Month 21 - "my eye, the doctor said I'm not meant to get dribble in it!"
With great mobility comes great hilarity. Hamish insists that he can walk to the shops. And he can. Eventually. He is extremely easy to distract, by bricks, or sticks or birds or cars going past, etc. It seems to work a bit better if he has something to push as well, like his pram or trolley. If he has decided that he should be walking, putting him in the pram often leads to screaming and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and trying to climb out while we're moving, or standing up and leaning against the back of the pram. This is exciting, because the engineers who designed it didn't really take into account that it might happen, and it changes the dynamics of the pram quite severely. I haven't shot him out of it by turning yet, but its only a matter of time.
Not all of the increased mobility is awkward tho... wait, no, yes it is. tacomonkey described him as a 'sandwich ninja' as she found bits of sandwich crust sequestered randomly all over her house after a visit where Hamish had been exploring their house. With the sudden cold mornings, he often gets dragged into bed for the morning feed so neither goldengrove nor I have to get up before we have to. But when Hamish decides its time to get up, he slips out of bed and either pushes goldengrove's glasses into her face or smothers me with a shirt - the signal is clear, get up and do these things you do when you get up.
We've been trying to take advantage of it as well - he's been to Jells Park for a long stop twice this month. The first time was wandering around the lake and being accosted by "ducks" (moorcocks) and being fascinated by the idea of putting wire on decking. The second time was mostly to play on the playground where I managed to slam his upper lip into a metal bar. Despite having horror images of having knocked out teeth he recovered and spent an entertaining walk down to the lakeside pushing the giant pram (read, hanging on to the pushbar while it coasted down the hill). goldengrove has also taken him swimming a few times at the nearby Monash Aquatic Centre which seems to be popular. Both of us want to make sure he's not nervous in water, and between the swimming and clowning around in the bath, that seems to be working out fairly well.
goldengrove takes Hamish along to the library on a Wednesday morning for storytime, which is pretty popular. She picks up some extra books each time, as reading is still high on Hamish's list of things to do (especially when going to bed - that is working well still). We are building up a critique of different kids books - whether they are easy to handle, read well, or have objectionable lessons. We might be reading too much into some of the books, but the mother cat in Three Little Kittens seems to be setting them up to fail - eating pie with mittens, of course you're going to make a mess. Also, the duck in Duck in the Truck is a jerk - spoilers and all, but once he is helped out of the muck by the sheep, frog and goat, he just zooms off without saying thank you. Orrr maybe we need to just look at the pictures too.
'Thank you' is just one of thousands of phrases Hamish can't actually manage as yet, but he can say please (actually "peeeeas"). He's working out that please is the word that means you'll do something, but he hasn't made the connection with actually asking you for something at the same time. So he'll say "pleeeeease" and look imploringly at you... but not give you any idea of what he actually wants. Its usually "up", or at least that seems to be a reasonable replacement for whatever it was. He can actually say 'up', its just that it was the thing we started getting him to say 'please' with the most.
More words seems to appear in his vocabulary daily. "wheels" was pretty popular, and accompanied by pointing at any wheels he sees. You might not realise just how many wheels you see every day, but I do. Now. He also says hot, walk, bright, day, night, stars, owl, hug, six, train, push, bush and tree regularly in addition to all the previous words he's mastered. He definitely understands a lot more than he can manage to articulate - when we went along to tyggerjai & bunnikin's goodbye party at kitling&nigelw's house, bunnikin said there were more toys in the library. Hamish wandered in there and span around saying something. It took a minute or two before I realised what he was saying was "Josh" and he was spinning around because Josh reads books at the local library during storytime and they do a dance that involves turning around. I've asked him to pick up a particular bag and take it into the kitchen and he's gone straight for it and walked off. This reinforces my need to change how I talk - he already starts to yell "SHEESH!" and "ODDD!" when I drive away from the house, pre-empting the yelling at other drivers I will undoubtedly be doing during the trip.
Other things he has done this month: ran away from me dressed as a zombie; patted a pony; dribbled in bjj_moves's eye; patted many cats; patted a dog; visited a grandmother for her birthday; gone to his cousin's first birthday; visited a couple of kinders and put in an application for 3yo kinder. I feel that there is something broken with a process that means you have to apply 18 months ahead of time for a single year's worth of kinder - the whole system appears to need an overhaul. Oh the things that have suddeny become important in my life :)
Feast your ocular organs