What's That Doing

[Insert long apology about being tardy yet again with a dadblog]
[Insert excuses about being busy with work and whatever]
[Insert usual trite announcement that many things have changed since last blog]

Last time I wrote he was talking a bit. Saying individual words. And then a month or so later, something abruptly changed. You know, those big changes seem to come in the span of just a few days. I remember it back when he was learning to walk, and it happened again with saying phrases.

I could even sense that he was on the cusp of leveling up as a baby. It might have been in his manner and how he watched us saying simple phrases with great interest, usually pausing and digesting before replying. He started getting the sense that he could say things and we would understand and act on them. All of a sudden he was stringing together multiple words and starting to form his own thoughts. It was really cool to witness. I remember transitioning at story time from "where is the moon?" (then he points) to (me pointing) "what's that thing?" "MUNNN" (that's how he said "moon" at the time).

When you think about it, it's not automatic that the association between a word and an object goes both ways. To conjure up a word to describe something you see, you have to mentally match the picture with everything you know about and pick the right thing. I think it's likewise interesting that I can ask him to point to the crow in a book, and he'll be able to find even the most abstract representation of it. It's really fun to watch him doing this pattern matching.

After he was readily declaring objects he saw, he started grasping the concept of actions. I'd read books to him and describe what was going on on each page: "The bird is flying away." "The boy is eating cereal in a bowl with a spoon." "The shark is swimming in the water." Already knowing most of the nouns involved and with the pictures for context, he began grasping not only what objects are there, but also what actions they're taking. It was really fun transitioning from "What is that?" to "What is that doing?"

We've been adding in other descriptors, too. He's good at identifying colors now ("can you bring me the blue ball?") and adjectives like big and little. He's just starting with numbers. Even though he can more or less count to ten--thanks to my mom, who did a bunch of repetition with him--he is just starting to make the connection that you can count up a quantity of things and that it is somehow useful. He can identify two of a thing ("have two eyes", "see two birds") with some consistency, but not consistently higher than that.

The concept of "me" and "you" as a relative thing hasn't really emerged yet; if I say "hi baby!" he repeats it back rather than saying "hi daddy." He uses pronouns only insofar as he needs them; "want that" is a pretty well-worn phrase.

In most of his speech, he just doesn't bother with articles, pronouns, and some prepositions, though he does know and say "under", "on top of", and "inside". He's learned what "another" and "too" mean. His biggest abuse might be "again", which he used to adorably pronounce "O-gain" and which he bludgeons into asking us for basically anything: "milk again", "pick up again", "whee again" (translation: "Daddy, kindly say 'whee' in that silly voice while tickling my ears, like you just did"). We've tried steering him towards "can I have milk please" and "please pick me up", but it will take time.

The very fact that he's developed the capacity to string together a series of words like "hear loud airplane out there" and "see another bird eating bird feeder" is just astounding. It's a critical mass of foundational communication that can really build further at a rapid rate, because we can base new concepts and words on ones he already knows.

And of course, his ability to understand us has developed further than his ability to produce sentences, so I can say things like "crawl under the table and get your basketball", "let's go to your room and change your diaper", "no, grab the end of your sleeve", and "go get your other water cup", and he knows what to do.

It's neat that he also forms multi-step connections about hearing things. If he hears the microwave go beep from another room, I've heard him say "daddy cooking food." Or if he hears the dogs barking in the evening around the time I get home, he says "daddy home!" Hearing a sound and associating it with something that's not directly the sound itself. That's cool.

It probably goes hand in hand with speech development that his memory is also developing. He was already remembering various words and concepts and so on, but now he's remembering specific events that happened to him, like seeing his friend yesterday or painting earlier that day. Or maybe he always did but only just now has the language to talk about it. The last thing I do every night when tucking him in to bed is have him lie on his back in the dark and hold my hand as I recount all the things he did that day. I like to think he goes to sleep reflecting on those events and internalizing something about them... but who knows? He's out like a light three minutes later.

Repeating repeating

In repeating what we say, he attempts way more than I would bother with. He'll try pretty hard words, usually with hilarious results:

• Electric meter -> eno meeno
• Batteries -> bateetees
• Broccoli -> bagigi
• Helicopter -> akako
• Pacifier -> padadoh
• Thermometer -> monono
• Octopus -> opotus

We never correct his pronunciation directly; we just pronounce things correctly without correcting him ("yeah, there's some broccoli for you to eat"). Except for the word... "yeah". Lately he's been slurring "yeah" as "yuh", so badly we can't tell if he's saying yes or no. Now we've been steering him towards "yes" instead.

Kicking and throwing

On the physical development front, he's competent with walking and kind of an almost-running. I don't think both feet are off the ground at the same time, so I can't truly call it running, but it's still decently fast. He can walk a long time, at least 30 minutes straight without a real break. Considering how many little steps he has to take for that, it seems like quite a feet, I mean feat. The other day we basically jogged laps around the house for half an hour straight before he was starting to visibly get tired.

At some point he started getting really into kicking balls and other toys. It's probably after he watched some soccer games on TV. Since he doesn't yet really have the balance to stand on one foot to swing properly at the ball, the kick is more like a stabbing lunge with his foot, but it gets the job done. Sometimes he switches to throwing them instead.

He's a bit timid when it comes to going down slides and other things where he's elevated, but he does like climbing up stairs and sliding down on his bottom. In the last week or so he figured out how to ride his little push-trike around the house, as well as the toy car he can sit in. He still gets stuck (and frustrated), but especially on the bike can go really fast. A favorite game of his is to ride his bike under my legs, like a bridge. He'll go back and forth across the kitchen doing that for a good while. Easy entertainment, I say.

