Tag Archives: The Kid

It's been a rough few weeks here (more on that later) but through it all, the one constant has been that Ian continues to make us laugh.  If laughter is the best medicine, then he's the best doctor there is.  (Not a bad feat for a 21-month-old!)  I swear, if it weren't for him, I would have spent a large part of the last three weeks in a heap on the floor.  

A couple of amusing anecdotes from recent days...

Practicing for the Elementary School Cafeteria

This past weekend, I took Ian to get his hair cut.  The Snip-Its that we go to is in the same plaza as Panera, and it's become our tradition to go there afterwards.  This time around, it was a little early for lunch, so we had a little snack -- milk and an oatmeal raisin cookie for Ian; chai a and toffee nut cookie for me.  Ian's still a bit too small to really converse with at length, but we sat by the window and pointed out trucks going by, and beeped each other's noses, and made faces at each other, and I tried to get Ian to say some of the things he says especially cutely.  It was a lovely date.

Just before we started getting ready to leave, a woman tried to sit at the table next to us and dropped her tray.  Her bowl shattered and soup was EVERYWHERE.  I think all of us sitting nearby would have just ignored it (she was fine and nothing was hurt) in order to lessen the woman's embarrassment, but Ian whipped around, sized up the situation, and yelled "UH OH!" at the top of his little lungs, causing our entire quadrant of the restaurant to bust out laughing.  Oops.  All I could think of was how, in elementary school, if someone dropped a tray or accidentally popped a plastic bag or something, the entire cafeteria would bust out in a chorus of "oooooOOOOOHHHHH....!"  Sorry, soup lady.  I swear he wasn't mocking you.

Funny, They Don't Look Like Hugh Laurie

My mother-in-law lives just about a mile from us, and as such we visit her frequently.  When we get there, I always say "we're at Grandma's house!".  The last time we went to see her, Ian yelled "HOUSE!" as we pulled into the driveway.  Which made total sense, since I always announce where we are.  So we go inside and go through our afternoon.  Eventually Ian pulled down the family picture from the table in MIL's living room -- he likes to point at everyone in the picture and identify them.  He started, as always, with "daddy," and then "mommy," and then "baby," and then...."House!"  Yes, he's apparently internalized the wrong half of "Grandma's house" -- and Grandma is now House.  Throughout the rest of the day he kept pointing at her -- "House!" -- and when we left, she got a very solemn wave and "buh-bye....House."

The very next day, my mom came to our house for dinner, and Ian called HER House, too.  (He doesn't see my mom nearly as much, since she lives in New Hampshire, so she was just excited that he clearly understands that she's Grandma, too!)

I'm not sure either of them will ever live this down.  Wonder how long it'll stick?  Maybe we should invest in some canes and VIcodin for them, so they can play the part.  They're on their own for the grumpy behavior, though.

(Remember this sweater I made, way back before Ian was even born?  It finally fits him!)

Ian is 19 months old now (in fact, today is his 19 monthiversary!) and he is just exploding with words.  He talks ALL the time -- a lot is still just gibberish, even to us, but his list of understandable words has grown to the point where it would take me quite a while to come up with anything resembling a complete list.  (And of course, being the stellar mother I am, I haven't been jotting down his new words as he learns them.  Someday, he'll ask when he learned certain things, and I'll just have to admit that I'm not as awesome at record-keeping as a librarian really ought to be.)

What's really neat to watch is that he's beginning to be able to express concepts, not just nouns.  He LOVES to go outside, and he will now go stand by the door and yell "Outside! Outside!" while trying to work the doorknob.  And he knows the whole routine that goes along with that too -- before going outside he'll retrieve (well, try to retrieve -- he can't quite reach) his jacket from the coat hook ("acket! acket!") and then wander around the house muttering "shooooes, shoooooes" until he finds his shoes.  And his tocks, of course.  You can't put on your shoes until you have your tocks on. 

He loves his books, too, and has started to have very definite preferences for what you read him, and when.  We used to be able to read him pretty much anything at bedtime, but now we have a selection of five or six books (mostly by Sandra Boynton) that he finds acceptable.  (Thankfully, other books are acceptable at other times.)  His favorites are The Going to Bed Book, Perfect Piggies, Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs (which he very cutely calls "My My") and, of course, the perennial childhood favorite Goodnight Moon (he likes to point out the kitties on all the pages on which they appear).  He's started to memorize some of the books, too -- in The Going to Bed Book there's a section "And when the moon is on the rise, they all go up to exercise" and he will often yell EXERCISE! (or something closely resembling it, anyway) at the right time. 

What's really hilarious, though, is his counting.  He's starting to learn his numbers.  I'm not sure how much of it is an actual understanding of the concept of numbers -- I think at this point, he's still mostly just repeating what he hears us say -- but he can count to five relatively reliably.  If you start counting and then stop, he will say the next number in the sequence, usually very loudly and with great enthusiasm.  My favorite is FWREEEEEE!  But if left to his own devices, he counts "doo, doo, FIIIIVE!"  Which makes me giggle every time.  So young, and already making Monty Python references.  That's my boy!