Tractor, plow, farm, papa chicken, rooster, cockadoodle-doo, push, pull, red-stop, green-go, siren, big, small, red, blue, yellow, green, purple, black, white, circle, piece, turn….

The words are just exploding and they have started to come in pairs ” bucket water more” “Mamma door” “Book read”.  Places have significance.  Mention library and he says “book!”.  He recognizes letters as a concept though everything is called C.  He counts to three and can fill in to 6 or 7, but I am not certain that he understands the concept of set.  Maybe.  He knows at least 6 colors with 80% accuracy. Yellow is his default.  If he is trying to express the concept of color or he cant remember the name then its yellow.

We read.  Palo the Train is the sacred text by which all other books are measured.  Palo is a train on what appears to be a Turkish Island.  Published in 1975, we have only a used copy picked up at a book sale.  It is rapidly showing age.  Potty books are a favorite topic and the tractor book. The Tool Box is a simple book that is rapidly teaching Alon the names of common tools.  Tractors and other large or unusual vehicles are of great interest.  Alon absorbs entire taxonomies of names.  He knows the difference between wheels and crawler tracks, a plow and front loader, a nail and a screw. 

He says, “oo-la-la”.

Holding a toad found under a rock….”oohh, oohh”  Head cocked to one side he coos at the animal.  It seems to work, the toad is convinced of Alon’s benign intentions and stays put in his tiny open palm.

Walking up the road, I find wild muscidines have fallen from some vine too high to see. I eat one and hey are delicious and so a gather a few and hand one to Alon.  He already has one in his mouth. I call Chris back and  we all gather  the small purple, pearls of sugar.  There are not many.  Muscidines grow singly, not in clumps.  These are small, about the 1/4 the size of most I have seen.  We quickly decimate the supply. Chris and I move on, Alon is convinced there are still a few left and wont leave.  We head down the other side of the hill, Alon is no longer in view.  Its several minutes later before Alon finally follows.  Not long ago he would have followed immediately, protesting loudly, but he would not have allowed us out of site.

Momma, poop!  He is bringing me a small piece of toilet paper covered in what is clearly toddler poop.  I hurry him to the potty.  Off in search of a book I scan for the rest of the poop.  I find it, on the glass top of the coffee table.  He has made a reasonable effort to clean it.  The rest of the poop makes it into the potty.

Momma, poop!  Its been a few hours since the last event and he now has a wipe, streaked with poop.  He seems to be telling me this happened in the potty, hard to tell.  The rest also end up in the potty.  I find no signs of poop elsewhere, but I keep my eyes  open.

Momma and Papa counted my words again yesterday.  They say I know 70 words.  I actually know a lot more, but they don’t understand me.  Momma’s favorites are “yogurt” and Papa likes my high pitched, melodic “Ma-Ma”.

I learn a new word about every other day.  Right now Papa is teaching me “up-side down”, which I say with remarkable clarity. Momma is working on two and a few colors.

My favorite things to talk about are birds, flowers, water, dogs, and planes. There are a lot of flowers right now.  The daffodils and start magnolias just finished.  The bradford pears, tulip trees and red buds are in their glory.  In our yard we have a peach, a quince, a blueberry, a redbud, a camilia and some bulbs.

Spring is a much better season for toddlers than winter.

Toddler kisses are definately the sweetest and I love to give kisses. I have two kinds the first is a parted lipped smooch and the other is a blown kiss. Sometimes I kiss mommas hand like I am blowing a kiss with her hand. I also like to give love bonks. These are generally soft forhead to forhead bonks accompanied by an enthusiastic “bahck”. Sometimes I am a bit heavy headed, but nobody has received a black eye yet.

I also come over for snuggles. These are generally just a quick lean in accompanied by “mmmm”. Its my way of saying, “I love you and your my momma and you should never be too far”.

On December 30 I turned one.  We had a party.  Mom made me a carrot cake.  For those of you hoping to see a picture of a baby with frosting in his hair, sorry to disappoint.  I am a tidy eater.

Alon with birthday cake

I enjoyed the potluck dinner and my cake.   I received many lovely gifts including some rattles and a xylophone.

Being one is great.  Now I get to face foward in the car.  I can walk and I learn a new word almost everyday.  I have also started dancing.  Mom and Papa think this is just about my best trick yet.

There are no baby gates in my house and I have never been in a crib or playpen.  When I wake up, I generally cry for my momma to come, but sometimes, I just get out of bed and go find her.

