No Dad, that's not what I said

I was changing T's diaper on the floor out in the family room. T was looking past me at the fireplace for a few moments while I had my back to it. He suddenly said "nu-noh". I didn't acknowledge him. He repeated "nu-noh," slightly higher pitched. I asked "piano?" and looked around. No piano's behind me. "There aren't any piano's over there." There was a long pause. "NU --- NOH" said T very emphatically. His tone was perfect, suggesting I was a complete idiot. I looked around again tracing his eye sight, landing on the painting "Passage to the Sun" by Michael Whelan. This is a painting of an archway within the ruins of a stone castle. "Oh, tunnel!"

I swear I'm not a complete idiot. To be fair, there is an almost undetectable difference between T's pronunciation of "piano" & "tunnel". Context is the real indicator which one he is saying.

Phrasing

T has started with simple phrases! Yesterday morning he said "Hi Daddy," in a perfectly clear sweet little voice. My all time favorite and possibly his very first phrase is "made a mess." T enjoys making messing and talking about it. One of his favorites is to pull all of the hangers off of the low bar in Scott's closet - what a fun game! T never misses an opportunity to let us know he made a mess. This morning he dribbled milk down the front of his shirt while drinking it out of his cereal bowl and guess what he said. You got it, "made a mess."

This morning he said "Go Outside" for the first time. He loves to go outside and it's so fun that he's graduated from "outside ... outside ... outside" to "go outside." Saturday morning he was so cranky and kept begging to go outside. Once we finally headed outside he was so happy and ended up playing outside almost all day. We spent a couple of hours in the morning planting a garden and doing some cosmetic yard work and T very helpfully watered the new plants and seeds as well as his shoes and shorts. He loves to water the plants. Before we moved the tomatoes into the garden he watered them in their little planters on the back patio and did a surprisingly good job. I'm not very good at watering plants, so it's awesome to have a little person obsessed with watering plants around to remind me.

In the last few days T has been gabbering A LOT in multi-sylable phrases. I don't understand most of it, but he seems to be trying to carry on a conversation. He does say another phrase fairly regularly and I'm pretty sure it's "please help me." It sounds something like ee EP ee and when he says it we try to help him with whatever he's trying to do. I hope I've got that right. There's one more thing he's been saying a lot over the last couple of days and it sounds exactly like the German phrase "Ich Auch." That translates to "me too" but in context I'm sure that's not what he's trying to say. We really need to figure that one out because it's so common.

Chocolate

T is always putting things in his mouth ... still! The other day he seemed to be chewing on something, but I couldn't see anything in his mouth. The Scoot also noticed the chewing and asked T what he was eating.

"Choc-late" said T

After fishing around in T's mouth the Scoot found a small rubber knitting marker ... great for chewing, but not actually chocolate.

A Mole, But Not an Animal

The other day T started prodding a smallish mole I have on my jaw line.

"It's a mole," said I.

"Aa'mal!" said T.

No doubt he thought I said "animal" instead of "a mole" but I still tried to explain that some words have two meanings and that some moles are animals, but some moles are spots on peoples skin. Although T shows incredible intelligence for and 18-month-old (in my less than humble opinion as his mother), I suspect my explanation still came across as gibberish as several times a day he reminds me that there is an "animal" on my face.

The Photographer

T likes to play with my phone. A lot. It's just a simple flip phone and is very easy to get into photo mode with the click of a single button on the side. Here is our little photographer in the making:

Family room light fixture

Dining room corner

Another corner

Palm of hand

 Foot

  A's car seat

Bedding

Monday Monday

My little smuglet on the way to school Monday morning


Blowing raspberries


Talking


My, what big teeth you have


A Cute little boy wanders into my photoshoot. Nothing accessorizes my most recent knit creation better than T.

Serious Color

I set aside my lovely moss green cardigan unfinished in favor of more colorful ventures. I don't know if the Oregon winter gray got to me or if the featherweight cardigan just dragged on too long (by no fault of it's own), but I jumped on the Noro badwagon a couple of months ago and haven't fallen off yet. Noro is a self striping Japanese yarn that comes in many luxurious bases (silk/wool, cotton/wool, etc). It also comes in some very vibrant colors. I'm on my fifth Noro project in a row. Here are the first four ...

While I was slogging through the featherweight cardi a friend made a pair of these mitts. They were so simple (and I already had this awesome yarn in my stash) so I decided to take a break and make some too. They were fast indeed and I had so much fun working with the bright colors ... that cardi is still hibernating. The mitts are made from Noro Taiyo (cotton/silk/nylon/wool).

