Monday, April 22, 2013

It's Been a While

I haven't even written a letter to my son in a good while. Just so much has been going on that when I get any free time I prefer to read or watch something.

Well William certainly has the knack of walking. He's getting pretty good at running, too. Course, the snow and icy/slushy areas aren't the perfect running surface. Today I found he has pretty great eye/foot coordination. I took him outside to walk around for a bit and his uncle decided to come out and play with him (his uncle is his FAVORITE person in the world). His uncle grabbed a foam ball from the box of toys I keep at my sister's apartment for when William is over there while I visit or when I need to run grab something from somewhere and need to do it quick. Anyway, he brought the ball outside and put it on the ground and kicked it some. He kicked it to William and I told William to kick it, showing him how. Well he walked right up to it and kicked it square on. He did it several more times. No slips, no misses, right on every time. None of those times was the ball right there where just simply shifting his weight would have touched the ball. No, he had to walk up to it every time and there was no hesitation. The ball is also small enough that when I make the sign for ball (making a sphere with my hand, fingertips touching) the ball fits perfectly inside it.

His talking is getting much better. I was beginning to get worried because all these other children born around the same time were saying quite a few words. Then someone asked me the gender of all those babies and only one of them was a boy. They said boys blossom later than girls. So I waited and now he's really catching on.

I think I mentioned his first word was the name of the woman at the daycare he goes to. Then came mama. He has three different meanings for the sound ma-ma. One is me, another is food or I want and at the moment I can't remember the third one. Now he says uh-oh, get down, papa, ew, and several others that for some odd reason I just can't remember right now. Ew is the newest one. He says it for almost everything. He ALWAYS says it for diapers, even clean ones. He's also trying out the word dog and phrase good job. We've been watching Kipper on Netflix and in the theme song the word dog is say quite a bit and William loves dogs (though he's a bit skittish when they actually come up to him) so him trying to say dog is no surprise. Right now it's just the D sound, though. We only started watching Kipper two days ago.

The phrase, get down, comes from the daycare woman and me, my mom, my sister, my brother-in-law, pretty much every adult William comes into contact with. While I don't think he's as bad as I was when I was little about climbing on things, he's still climbing a lot. When I first heard him say it I was like, "What the heck are you saying?" He was very forceful in tone and his brow was furrowed as he said it so it really struck me. It just came out as something like, "dowa!" He was just sitting next to me watching something a movie. Then the next day he added a g' to the beginning so it became "g'dowa!" and he was standing on something so I realized what he was saying then. After that he'd say it every time he was on something he shouldn't be, pretty much telling on himself. Then we had to go to the doctor's to get his ear infection checked out and he was telling other kids to get down when he saw them sitting in the other chairs.

We're not sure if he's calling for my mom sometimes but he's been saying me-me while at her house. It's the only time I ever hear him say it and it almost always has something to do with her so we're beginning to wonder if that's his name for her, mimi. No idea where he's gotten it from. She refers to herself as nana and everyone else calls her that, too, to reinforce it.

My little man still likes to tease. I think it's a family trait from both sides. My niece has become extremely good at it. She's been doing it since she could talk, at least. With William I noticed it starting around 6 months. He was sitting in his high chair eating some goldfish (which some of you might think is crazy of me but my son has been nomming solid food since he was about 4 months and he initiated it, he's a very good eater when it comes to not choking). After a while he decided he was done and proceeded to just grab a handful and drop it on the floor. I fussed at him for it a few times. One of the times I was looking at him right after telling him to stop and he slowly reached down, picked up a single goldfish cracker, slowly brought his fist to his mouth, opened his mouth, closed it, then slowly moved his fist, still containing the cracker, over the side of the tray and dropped the thing. The whole time watching me.

The latest thing was he stuck his thumb into a potted plant at my mom's and got a little bit of dirt stuck to it. He held his hand up, finger splayed, in front of his mouth with the thumb pointing towards his mouth. He then smacked his lips, which is what he sometimes does to show he wants to eat something (if I make the noise by him he'll feed me something from his tray). He then brought his thumb as close to his lips as he could without touching then, a huge grin on his face, then just before it touched he drew it back real quick, laughing. He did it several more times, looking right at me. My mom and grandma were right there, too, so I wasn't just seeing something haha. You know, I think I only teased him a handful of times with bits of food, making like I was going to give him some but then ate it myself. Other than that I tend not to tease, not because I find it mean or anything, but just because my mind just doesn't exactly think that way. So all I can do is blame it on genes.

Well I'm going to stop there for now, it's somehow gotten to be 1am and I should get to bed.