I know to be very careful around the glasses and plates that are on a low shelf.  Mom serves my food in glass dishes and I have a very tiny water glass that I drink from.  I have broken a few dishes.  Mom and I were sad, but I learned that dishes are fragile and if I throw them on the floor they will break.

Last weekend mom and I went to a womens gathering.  Mom was so happy to see that with shelves of porclein and glass dishes on low display, the only things I took down to play with were a few small pewter dishes.  I am one and I can make intelligent choices.

Last weekend was Thanksgiving.  We went to Tom Bluewolf’s for the “First Annual Stone Peoples’ Lodge Thanksgiving”.  There were a lot of people there and a lot of food.  I like to eat.  Everyone says I am a great eater.  I have some molars now, so I can eat just about anything.  But Momma says I am still skinny.  At my last Dr. appointment I was in the 90th percentile for height and 25th for weight.  She has been trying to put weight on me ever since.  Well this weekend it finally worked.  I ate and ate and ate.  At one point Papa was feeding me practically in my sleep.  Here is a picture of Momma showing off the results of the hard work,

About a month ago, while we were in Oregon, I let go of the couch and took a step.  I tried one more time that night to walk.  I haven’t tried again (at least while anyone is looking).  I practice standing alone all the time.  Sometimes Momma tricks me and hands me something for each hand so I have to let go.  I can stand up and even play with toys while standing, but I do not walk.  I decided to put off walking.  Everyone was so excited that I would walk before 11 months.  I think its a better idea to have a growth spurt and learn some more things before I start walking.  Here are some of the things I have learned to do this month

• Blow kisses – Papa and Momma have been blowing kisses my whole life, but it was Aunt Tivona who finally got me to do it for the first time.
• Kiss – I am very private about my mouth as anyone who has tried to look at my teeth knows.  I would mimic Momma and kiss a duckie, but I wouldn’t kiss her.  On Thanksgiving I thought it would be a nice thing to give momma a kiss.  Now I like to get lots of kisses.  Momma is sometimes afraid I am trying to bite because I dont close my mouth to give kisses and, well, I sometimes bite her.
• Feed people – while at Heather’s I started to feed Momma my apple. It works!  She actually eats from my hand.
• Play catch
• Open drawers and bins
• Try to snap my fingers (this one is going to take some practice).
• Turn lights on and off, quickly and with skill
• Say hat, light, kitty, apply and sign water.  I already say up, Momma, Papa, dog, bird, ball, book, more and bath.

I will probably start walking soon, so stay tuned.

Last night mom dressed me up in my new dragon outfit.  I do not like to wear hats, but I leave the dragon hood on my head because I like to dress up.  I played in the kitchen with Heather and Brian until it was dark.  Then Heather gave me a pretty little bag and we went out into the night.  Mom and Heather kept saying “Trick”.  I cant say “ck” yet, but I can stay “tri”.  So we practised saying “tri”.

Then the strangest thing happened.  We walked right up to a house I have never been to and knocked on the door.  People came and I was so surprised, I forgot how to say “tri”.  They gave me Play Dough.  Mom says its not for eating, but I am not totally convinced about that.

After that, we went right up to another house and the same thing happened.  Except this time the people gave me a teething biscuit.  Mom let me eat that right up once we got home.  We did this two more times, except those people gave me very shiny packages that Mom will not allow me to have.  I consider this very unfair, but I have already moved on to other matters.

The whole affair was a bit confusing, but I like my dragon outfit and other people seem to like it as well. Mom says I can dress up in it all the time, but we will not go “trick or treating” until next year.  She thinks Halloween should be like leap years and occur only every 4 years.

Thank you Aunt Tivona for getting me such a cute and comfortable costume.  And thanks to Heather for living amongst people who think to have teething biscuits and play dough for treats. What a great world I live in.  Mom says, I am very blessed.

Pictures are forthcoming…

One of my favorite parts of getting ready for bed is brushing my teeth. Now that I have teeth, I need to do this regularly. I have a lot of fun with it. I can pretty much do it myself, though Mama insists on doing it some too. The only bad part is that Mama takes my toothbrush away at the end – that really makes me sad.

I had so much fun in the sandbox, I was an easy target for Papa’s videos. He was fascinated by how I was enjoying the sand in my hands – and didn’t even stick it in my mouth. Check out my latest videos on sandbox playing.And thanks to the Oakhurst Community Garden for having such a great baby play space!

This first one features me and also my new friend Benjamin. You can hear a loud mocking bird that was in the bush overhead as we played.

In this second video, I am really getting into it again!