Liam is a year and a half old. Part of me cannot believe it, and part of me feels like he's been in our lives forever, surely longer than a year and a half.
When I look in his face I imagine that I can already see the contours of the face he will have as a boy and a man, because he is already such a little boy. I still call him my baby, but really he is a little boy, a little person. Watching him constantly evolve and develop his own individual preferences and mannerisms...his own personhood, has been the most magical aspect of motherhood so far.
It isn't all upside, and before I get incredibly mushy, I suppose I should record the trying moments for posterity. For the last week or so he has been really into pinching. Hard. And it turns out that becoming a little boy is the dawn of discipline. He got his first few brief timeouts while we were staying with the McDonnells for intentionally pinching someone hard enough to hurt immediately after being told not to do that. I wrestle with whether to try to ignore the pinching (sometimes physically impossible) to try to avoid a strong reaction that might encourage the behavior, or to tell him it hurts, makes the person sad and that he may not do it. That hands are for helping and being kind. He knows what "gentle touch" is, and if I ask, "Can you show me gentle touch?" he will reach out and gently pet the person. He knows, but still he pinches. Gar! Though I wouldn't trade it, it was certainy easier when our only jobs were to feed him and love him and change diapers. Along with becoming a person, is the added job of trying to figure out the right way to guide his actions and interactions with others to help him become a kind loving person who is a joy for others to be around.
He has certainly begun to test boundaries, and it can be exhausting to be consistent. We are trying to explain once, and follow up with action rather than nagging words that start to lose meaning. So once I tell him he may not climb on the stools in the kitchen and I take him down to the floor by his toys, or put him on the blue climbing block where he can more safely stand to look at what we are doing on the kitchen counter. But the next time he climbs the stool, I just have to drop whatever I'm doing, go to him and quietly but firmly take him off the stool and put him on the floor or climbing block. Again and again and again, for the next 107 times that day.
He loves climbing the stools in the kitchen that are too tall and wobbly to be safe. He loves standing or bouncing on chairs that are only safe to sit on. At Grandma McDonnell's house he decided he liked to put his toes on the table. And the pinching. And he seems to have a thing where he slowly bull-dozes smaller kids over in a way that doesn't seem overtly aggressive, but results in a littler kid back-peddling bewildered and therefore isn't good. We pick our battles. We aim for consistency. We do what we can. And we are exceedingly grateful that we get to practice for at least a few years before we have to do anything so complicated as have a talk with him about (gulp) safe sex. Right now getting him to stop pinching feels like the Mount Everest of parenting.
Like any toddler, his tastes are sometimes fickle. One day he may love blueberries more than life itself, and the next day if they are put on his tray he will smash them all up and swipe his hands across the tray to send them flying overboard. But lately he really can't get enough of watermelon and pickles. While visiting the McDonnells he really started grooving on salad for the first time. Turns out the key is tasty dressing. He leaned over and grabbed some salad off Grandma's plate and the next thing we knew he was shoveling lettuce into his maw faster than he could chew. He is a very well rounded eater, just as likely to reach for asparagus or broccoli as fruits or carbs.
He loves books, and his hands-down favorite right now is "where is Masie." Given the choice, he always picks to read that one, sometimes going to get it if it is not one of the choices offered to him. It is a book about a mouse that goes to hide, and on each page you lift a flap to see if masie is hiding there, but "Oops! not here!" you find one of her friends instead. On the last page it says "knock knock" and shows a little red door. When you open the door, there's masie! Liam likes to knock with his fist on the door when I read "knock knock."
Today while we were in the room he brought me a diaper and I very extravagantly said (and signed) Thank you! And then he brought me another and I thanked him again. And after a pause it occurred to me that he might need a diaper change. Lo and behold, he had pooped his diaper. I'm hopeful that bringing me a diaper was him communicating that he needed a diaper change, and part of his growing awareness of all thigns diapering that may help us with potty training down the road.