Confronting the kicking and throwing

This is an interesting segue into another side of his development. As he nears 2 years old, he's started pushing boundaries more and he's started having outbursts he can't quite control. It usually happens when we tell him not to do something, or when he wants our attention and we aren't giving him enough. Hitting, kicking, and throwing stuff have all come up. How do you convey to a toddler what things he can and can't throw and what things he can and can't throw at? Sure, you can throw your ball at the floor. No, you can't throw stuff that's too heavy. No, you shouldn't throw at people or windows or walls inside. It's confusing. We've basically said throwing his own toys at the floor is okay.

He went through a phase where he wanted to kick the dogs. No, you can't kick the dogs, but you can kick your ball instead. Sometimes he gets frustrated and tries to hit us. It's not malicious; it's just acting out. We calmly tell him it's not okay and physically prevent him from hitting us. He usually stops in a minute. I can just see in there that he has a feeling, and he doesn't really understand it or know what to do with it, so he just does something. Like throwing a toy clearly out of frustration. We know what to look for and how to deal with it now (just take the toy away and explain why, maybe give him an alternative outlet). I'm sure these outbursts will get harder to deal with and more creative before they get easier!

It's also important for us to give words to his feelings and explain how we think he's feeling and why he's doing things ("even if you're mad, I won't let you hit me"). We never get mad or yell. He's just figuring out how his little self works. We try to help with that. We also try to give him some warning and predictability, and this spans across disciplining and basically everything else. We'll tell him, "if you throw that toy again, I'm going to take it away" and also "in one minute it's time to put the toys away and go eat lunch."

I can imagine the frustration of not being in control at all, of being suddenly snatched away from any activity to do something seemingly pointless (what could be more important than playing with this toy??), so we try to cushion that by letting him know it's coming, even if he doesn't have a say in the final result. Conceding choices along with ultimata also helps, such as giving him the option to bring a toy with him or choose which of two required activities to do first.

The really wacky thing--which is unintuitive and I didn't realize until I read some parenting books--is that setting limits for kids is actually comforting to them. There's a balance you have to strike between giving them freedom to be independent and limiting what they're allowed to do. Toddlers don't have the capacity to deal with unlimited freedom.

Having someone to look at who clearly is in charge and knows what to do is a stabilizing force in their lives and gives them confidence to explore on their own. It's the same reason why the calmer and more in control we are around him, the better he responds. I have vague memories of times when my parents either cried or were very upset or agitated when I was little, and though I can't remember the specifics, I still remember it being deeply unsettling.

The other side of emotions

Understanding emotions comes up a lot at this time in his life. Just as we explain what he's feeling, when we read books together we talk about what we think the characters in the book are doing and what we think they're feeling: "the kitty is lost and worried and wants to go home", "that boy looks happy because he's eating yummy food". He picks up on it, too. Just the other day we were reading a book and on his own he identified a monkey feeling sad. Cool to see him start making these frankly kind of subtle associations. But as a human he's wired at some level to be able to, and it's developing.

One of the cutest things he started doing is pretending. It's weird to think about because as an adult I just don't anymore, really. He pretends his animal toys are flying and running and jumping and so on. He pretends he's a frog and hops around. He pretends he's eating his toys and stuff. Sometimes you can see him kind of get lost imagining stuff while he's playing. It's very cute.

Creative and tinkering sides

Drawing and painting have been some of his top activities lately. We have a little high chair strapped to the counter in the kitchen, and he asks at least once a day to go up there and draw with crayons. So we tape down a piece of paper and give him a jar of crayons to draw with. He's allowed to have one crayon out at a time (and he's pretty good at putting them back).

He picks his own colors and generally draws circles and dots, but I've taught him how to draw lines, too. If I'm sitting with him, he also asks me to draw stuff. "Draw another circle. Draw daddy again." He gets really into it, and it feels like he's got a process there, inscrutable as it is to us.

Painting on the kids' easel he has is another big hit, though with a bunch of setup and cleanup. We pick two colors he can use in a given session, and he comes to the bathroom to help wash the brushes and cups in the sink when we're done, and helps carry part of the easel back to put away. He doesn't seem to mind.

One of my favorite things to do with him is get him involved with fixing stuff and any housework I need to do. The other day we got some dowels from the store and I had to saw them to the right size, so I got him up on a stool and had him help hold the saw while I did it. Boy did he love that. Whenever I have to change the batteries in a toy, I get him to help turn the screwdriver. He loves to get right in there, usually so much that he's in the way, but he's just so enthusiastic I can't say no.

When he's playing with new toys, it seems like the ones that hold his attention the most have various articulated parts or some kind of machinery to them. He loves screwing and unscrewing caps on things and trying to figure out how things fit together, like buckles. The other day he was playing with a toy tractor which had wheels that made some eyes move when they turned. He spent fully fifteen minutes intensely focused on reliably turning the wheels and seeing what happened. His breathing changes and you can see the smoke pouring out of his little ears.

He has a bath toy that is pretty cool. It's battery-powered and has contacts on the bottom that have it turn on when it's in contact with water. He's still puzzling out how exactly it turns on, so sometimes he'll spend a good chunk of bath time experimenting with it and trying to figure out how it works.

When he gets like that, I try not to interrupt him or help him. I love watching him dive in. It's hard not to project my thoughts about this onto him. I don't know what kind of boy he's going to grow up to be. I don't know whether how he acts now will mean anything at all later. Of course I'd love for him to be a bit like me, but I have to keep reminding myself that he's his own little guy. He's just turned 2 (birthday party pic with bonus photobomb by his super cute cousin above). I can't wait to see what his next leap is.