Putting things away. How this boy got his sense of order in our messy house, I do not know. (I hear it's a toddler thing.) He puts his shoes away fairly reliably, that is until recently, when he discovered that it's even more fun to put his socks in the laundry hamper when we get home. Anytime we ask him to put something in his laundry hamper, he'll drop what he's doing, giggle, then carry the article all the way down the hall and drop it into his hamper, very satisfied with himself. He likes to put other things in his laundry hamper as well, like toys and blocks, so we always have to sift through it when it's time to wash clothes so that we don't end up washing his blocks.

He also has special places to store toys and other things he finds around the house, such as the hall bookcase, where he places his blocks one by one (see above). There's also our table by the door, which we emptied out when he started walking and could reach inside it. Now, it's a place for his treasures. Whenever we can't find something, we look in that table first.

Language. This kid is having a language explosion. He tries to imitate the sounds we make, but he's still mostly doing it one syllable at a time. When we sing one of his songs about putting things away that ends with the line, "because it's fun to do!" he sounds out "dooooo" in the cutest way. Actually, it's more like "duuuuu" with a nice long "u" sound. We've started singing the alphabet really slowly with him, seeing how many of the letters he can sound out with us, and he's doing pretty well. He gets hung up on "k" sounds (ironic, since his name begins with K) and some of the softer consonants, like F and J, but he does pretty well with most of the other letters. Also, because I'm a total music nerd, I've started trying to do solfege with him (think "Do Re Mi" from The Sound of Music), and we've done it so many times that after I sing "do" and he repeats it, I then sing "re", and he moves straight onto "mi" because he knows that comes next. He does the same thing after I sing "la", moving straight onto "ti". It's awesome. If he ends up being a music major, at least he won't be one of those kids who has no idea how to use solfege.

Signing. His most often used signs are "more", "all done", "bath", and "shrimp". We hardly eat or sign shrimp, but every time I mention the word, he starts bouncing that finger up and down. He actually says "moh" when he signs "more", and he uses it ALL THE TIME, every time we're doing or eating something he enjoys. Sometimes he just says it when he's hungry — to him, it's associated with eating, but to us, it sounds really funny, since he hasn't had anything yet, so he can't actually have more of it. Jack sometimes brings up the funny line from The Princess Bride, when the know-it-all character keeps saying "Inconceivable!" and Montoya replies, "You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

The funny thing about the "bath" sign is that Kent will use it any time he sees someone getting wet, which includes swimming. We were watching part of Finding Nemo last night (because he was very excited by the Nemo sticker he got at the doctor), and he kept signing "bath", prompting Jack to look up the sign for "ocean" online so we could teach him that. For now, though, he's assimilating everything into that schema of bath.

Heh, just now, we were watching more of Finding Nemo, and during the sea turtle part when everyone keeps saying "Dude!", Kent kept repeating "Duuuuu!" He's cracking me up. And every time I or one of the characters says "Nemo", Kent tries his darnedest, but it keeps coming out as "Neemee", "Moomo", etc. It's like his version of saying "Elmo" or "mango", which both come out something like "Mehmo".

The last adorable thing is that he's still hugging everything in his path. Us, other people who hold him, his stuffed animals, the cats... the cats are less excited than anyone else, and we're still working on those gentle pets, instead of overzealous grabs, but it's rather cute anyway. And you can't beat Celia's expression in this photo.

I honestly don't know what I did for entertainment before he came along. Watching him grow and learn language is the coolest.

Labels: felines, Kent, photography

• posted by erica 11/12/2008 10:08:00 AM
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