Friday, June 26, 2009

Language, Markers, and Trucks...


We are having so much fun with words in our house right now. All of a sudden this week, Kai seems to repeat almost everything we say to him. He is starting to use two word sentences and is just delighted by the act of speaking. In his sleep, I often hear him saying, "Buh-bye mommy, buh-bye daddy, hi mommy, hi daddy" over and over. And after a diaper change yesterday, he waved at his penis and said "buh-bye nis!" and cracked Bob right up. Hmmm. I hope he doesn't hate me later in his life for posting that today.

He's also OBSESSED with markers. Crayons won't cut it anymore. Half the time he won't eat a meal because he's so focused on asking for markers and "papee" at the table to draw with. He even asked to come home from the playground yesterday afternoon to draw. But we have to take many, many breaks from the markers because they are just so tempting to eat, and while I'm okay with him biting off and spitting out the ends of crayons on occasion, I am NOT okay with him sucking down marker ink. It seems to make him less and less upset as I enforce that limit with him, and I'm hoping that after a couple of weeks, he'll chill with the marker eating a bit.

Speaking of which, I think part of what helps him with the limit is that I'm not just taking away the markers, I'm offering him his new favorite choices for handing things over or doing pretty much anything. I finally clued into the reality that my kid could care less about animals and animal noises, but that I could use his love of trucks to offer fun choices. When I need him to put something down or give it to me, he chooses between dumptrucking or diggering it down. Sometimes he makes a truck noise, sometimes he just says "diggee!" or "ump!". Same for cleaning up his big bag of duplos - we exclaim "Digger!" when we pick the block up and "Drop!" when we put it in the bag. And he gets so excited about cleaning up the blocks that sometimes when we're done, he then dumps the bag out just so he can digger all of blocks back into the bag again.

I love my kid.

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