growing up—17 months

Dear Gideon,

Early into August, while eating lunch one afternoon, Daddy asked if you wanted some rice. Without skipping a beat you looked at him and said, "Rii-ce". Perfectly. We both looked at each other wide-eyed and connected with the same thought, our child is a genius! I cannot believe how smart you are and although your development may be right on track, we think you are extra smart. You are mimicking words we say non-stop these days—which means any day now you'll utter the word "shit". As long as it's not in front of Gam, I'll let it slide. But let's not worry about that right now, instead let's focus on a couple of my favorite additions to your vocabulary.

17 months—August 24, 2008

First we had "Mom-mom". Every time you said it my heart would swell because I knew it was being said to me. I'm your "Mom-mom" and you coined that term of endearment for me. And you said it often. You've since shifted that to just "Mom" these past couple of weeks but it is no less sweet. Besides "Mom" and "Dad" you seem to have a few other favorite words. "Dog", "No", "Uh-oh", and "Juice". Each one has it's own cuteness factor but the way you say dog is hilarious. It's sort of like "dough-ga" and sounds oddly like it's coming from the voice box of an old smoker.

riding the carousel at the Toledo Zoo for the first time

We've been working on teaching you to wink this month. Much to my happiness you wink well—and with either eye just like Mom. I learned to wink at a really young age and G-Gi says I would wink at people everywhere we went. I hope you take after me that way—especially since your Dad can't really wink at all.

watching Dad put on a puppet show at 577 Foundation

You decided that two naps no longer fit into your daily schedule and we've completely abandoned the morning nap. This was a little tricky because you wanted the one nap a day to be in the morning and I wanted it to be in the afternoon. We went through a few days of droopy eyes at 11:30 but now you know that naptime is after lunchtime. It's a nice break in the day for all of us and since you only nap once we get 2.5 to 3 glorious consecutive hours of down time.

this look is going to kill the ladies some day

When you first started watching cartoons (bad Mom that I am) I refused to let one of those shows be Barney. Curious George, Clifford, Super Why, or Arthur? Sure, even I enjoy those—but Barney? No way. Something about that purple dinosaur rubs me the wrong way. I didn't hide my dislike for Barney either but G-Gi didn't care, she would let you watch it. And of course you loved it. You'd do a little dance when it came on. So I gave in and let you watch it in our house once or twice. One afternoon as the show wrapped up Barney and his pals were singing the "I Love You" song like they do at the end of every show. When they got to the part that goes, "with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you", you ran over to me, gave me a huge squeeze, leaned your head back to look at me and then gave me a big kiss.

checking out your reflection at the Butterfly House

Needless to say, we have watched Barney (or at least the last 5 minutes of) several times since that incident. I'm not ashamed of my ulterior motives at all. As a matter of fact, this afternoon we were eating lunch and I turned on PBS because it was time for Barney. Much to my dismay (a phrase I never thought I would write) Barney was not on. I checked the listings online and it looks like Barney and Friends is no longer part of the daily lineup. It made me a little sad. Good thing you have me to sing it to you.

whee!

Love,

Mom-mom