Thursday, February 16, 2006

17 ...


"My favorite smiles"
Click here for more photos.

MONTHS that is! Happy Birthday Goosey Guy! You are 17 months old today and every bit of it. Do you know what that means?: "every bit of it"? It means that you have every characteristic -- good and, 'er, not so good, 'er, challenging, I'll say -- that a goose your age should have. Translation: You're giving me a run for my money.

To celebrate your special day, we visited the zoo. As a result of your Everyone Poops book ("An elephant makes a BIIIIIGGGG poop"), you have developed a little bit of an elephant infatuation, so we thought it appropriate to indulge you with REAL elephants. Aren't we accomodating? Whenever you see anything remotely resembling a pachyderm, you purse your lips together and blow out, attempting to make the trumpeting noise that an elephant makes (and that mama makes everytime we talk/read about elephants). In the picture above, you and Dad have just finished speaking in Elephant, and it was real funny.

Actually, animal sound games are all real funny (which is drastically different from "really funny"), and your dad and I get as big a kick out of it as you do. My personal favorite is your imitation of a duck, which involves the longest, loudest, hardest "qu" sound in the history of the planet. The "qu" portion of your "quack" goes on and on and gets louder and louder until you finally punctuate it with a very short "a" sound and then a moderately long "ck" on the end. In fact, it's not all that different from your pronunciation of the word "clock" -- which, by the way, has mostly been replaced by the phrase (yes, I said PHRASE, not just word -- pure genius), "tick tock."

And speaking of phrases ...

Today as Dad was leaving for work, you said, "See ya later." You also said, "Push it!" about your trike and "I don't know" about my persistent question: "Why are you coughing?" (Side note: WHY ARE YOU COUGHING???)

There have been some changes made in our daily routine of late due to the findings of some not-so-recent research about the damage that can be caused by videos -- yes, even educational videos. Up to now we had allowed you to watch ONE educational video per day OR to play ONE computer game per day. However, it seems that pediatric researchers believe this MIGHT cause you to have ADD or ADHD and so we have done away with all of it for now. This development has opened up a whole new world for both you and me. For me, it means that I have to come up with something new and completely engrossing for you to do while I cook delicious, low-fat meals. For you it means that you get to watch me clamber around desperately stuffing new objects into your hands as I to-and-fro throughout the kitchen attempting to cook delicious, low-fat meals for my beloved family. In fact, this has been much more difficult for ME than for YOU, because it is now up to me to find something to entertain you during the 20 minutes it takes me to cook up those delicious low-fat meals (EVERY night -- I should really change my name to Susie or Betty). So far the experience has been nothing short of HAIRY. When Dad is around, this is not a problem ... one of us cooks and the other entertains you. But when it's just me and you then LOOK OUT. In the last week I have entertained you with the following items: play-doh (see my Flickr photostream for evidence), a salad spinner, and an almost-empty bottle of French's mustard.

Truth be told, you never really watched those videos anyway. You'd look up during your favorite parts, but for the most part, you'd just sit in the living room listening -- jamming out to the classical music and simultaneously ripping CDs off the shelf, or playing the piano, or climbing onto the back of the recliner, or snatching ink pens from my desk, or flipping through the pages of your favorite books, or pushing trucks around all over the floor (and up the walls and across the furniture), or opening and closing DVD cases, or any number of other 17-month-old Big Boy activities. And don't worry ... all that research ... it only says that it's bad for children who are under 24 months of age ... so in seven months you can watch whatever you want baby!

Just kidding.

Happy 17 Little Buddy,
Mama

2 comments:

Carrie said...

That photo is killing me. I love it - what a great shot of the two of them.

Basha's Mama said...

Great, now you're giving into the ADD hype! I was using you as my justification for the BE videos... *lol* I love the pics!!

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