Variableclouds

Noah’s biggest trick is his new word: gi-ee.  This means kitty.  He says it every time we go into a room where she is, and we’ve been pretty sure it’s a word for the past week.  He has a few other combos that he’s saying pretty often- mummum, and dap and dada and ba, but we can’t figure out what he really means by them yet.  We thought balloon might be his next word, but that’s a pretty tough one to pronounce, so we’re trying to teach him ball instead.

In other news, he’s gotten so good at climbing the couch that he can now get onto the top of the couch back, and even stand up on the window sill.

He demonstrated his object permanence last night when he started to wonder if the witch’s balls that we have hanging in two windows were balloons.  Dave took him to see each of them, then he crawled to right under the red one.  The other one was then out of sight because it was in a window on the same wall, on the other side of the fireplace.  But he started pointing at where it should have been. 

And he has a new obsession with the bible.  He found a little red new testament that he’s completely obsessed with.  He threw his biggest tantrum ever when we took it away from him…so now that’s one of our toys of last resort.  He sits and opens and closes the covers, and says strings of Grimlin words in his soft little baby voice.

His walking remains consistent at about one or two steps before he sets down to crawl, and he will walk all the way across the room if I’m holding his hand.  His climbing, on the other hand, gets better and better, and he can now climb onto our bed from the floor.

So, Noah started talking in complete sentences the last week of October.  The only thing is, it isn’t in English.  We think it’s some sort of goblin dialect, which makes sense, because he is a little goblin.  It’s really cute to listen to- he talks really softly and uses lots and lots of consonants.   But it’s not a milestone!

Climbing the couch is also not a milestone.  He has a system all worked out.  He goes over to his toy box, stands and grabs the back of it so he can pull himself up on his stomach.  Then he climbs over the arm of the couch.  He crawls down the couch, pushing the cushions onto the floor if they’re in his way.  Then he climbs onto the collapsible tv-tray table at the end, and sits there looking pleased with himself.  He’s fallen off that table quite a few times, but doesn’t realize it because I’m always there to catch him, so he doesn’t even know it’s dangerous.  Anyway, walking is a milestone, climbing is not.

Getting out of cloth diapers to pee all over the crib.  If he isn’t in a onesie or pants, he now knows how to get out of his velcro diapers.  I was kind of expecting this, and we have some with snaps, but most of his cloth covers have velcro.

Pooping in the bath tub.  Is not a step on the road to potty training at all.

Wrestling a helium balloon into submission.  Not a milestone.  Not even really an achievement when I’ve tied a weighted string to the balloon so it can’t get more than 2 feet off the ground to escape.

baby pumpkins

I’ve been super busy lately with Noah’s new habit of staying up until 9, 10 or 11 at night, so I asked him to help out around the house and update the blog.  Here’s his take on Halloween weekend:

Balloon!  Balloon!  Balloon!  Yay! 

Here’s how it went down: I got tied down in the car seat and blacked out again, and woke up in an amazing place.  There were people everywhere on the street- it was like the entire city was a mall.  I rode in my carrier on Mommy on a train that went underground, and we went looking for Grandpa.  There were people everywhere, lots of nice smiley people everywhere we went… what a great city!  Daddy kept sanitizing me, but the joke was on him when the bottle of hand sanitizer broke.  We found Grandma, but not Grandpa.  So we hung out with her for hours and hours.  Apparently babies aren’t welcome in post-op rooms, so I didn’t get to see Grandpa’s new knee.  And I wasn’t allowed to crawl around at all- luckily I’m a good baby but it was rough.  I’d had enough when they tried to go this Italian restaurant that was hot like the flames of hell.  Babies are not built for blast furnaces!  So I let everybody know how terrible it was, and we got to go back to the hotel.  The hotel was awesome- there was a mirror that came down to the floor, and power cords everywhere. 

The next morning, I still couldn’t see Grandpa because he was still in the post-op room.  But, somebody sent him flowers with balloons in them, and I stole one when Grandma was off visiting him.  That balloon has completely changed my world view.  Back when I was a baby, I used to think that things always stuck to the floor, but obviously not.  So ever since then, I’ve been pointing at things I see stuck to the ceiling, so Mommy can check if they’re balloons.  Like the skylights, or the bathroom vent, or lights.  How do we know they aren’t floaty, too?  It took me a few days to beat the balloon into submission, but it’s all taken care of now.  It got weaker and weaker until Daddy finally put it out of its misery.

Noah seems to be winning

Oh, yeah, Halloween.  Mommy and Daddy bought 3 bags of candy, and only got one trick-or-treater.  But do you think I got any of it?  That’s right, they ate it all!  I’m not forgetting that one soon.  And, Mommy made me wear a sushi costume like some lame hipster baby.  Bleah!  She’ll put a picture up when the big computer is turned on. 

Noah as sushi