His communication has really taken off in leaps and bounds. June was really a transformative month where, for the first time, Terry and I both became convinced that he was really showing signs of receptive language: or in plain non-clinical terms, he understood english. Now, if you say, "go get the book" he goes and gets a book. If you say, "bring your shoes to Daddy" he does.
He has started to pick signs up quickly. He now know sand regularly uses the signs for eat, milk, more, bath, sleep, play, thank you, please. He started trying to sign "help" (one flat hand 'lifting' the other fisted hand) just today. His signs are still approximations, so "eat", which is supposed to be bringing the finger tips together to the mouth like you are eating a grape, looks more like him punching himself in the jaw. And he also uses that sign for when he wants to drink, having never taken to any of three possible signs for drinks we've tried (drink, cup, or water).
He says ball "bah!", button "buh!", and mama very clearly and pretty often. We used the tip from the speech therapist to create interesting word patterns, and taught him to say "GO!" We say "ready, set" and then pause and he says "go!" (only more like gah!) and then we swing him between our hands while walking, or lift him up into the air like a plane. He will sometimes say more "moh," book "booh"and dada. Can you tell he's pretty big on the starting consonant sound, not much for whole words? Occasionally he busts out with something that sounds very much like the right word or phrase (like "read book") at the appropriate time (while walking towards me holding out a book), but doesn't repeat it regularly or often enough to be sure. By the same uncertain measure, he may actually know 10 or so gutteral Dutch words that he uses when he's giving me a lecture about something. They mean nothing to me, but he says them so seriously it is nearly comical.
Seeing that he truly understands and processes language is an incredible relief. It has erased nearly all of my concerns about his language delay. And it is also a selfish joy. Before we were like two people dancing in the same room, but not necessarily dancing together. Now I can communicate with him and it makes me feel like it is possible to engage him and interact with him on a whole new level. Like now I can know my son, and he can know me.
Speaking of dancing, this baby loves to dance. He will spontaneously start dancing when music is on, or if you ask him "Let's dance Liam". Mostly he does deep knee bends in place, mixed together with a few quick staccato prancing footsteps, and occasionally a few times of turning around in circles. We're exposing him to a broad range of things, from Motown and hiphop to African music and country. Whatever the music, dancing usually makes him break out into a broad grin, and I like to see that, like me, dancing is a source of happiness for him.
In fairness, everything seems to be a source of happiness for him. He especially loves being around other people. Terry and I mentioned today that as best as we can think, he may have gone through a week of stranger danger. But generally when he sees strangers he wants to wave at them, or go right up to them where they sit or stand to see what they are doing. Or point out his little finger at them to see if he can shock them with his magic "buzzy" finger (a game Grandma McDonnell invented).
We had lunch today with an old friend of Terry's, and after spending an hour with Liam, she said, "He really is a joyful child." Which I thought was about the best thing a parent can hear.
He can now climb out of his pack and play, so we had to devise creative ways to create a safe place for him to sleep while we were visiting Grandma and Pop McDonnell. We wound up putting an inflatable mattress for him at the end of a hall by our bedroom and putting a tall baby gate in front of it. But he was still having a hard time falling asleep in the unfamiliar environment. And because the inflatable mattress was big enough and on the ground, I could crawl in there with him and lay down next to him.
He would turn around a few times like a cat settling in, and then he found just the perfect spot with his head resting in the nook of my arm, his back cozied against me so I could feel he sweet slow breathing and nestle my nose into his sweet soft blond baby curls in the back of his head just like I used to when he was a tiny newborn. One afternoon I stayed with him like that for almost an hour, just enjoying the closeness of being with him while he slept peacefully. He stirred a bit when he woke, but he didn't cry at all. When he saw that I was still there next to him, he lavished me with such a smile it lit my heart on fire. He beamed. For such a smile I would be willing to sleep on the floor next to his crib or let him into our bed all the time. I'd never be well rested, but man I'd be happy.
I suppose I have come to realize how fleeting this time with my baby is, that he is always growing older and becoming more independent. I love that independence and growing sense of Liam as an individual little human. But I also treasure these soft small moments where he is wholly my baby and there is nothing in the world so much as being quiet curled up together.
