Walkin' and Talkin'

John and I are so super in love with our son. He is a lot of fun and really changing every day now. He has started to use sign language meaningfully. He has asked for cheese by sign and verbally ("deez") and banana by sign and "nanana." Tonight I asked if he wanted more of dinner and he signed for cheese. John and I agreed that it was a good idea and just might help my bland dish. Elliott is also finally tapping his fingers together for "more." Many other kids have been doing this for months; it's so exciting for me to see Elliott do it, and to see him so happy with himself! After bath with John, Elliott apparently made the sign for milk, expecting that he'd come back downstairs and nurse one more time before bed. We have started having him nurse and have a snack after bath/before bed. One night we got things out of sequence unintentionally, and, when downstairs after bath (a while after dinner), Elliott climbed into his high chair as though expecting to eat. So we all ate coconut milk and almond cookies. That night he slept soundly from 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. He's never gone eight hours before. He fussed for just a minute about midnight but I was not in bed, and he put himself back to sleep. Thus we now conclude that it is indeed hunger that makes him wake and not easily fall back asleep, so we'll do post-bath snack for a while and see how that goes. He's also taken to climbing into his high chair in the morning even before I've got breakfast ready. The chair is on the floor because he stands up toward the end of his meal, so it's easy for him to just climb in and wait to be served. Right now I'm accommodating him and feeding him something right away while the eggs cook; it's so exciting that he's able to show what he wants!

And it's also exciting that he's walking. We had a few days of not walking much in public and just a bit at home. Now he'll walk in public fine and is doing a lot of walking at home. It's so weird to see him just saunter into the kitchen from around the corner. Well, actually, it's more like ambling or something; he still has that drunk staggering look. When he's really tired, his balance isn't great, but he always catches himself well with his arms or just by sitting backward. We went to Nordstrom for his first time trying on shoes, and I got him a pair of Pedipeds, a soft-soled shoe just a bit thicker than Robeez. When I was showing them to John, Elliott got pretty excited and was trying to put them on his feet. Then with them on he seemed to walk around the house more confidently. Maybe he's just excited not to have that elastic digging into his chubby ankles.

Elliott is interested in putting his little potty seat on the toilet. Sometimes we get lucky and sometimes it's just an exercise. But the fun thing the other day was, while I sat in front of him , he pointed at the flowers on my pajamas, which prompted me to do the baby sign for flowers - putting fingers to nose and sniffing. Then he did it and has repeated it other times since. He's been panting like a dog occasionally when he sees a dog for a week or two, but now he's more quickly imitating sounds like the sniffing, a brrrrrooo elephant sound, grrr bear sound... But his own language is still a lot of "takka takka takka" and "boulidibibib." He does say "mama" and "dada" for the two of us, but he also uses "da" or "ba" with a raised hand and pointed finger as his "Hey; that looks cool! Let's take a closer look!" And he still shrieks. His laugh has gotten deeper and funnier to hear, more like a "I crack myself up" undertone with accent notes of "damn, life is good" and "this is the **** (stuff)", finishing with "come on, you know I'm right."

There's something he's eating that he's not reacting well to physically, and I'm guessing it's tomatoes. He really loves the grape and cherry ones from our garden and from our local CSA share. But he's got mild circles under his eyes and some diaper rash that tells me to cut back. That's the only food of which we've dramatically increased his intake recently, except maybe peaches. I really hope it's not the goat cheese because I love that he knows the word and sign! When eating blueberries tonight, he looked at me expectantly as if waiting for me to show him the sign. I didn't know it and I didn't feel like interrupting the snack to check the online ASL dictionary, which I had done at breakfast to learn what "peach" was. It's pretty cool to just watch someone sign on a 5-second video.

Tomorrow (or today, as it's 1 a.m.) we're having all five of the other couples and babies from our Bradley childbirth class over. It will be our first time trying out the pool Grandma Marcy sent us in our own front yard, but I'm sure Elliott will love it. We went to Katie and Joey's toddler pool briefly on Friday and Elliott had a blast splashing around on two feet and didn't mind if he fell that the water was about at the level of his face when on hands and knees. He really takes to the water. And this is the Aries kid who chose not to be a Pisces.

Well, it's now a full hour into cousin Zach's birthday, so perhaps I should do a little yoga and go to bed.