Nineteen Months

I really didn't intend to let so much time go by without blogging your growth and development, but having a toddler is really so much more work than a newborn! Well no, scratch that, there's just less nap time downtime for me to write. So no thoughtful letter this time around, just quickly jotted down stories so that I remember what you've been like the last five months.

I think this picture is fairly representative of the current state of things: Walnut is resigned and lazy but still secretly begging for belly pats, you are goofy and into elephants and balls. 

• For a while, you were really into this dollar store package of yellow balloons. You wanted to carry them everywhere and point to every balloon on the package sand say "Ball! Ball! Ball!" like some kind of weird balloon affirmation ritual. More than once, you tried to bring it to a meal, but we have a no toys and books at the table rule (the latter is really necessary for both you and me, less so for Daddy), so I took it away. You had the saddest crumple-face meltdown and refused to eat without your beloved package of balloons. I really wanted to 1) laugh at how pathetic the whole situation was, and 2) capitulate, because you were really so sad, but I held strong and calmly reminded you of the rule.  

Teary-eyed over a package of balloons. 

• You are really into looking at books with real animal pictures, so I've been checking those out at the library for you. You loved the last batch so much, they were overdue for three weeks and I ended up paying over $20 worth of fines. Oops. Generally I try to return library books without you in tow, because when you saw the book return machine eating "your" soccer ball book, you got seriously upset. I thought I was being so clever by returning them solo, but the other day we mentioned one of the library books and you promptly went running throughout the house looking for it. I'm amazed (and so proud) that that book apparently made such an impact that you remember it even a month later! You are indeed your mother's child. 

Even the SPCA fundraising booklet is acceptable reading material, because it has pictures of cats and dogs in it.

• You are still more of a cat person than a dog person. Granted, ever since Sandra Boynton's Doggies went missing a month ago, you've periodically pointed at its picture on the back of her other books, and asked where it is, but I like to tell myself that that's because you like inventorying, and not that you really like dogs that much. I console myself that every morning, your first order of business is finding Walnut to say hi, and every night, you have to say goodnight to Walnut and give him a kiss before you can sleep. When we go out, I am always surprised when you point and insist that you see a cat that I can't see, and then it turns out that you were right, there really was a cat. Or tiger. Or something else vaguely cat-like. Daddy says you're an S for cats. 
• You might also be a J. You love inventorying your toys: cars, dinosaur food, hotel shampoo bottles, wooden stacking rings, and gelato containers all get lined up, appraised, then rearranged into a more pleasing configuration. You sometimes get a little too eager to clean up and throw everything into the laundry basket regardless of whether or not it needs a wash. So far, you seem pretty amenable to cleaning up when I say it's time, knock on wood... 

You tried to help out the library by rearranging all the chairs in the kids area .

• Besides running, you can now walk backwards and on tippy-toes, as well as hang out in an Asian squat. You can also approximate a bow (to the horse and cow), strut (like a duck), and spin (with the chickens, cluck cluck cluck). You're also ridiculously fast, more resilient to falls, reaching to the third shelf of the EXPEDIT, and climbing the boxes barricading the penguin humidifier in your room. 
• But you are really cautious in new environments. When we go to the park, you do not want to let go and explore. Given your choice, you prefer to stay in my arms for the first several minutes when in a new place, then depending on how stimulating the environment is, you may cautiously explore. No amount of warming up time, though, seems to be enough to get you to climb a play structure. 
• I was beginning to think that you would escape having a security item, but now you seem fairly attached to your towel-turned-"bo"-blankie. After I spent all of third trimester lovingly sewing quilts and plushies for you, of course you would glom onto a mass-produced, non-marine-themed towel, of all things. From Hong Kong*, no less, so there's no buying replacements if this one goes missing. Sigh. It is pretty cute, though, seeing you pad around the house with a little light blue blankie like Linus. 

Not the greatest picture, but that's the towel blankie. This was the morning you insisted on wearing Daddy's sock. 

• Bebberousness is brought to you by the letter B. No surprise there, I suppose, considering we call you Bebbers, Mr. Bebs, Bub, etc. But what I meant to say is that most of your "vocabulary" is some variant of bo/ba/bee. Bo = ball or balloon or elephant or your blankie (which has elephants on it), ba = zebra or bus or bye or sheep or please pick me up, depending on the context, bee = berries or beans or babies or bellybutton or bear, again, depending on the context. But hey, at least you finally call me Mommy now, or rather, Mae, as in mah-mae. Of course, you also call the moon mae, but then I guess my name originates from the Greek goddess of the moon...perhaps you can somehow intuit name etymology? You have also picked up D sounds, but because Daddy always asks you to say "please, Daddy," you've come to the conclusion that dada = please. 
• You have become a self-proclaimed vegetarian/occasional pescatarian. If it were up to you, you would live on carbs, fruit, and beans/legumes. It's a struggle to get you to eat any chicken or pork, and you pretty much won't touch any form of beef. If you're in the mood, you'll eat fish. Cheese and egg are tolerable, but really, a diet of blueberries and strawberries would be just fine with you. Perhaps you are secretly a fruit bat? 

