Luv dem berries

We just went for a little walk behind the house here and the blackberries are gettin nice and ripe. I can't tell you how many years it's been since I've grabbed a berry off of a vine but he pointed to them and said "Boo! Boo!", which is his way of saying 'blue berries'. He loves blue berries!! So, I chose a nice, big, ripe blackberry and handed it to him. He looked at it for a second and then trepidatiously brought it to his lips and gave it the tinest of nibbles. He considered the flavor for a moment before he voraciously shoved the remainder into his ravenous maw. They passed the taste test, to be sure! So, I figured if they're okay for him they should be okay for me, right? I chose for myself another nice, big, ripe berry and popped into my mouth and immediately spit it right back out as my eyes watered and crossed at the sourness of what I had just sampled. I do not like sour. Blech!! I really hope his tasted better than mine! He wanted many, many more but we were on our way back home to change his diaper. Something about the majesty of the great outdoors makes him load his pants every time we go outside. It's irritating sometimes. I doesn't matter if I change his diaper right before we head out the door, as soon as he hits that fresh air he drops a lethal stink bomb. It's time for me, as his parent, to look forward to the day when he has a child and gets to experience the joy of diaper changing. Vengance is a dirty, stinky thing. As it should be!!

All about poop. !

We bought him a little trainer toilet seat, some pull up training pants and some Pixar character underwear for reward/incentive. Here we go! We (as in all three of us) are ready for this. The time is now. I know he has the ability to figure it out, but I've been wondering if the short gut is gonna make it hard for him to know when it's time to go potty. Or something. I don't want to go into specifics but I just like to cover all the possible outcomes. When dealing with poo it's good to have people with their lights on all the exits.

Let's talk about this

He's said please and thank you! Said them! With his mouth! Earlier this morning we were in the car and I had just put in Metallica's Master Of Puppets and he instantly raised his hand in the air and pumped his index finger like he was shooting the metal up to the sky! He's never been able to rock the horns, he's always used his pointer finger. But today he watched my hand pound the air and he studied it for a second and then he tried really hard to get his pinky up and keep his other fingers down. But....he....just......couldn't....quite..do...it... He could get his middle finger tucked but that darned ol' ring finger just kept popping out and snugglin up to that kinky pinky. He started to get frustrated. I told him we'd work on it later and everything was going to be okay, he'd rock the horns like a metal monster in no time 'tall. I could tell he knew what he wanted his fingers to do, he just doesn't have control of them completely. Yet. It's moments like that, when I can see his gears grinding and turning and see him figure something out (or not), I find so fascinating and unbelievable rewarding. And most times humbling, but a smiling kind of humbling! He's just so fun. Each day is a new word or problem solved or area explored. He watched Mickey's Clubhouse for the first time and he liked it so we watched a couple of episodes and this morning it was on when we all got up REAL early and he knew which mouseketool to use at the right time and all that stuff. Really interactind with the program in a positive way and actually getting something out of it for his betterment. We both saw it and looked at each other like, 'I'll be damned, did he really just do that?'. His lion roar with hands clawing at the air is priceless. Him thinking that everything is MINE, MINE, MINE? nnnnot so much. Boxes of food at Safeway, toys at Target, Ollies Elmo, my food, EVERYTHING is 'MINE'!! His least attractive characteristic at the moment. Oh, and throwing things. Not really in a protest, tantrum type of way but more in a mischeivious, playful way and the kid has an amazing arm. He can really throw! He's gonna make his parents rich someday.

The wonders of speech therapy

Sarah, a speech therapist through Early Intervention, has visited us four times now and the benefits of her expertise are already becoming evident. She stays for about a half hour and just shows us a few things in sign language and plays/works with Baron. He LOVES her. He wants to show her everything as soon as she walks in the door and really wants to take her into his room so Daddy and Mommy aren't interfering with their time. He now knows the signs for 'please','more','go','hungry' and can understand quite a few others. Sarah said that he's taking to signing faster than any toddler she's worked with. Not only that, but signing is helping him understand words and their meanings and that understanding is helping him speak more. He says quite a few words now and he says a new one every couple of days. It's so exciting. He and I almost had a short conversation on Thursday. Our first!
Boy loves to dance. He has a couple of favorite kids shows and all of them are music based. Wow Wow Wubbzy, Fresh Beat Band, Yo Gabba Gabba, and live concert footage make him MOVE! The other day he busted out The Disco Roll dance that Jack Black performed on Yo Gabba Gabba. Killed me!!!! The other day he let me watch John Legend and The Roots on Austin City Limits and he actually liked it. I couldn't believe it. He sat through a few Pantera videos on Youtube. But, as much as he loves to listen to Pantera I think the visual of the band was a bit much for his impressionable little brain to handle.
And a slightly funny development; he's afraid of monkeys. It's because of the monkeys in Toy Story 3. The only things in this world he's afraid of (other than not getting his way). Whenever he sees a monkey on TV he runs to us and buries his face so the evil monkeys can't see him. Precious.

He's just self concsious of his personal odor.

He demonstrated his gift for mimicry today by opening 'my' drawer in the bathroom, grabbing my deodorant, unzipping his sleeper and applying my deodorant to his underarms. He is just so cute. And now he smells pretty good too.
He babbles all of the time now. He has an actual vocabulary that is growing, finally. He says 'shake' when we make his bottle because we always make it a game, building the anticipation of each part of the process until we screw the cap on aaaaannnnnnddd shake-shake-shake-shake-shake-shake-shake-shake-shake-shake etc..... and he just loves it. He says 'kitty', or at least an understandable variation.

He just walked up to me and pulled up my shirt and stuck hid finger in my belly button, which he KNOWS I cannot stand. Then he unzipped his sleeper and pushed his own belly button and said 'OWWW!' in perfect mockery and mimicry of his over exaggerated father. Cute kid. Can't wait for him to get a job.

An appetite like a shark!!

He has been eating so much the last few days! It's so unlike him. Today Papa took us out to breakfast at Elmers and he all but devoured Mommy's steak. Then for lunch he consumed a good portion of MY cold pizza. Cold!! And he's had pizza several times in the last four or so days. But cold pizza? I still can't believe it. I mean, I don't know why I like cold pizza. Weird. He feels heavier. I'm not going to be able to hold him much longer. I'm expecting a big 'ol growth spurt in the next few days.
Great.

Where did Spider Man's head go?

Baron woke me up at six this morning, fully armed and ready for action. We started watching some cartoons while I tried to get my eyes to open and after my lids finally parted I looked down and saw Baron playing with a headless Spider Man. The first thought to penetrate the morning fog in my mind was that he had swallowed Spider man's head, which gave me a little panic at first but then I remembered that he swallows most of his food without chewing so worst case scenario would be me finding a very unhappy Spider man head in his next diaper. Uhm.... ick. But then he was whining a bit and limping a little. Hhmmm... So, I picked him up and felt his foot through his sleeper, checking for anything that could be the culprit and sure enough, lodged between his big toe and the next toe was a very Spider Man-head-like ball. I unzipped his sleeper and dug out the head and sent him on his destructive way, none the worse for wear. He does this quite often now, taking Mommy's keys, name tag or various plastic cards from her purse and stuffing them into his sleeper. Sometimes it's the snack that I THOUGHT he had eaten (no wonder it's hard to get him to gain weight!), or maybe a small toy of some kind. He's like a box of Cracker Jacks; always a prize inside!! I can't wait for the day when he tries to stuff the cat into his sleeper. THAT'LL be a hoot.