20 Months Old

The little boy is quite a chatterbox these days. His pronunciation is not quite up to the same level as his vocabulary so sometimes he will be saying a word that cannot be identified, which is frustrating for everyone, especially him. When he is too tired, this dissolves in anguish and the game is over. But most of the time he plays this word association game and tries to come up with enough related words that I will be able to guess the original one he was trying to say!

It goes like this:

We are eating breakfast.

"insert gibberish," he looks at me expectantly.

"What was that, baby?"

"same gibberish," he looks hopeful.

"More smoothie?" I ask.

Frowny face, wild headshaking and a general demeanor of grave disappointment in Mommy's intellect.

"repeat the gibberish. Outside. Trees. Neighbour house." He adds.

I glance behind me at the window.

"Outside you see trees and the neighbour's house." I repeat obediently.


"ouddarindu. Outside."

I wait.

"Indu. Indo. Indow!"

"OH! Window! The other window!" I strike gold.

He nods an affirmative with his whole body.

"usttairs oddar indow. All done."

"Ah, you want to upstairs to look out the other window in Grandma and Grandpa's room at the neighbour's house."

He shakes his head.

"Big trucks."

So he wanted to go back to his own room upstairs to watch the street traffic, but he described the view out the other side of the house because it was what I would see though the closest window to where we were in the kitchen - more likely to help me guess the word "window." I was impressed.

We play at lot of word association charades. It is cumbersome communication, but I will take it over crying any day. And he is still learning new words daily and incorporating them into his descriptions.

We spend almost every morning at the beach and sometimes again following his afternoon nap. Other times will we go to the park or into the woods to play. He loves the forest by our house: he calls it "path is hiding" aka "the path that is hiding" because the forest is full of official and unofficial footpaths that you cannot see from a distance. Thus, they are hiding.

The weather is always good at the beach. Or anywhere outside for that matter. We only go inside for thunder storms and even then, he doesn't understand why I am ruining his fun. We have been going swimming on hot days. He was very unsure of the whole swimming thing at first and was sure that I had fallen down and couldn't get back up. Now he is happy to hold on to my back while I swim the length of the waterfront. Although, he is generally distressed in the first moment he gets wet, insisting that we go back and get him some "fresh clothes" because "James all wet."

One of his favourite times of day is late afternoon when most families' beach days are over - because then he can play search and destroy with all of the abandoned sand castles.

We have started our own version of morning cartoon watching. While I am making breakfast he likes to sit in the living room and watch the first few scenes of the movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. For those of you who don't know - it's a movie about a horse, from the perspective of the horse. I also loved it when it came out.

James really only loves the first few scenes, which is fine with me, breakfast only takes a few scenes to prepare anyway. But his reason is pretty funny. He enjoys the lead up - an eagle flying around.

"eagle-bird! eagle-bird!"

Then he loves the first scene where Spirit is born.

"mommy horsie! baby horsie!"

He even mimics the baby horsie neighing on cue.

Baby horse learns to walk ("kaboom!"). Baby horse runs to music ("horsie tunes! mommy horsie. snow"). Baby horse meets some buffalo ("buff-low. water"). Baby horse grows up.

And the spell is broken.

The minute that baby horse turns into a big horse... show's over. Time for breakfast.

I guess he only identifies with horses his own age?