You didn't want your turkey, but Walnut was all too happy to take it off your hands for you. 

• When I was growing up, I was always hanging around church while my parents were in meetings. You, on the other hand, are always hanging around school while your mom does review sessions. Generally, I can't complain about your behavior; you're more or less quiet and you haven't destroyed anything or hurt yourself too badly, and you're willing to be pacified with snacks, calculators, and of course, selfies on student phones. It's ridiculous how good you are at taking selfies. I also hear that you enjoy Snapchat, so in that arena you're more up to date than I am! You have your favorite teachers (Mrs. Condit and Mrs. Sun, of course, and Lester) and students (Maggie, hands down) and classrooms (Mrs. Campbell's room, with all the tigers on the walls), so I hope you have as many fond memories as I do of that old church building.  

At school, ready to learn!

• It's scary how much you learn from watching and listening to us. You want so badly to be just like all the "adults" in your life! I say "adults" in quotation marks because, besides learning to vacuum the couch and under the table like I do (no lazy slapdash vacuuming for you!), you also learned to use phones to take a hundred selfies, probably from students at school. You also insist on having deodorant in your armpits (Daddy fakes the application with a covered stick), sitting on chairs at desks when at school, and trying to help dust the furniture when I do. If you can get ahold of a calculator, you hold it to your ear and babble for a while, then say "bye bye!"  I always knew toddlers were like little sponges, but I think it really sank in when you started saying "bad 貓貓!" every time you saw crumbs or other litter on the floor. It took me a while to figure out what you were saying, but one morning you pointed to a hairball under the piano bench and said "bad 貓貓!" and I suddenly realized that I always call Walnut a bad 貓貓 when he makes a mess exiting his litter box. Oops. Thankfully it's not a cuss word, but I do feel slightly bad every time you try to blame a mess on your big brother. Still, I have to laugh whenever we're at school and you exclaim "bad 貓貓!" when walking through the classrooms after kids have been messily snacking.  

Also not a cuss word, but still concerning? One time you pulled up Siri and babbled at it, and apparently Siri thought you asked for a sex movie.

• You are finally developing a sense of humor about incongruous statements/situations. You'll smile deviously and shake your head no when I ask if you're a little boy, then nod yes that you're a cat. You ask to wear your socks on your hands and laugh when you can't pick things up. If I put my shirt on you, you run to the mirror and giggle at your reflection. Lately, you've been requesting to be rolled up/tucked in with a blanket so that you look like a baby burrito once more.  

• You are such a busy little person. If you're not arranging all your toys, you are busy opening up all your containers and pouring out their contents, pulling all the books off your shelves, or toting your food pouches back and forth. There have been multiple occasions when Daddy has come home from work to find that his socks and boxers have all been rearranged because you took them all out, then put them back in (of your own accord!) in a different order. In the backyard, you love trotting back and forth with your little cup to water all the plants, and if the plant tags are close enough to the edge of the planter box, you will dutifully collect them all and present them to Daddy. 
• Everything needs to have a signature noise. I suppose that's really our own fault, what with emphasizing that cows go moo, sheep say baa, and three singing pigs say la la la. Unfortunately, that means I frequently have to improvise when you want to know what noise a giraffe makes (we settled on "nom nom nom" since they're ruminants), or a rabbit ("hippitty-hop"), or an alligator ("snap! snap!"). Worst improvisations: a snail (according to your Auntie Emily, "snurrrr....snurrrr...") and a beansta, because one time we tried Trader Joe's black bean rotini, which was nasty, but bean + pasta = beansta, which was too evocative of a name not to attempt illustrating, so I drew one on the whiteboard and then you wanted to know what noise it made, so Daddy decided that it could just say its name several times in quick succession, like a Pokemon. 

That's the beansta on the bottom left, with a grill and a blingy necklace and wielding a gun and a syringe full of drugs. "Beansta beansta!" On the right, next to the periodic table, is a Japanese beansta, courtesy of Auntie Emily. 

*You also LOVE the little public light bus model that Lester has in his office, so maybe we are indoctrinating you correctly, that Hong Kong is the best.