I only burned through part of a skein with the mitts, but I still felt like I was on a spring cleaning roll, so I dug out this soft wool/angora/silk blend that's been adorning my sewing room for at least 2 years. This was made from not quite two skeins of Noro Kochoran and I made up the pattern as I went along.

Emboldened by several small sweater successes in the last year, I decided it was time to try something grander - a full length cardigan! For probably the first time in my knitting career, I selected a pattern before picking the yarn. Usually it's the other way around - I fall in love with a yarn and then figure out what to do with it. I didn't actually have enough of any one yarn in my stash to do this, so I made a trip to the local shop and found this neat colorway that reminds me of lightening. None of these colors would have seduced me on their own, but I found the unusual combination very compelling. This is my Noro Kureyon (wool) Catwalk Lightening Cardigan. This was my first ever pieced sweater and it even has pockets! I can do anything now.

I fell in love with this Noro waistcoat pattern and after surviving Catwalk Lightening, pieces, pockets, and all I had no trouble diving right in. I had some of this Noro Taiyo yarn already, but not enough so I had to order more. Luckily, the yarn has so many colors to begin with, I had no trouble blending the two dye lots. The back was knitted with two skeins at the same time, alternating every two rows to create a broader stripe pattern.

A is for AA-mal

Last week we started cataloging T's utterances. He likes to mimic words we say, but most of the words in this list were spontaneous without prompting. Some of them really surprised me.

Abbey, all done, all gone, animal, apple, ball, balloon, banana, bath, bee, beep beep, belly button, bike, bird, blue, boat, boo, box, bubble, bum, butterfly, bye bye, car, cheese, cracker, daddy, dirt, door, duck, ear, ei ei o, engine, eye, eyebrow, fan, fish, flower, flush, green, hair, ham, hand, hat, hi, hiding, home, honey, hop hop, hot, kitty, knife, lawn mower, Letha, lights, mango, mess, milk, mommy, more, mouth, neigh, night night, noodle, nose, off, Oma, onion, outside, owie, owl, pee pee, pepper, pew, pizza, poo poo, quack, rain, raisins, razor, ring, row, row, school bus, screwdriver, spoon, strawberry, stripes, thank you, tick tock, toothbrush, truck, tunnel, twinkle, uh oh, up, vacuum, watch, water, wee wee wee, window, yellow, yum.

Animals: bzzzzz, quack quack, moo, meow, woof woof, who who, rawer

He also does vehicle sounds: Woo woo (train), rum rum rum (motorcycle), vroom vroom (car)

Everything his says is adorable, but the fundamental communication is especially nice. I love that he can ask for water and tell me when he needs to go poo poo. Sometimes he asks for specific food items like apples, mangoes, crackers, and hop hop (bunny grahams). The other day after I tucked him in I could hear him calling from his room. When I came back he was standing and pointing to his net full of stuffed animals and saying aa-mal. I love the way he says it with a long drawn out emphasis on the 'A'. I handed him a soft green frog from the net and he promptly dropped it in his crib and resumed repeating aa-mal. I handed him a striped tiger and he dropped that as well. Finally, I removed him from the crib and held him up to the net so he could pick his own aa-mal. He chose a spotted cow complete with bell (not my first choice for bed time). He laid right down when I put him in the crib and went to sleep with his aa-mal of choice.

T is fixated with Lawnmowers. As soon as he hears someone fire up a lawnmower engine he starts saying 'mowmower' and will keep saying it until we help him identify the source. He watched our neighbor mow his entire front lawn yesterday and waited patiently for glimpses of the lawnmower through the gate when our neighbor moved to the back yard. He loves to push the toy lawnmowers at school and also enjoys helping us vacuum.

The Scoot and I are often shocked by how observant T is. He'll say something that is very understandable, but we won't see the object he's mentioned. The first few times this happened I thought he was mistaken, but I've learned that if I look harder I'll find what he's talking about ... A silent, parked, lawnmower in a neighbors yard; a ball glimpsed through slats in a fence; a tiny tiny duck sticker on the dresser (qack qack). He's also training me to pay attention to the context when he says things. Although he gabbers plenty, most of what he says are 'real' words and if I try hard enough I can usually figure out what he's saying. This morning he pointed to his tray at breakfast and said something I totally didn't understand. When I looked at him but didn't respond he repeated it. It sounded liked "right here" and when I said "right here" he stopped repeating, so hopefully I got it right. I don't want to miss and opportunity to let him know that I'm really listening.