And Then I Stepped in Gum . . .

Darn Free Will!

A couple of months ago, Ian's communication took a huge step forward when he learned to nod "yes" and shake his head "no." Oh, at first it was a little hard to tell which he actually meant, especially since for a month or so his nod was mostly an emphatic look up at the ceiling, but it was amazing to finally be able to engage in some type of interchange with him. The side effect was that suddenly this little creature had opinions on everything! Rhetorical questions meant nothing to him; he had an answer for each one. On the one hand, it was nice to find out whether or not he actually wanted a banana before I peeled it; on the other, we found ourselves asking questions like, "Do you want to get your jammies on now?" and being met with insistent head shakes. We had to backtrack and learn all over again not to ask questions when there really wasn't a choice in the matter.

Regardless of the parental learning curve, I loved the breakthrough and still love it, especially since the little guy hasn't been too terribly forthcoming in the words department. His full-body nods are adorable, and lately they've been augmented by an appreciative "mm-hmmm" or "eah" ("yeah" without the "y").

A couple of days ago, we experienced another milestone -- the development of Ian's favorite color. Dave was drying him off from his bath, and Ian pointed to the yellow towel and insisted, "oh-low." Dave was skeptical that Ian was really expressing a color preference so he tested him, but sure enough, Ian wanted the yellow towel. Then for dinner I was gathering plastic plates and utensils, and had a yellow fork and a green fork in my hand. Ian came running up to me, saying "oh-low, oh-low, oh-low." "Do you want the yellow fork?" "Mm-hmmmm." I then also had to find him a yellow plate. And for the past two days he's requested yellow sippy cups. He doesn't seem to care as much about what's in them as he does about the exterior color.

While it's great that he can recognize colors (he also identifies red cars as "Dada vroom" and blue ones as "Mama vrooms"), this fixation had better not be too long-lived. I only have so many yellow cups and plates!

posted by Jennifer Morgan, at 9:45 AM