cognitive leaps. I think I've used this metaphor before, but it feels like I am driving in southern Minnesota trying to tune into MPR on the radio but not quite getting a signal, Terry Gross' voice coming in and out, enabling me to hear only snippets of an interview but thrilled at the optimistic implication that I must be driving in the right direction. You're definitely starting to "tune in" to the world with your burgeoning 5-10 word vocabulary (if you don't worry too much about enunciation).

Please pardon the repitition from last month's issue.

"Ball!" (emphatically) remains your most prominant word. It is almost to the point now, that I believe you've started your own religion around the spherical deity. BioMom told me today that you were taking one of your balls for a rides around the living room on your trike.

Star
Car
Flower
Dog
Kitty
Stop
and, some have reported hearing you say the inevitable, "no".

Whether we can understand it or not, you definitely know words and their meanings. One afternoon, we were heading over to the movie shop to pick up a little something for that Friday evening's entertainment. You were in your car seat playing with this baby toy of yours, a sphere that can rotate within a square. The sphere has stars and moons on it. I happened to be wearing a sweatshirt with a star on it. You pointed to the star on my shirt and then down to the star on the sphere.

It was amazing to see you make that connection.

Similarly, if I either say we're going "outside" or even if I begin to organize the paraphernailia for leaving the house, you rush to the front door, often grabbing a shoe or two along the way as if to say "what are you waiting for??"

You started this thing where you reaching up under people's shirts looking for bare skin, trying to tickle people and laughing sadistically while you do it.

And lastly, the other night, BioMom and I were trying to get you to ask for "more" food, drink, whatever, using the little sign of putting a finger or two from your right hand into the palm of your left. You did it! (You ALWAYS want more blueberries!) and you even remembered the sign the next day.

I feel a little like Jodie Foster in Contact!






1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Congratulations to you all on the milestones. Lordy Big is getting Bigger all the time. Don't they all. The passage of time has never been made more vivid to me than since I began to watch it in the persons of our kids.

That last picture of him is my favorite.