Well, pseudo-words perhaps… sounds really close to words, used in a predictable fashion in the right context more often or not, but not yet clear enough or consistent enough to definitively call talking… lets see…
Ning: He has been using this consistently for at least a month or two now to say he wants to nurse. Not English of course, but he gets across what he wants.
Mamamamamama (with a variable number of ma’s) and Dadadadadadadada (with a variable number of da’s). Over the last month has started to use these in the right contexts (when the appropriate one of us is present) rather than just randomly.
We *think* we’ve heard him sometimes trying to say Amy, but not consistently enough for me to say that for sure yet.
A couple of times I’ve heard him say something like “ogdidi” when reaching for Roscoe, but that could be coincidence.
Then the new stuff this last week…
From Brandy on Wednesday (16:47 UTC):
So… I was sitting at the kitchen table feeding Alex. He decided he didn’t want any more cream of wheat, shaking his head and making a face, saying “nana nana nana.” So I went and got him a banana. Now he is quite happily sitting and eating it.
Since then he has been using “nana” on a pretty regular basis when confronted with the yellow fruit.
Then from Brandy on Friday:
17:59 UTC
Brandy: … I think Alex can say dog.
19:11 UTC
Sam: Like actual dog? Or ogdidi?
19:21 UTC
Brandy: “Dog, dog, dog, hi dog, good dog, dog.”
19:26 UTC
Sam: Hi? Good?
19:30 UTC
Brandy: Oh yeah. Now, he could have just been making sounds, but when I went into the room he was looking over the edge of the crib at the dog. If he repeats it then we’ll know.
Now, so far I don’t think he has repeated that. Not in front of me anyway. I’m always away when the good stuff happens. :-) He probably doesn’t want to do it when he knows non-dogs are listening. :-)
Anyway, most of this is still of the sort that is subject to optimistic parental interpretation rather than being absolutely and incontrovertibly words. But he is babbling pretty much constantly. Some of the babbles will inevitably become actual English words at some point. And the parental mind strives to find patterns and meaning. :-)
Starting right before the new year, I got all wound up playing Scrabble on the iPhone with various Facebook friends. I was having lots of fun. I was spinning up to always be playing 10 games at a time. (All asynchronously, often with moves a day or two apart.) I of course had a whole little system worked out so that whenever I dropped below ten games, I’d start a new game inviting friends to a new game based on a randomized system where people who I knew were Scrabble players had greater odds of being invited than people who were not, and people who I’d never invited had better odds than people who I had invited before, but hadn’t played. I kept graphs. It was fun.
Somewhere along the line though, Facebook made it so that Scrabble couldn’t send notifications any more. This made it so it was harder for people to know when their turns were. (At least people actually playing on Facebook, the iPhone still has push notifications for this.) It made it harder for me to scan and see who was playing and who was forfeiting (so as to change the weights on the probabilities I was using to determine who to invite.) It just generally made it harder to do what I was doing. I could still do it, but it was a bigger pain than before.
So I decided a week or two ago to just wind down my playing. I’ll still accept requests for games from anybody who wants to play, but I won’t be sending out any new requests. So my number of games is slowly winding down. From the ten I was keeping it at I’m now down to five. Unless I get unexpected invites, those will slowly wind down and I’ll have none left.
OK, once again as I’m up working on stuff, having only actually gotten into a good productive groove after I should have already been done with everything and in bed, I see the first East Coast folks coming online and starting their days. These are just the early birds so far, but yet, it probably does mean I should close things up and head to sleep even though I’m not yet done everything I want to get done. Sigh. I’d say there aren’t enough hours in the day or some such, but really it is just about getting into the right rhythm of stuff and using the available time efficiently. Once I really got going about 8 UTC I was just cruising right along. The problem is of course that I should have actually been at that stage a few hours earlier. Oops.
And yes, this probably means the podcast won’t be out until Friday this week. But I’ve had other things that have been more pressing to spend my time on.
Alex just woke up though, so maybe I’ll wait just a bit before actually going to bed.
If you live on the West Coast (as I do at the moment) and you stay up late to get some things done you need to get done, but you start seeing the East Coast folks starting to log in and make Facebook posts and such, especially if they are posting about breakfast and heading to work and such, then it is time to go to bed, even if you aren’t quite done with everything you wanted to get done.
So… transcript starting with the text from Brandy saying that Alex was crawling for the first time…
2010 Apr 16 3:20 UTC
Brandy: He’s crawling.
Brandy: Like, on the knees crawling.
Brandy: Where is the camera?
Sam: Did you get video???? Cam is at top of stairs I think.
Sam: Woo!!!!
2010 Apr 16 3:33 UTC
Brandy: He is upset with me.
Sam: Because you got the camera?
2010 Apr 16 3:50 UTC
Brandy: I bumped his head pulling him out from under the table.
Sam: Oh
Brandy: Then I put him down on his feet. He started to fall and I scratched him when I caught him.
Sam: Oh
Brandy: So I picked him up to hug him. He twisted around and I poked him in the face.
Brandy: So I have him ning, and now he is bouncing happily in his jumper.
Sam: Oh
Sam: OK. :-)
And then, a little over an hour later when Amy and I got home, we were greeted with Brandy, Amy and Roscoe sitting at the top of the stairs and Alex sporting the black eye visible in the picture above. The story:
Just a few minutes ago we were finishing up his bath, and he stood up and fell on his fist.
Uh huh. Likely story.
Um, well, actually given the previous couple hours, completely typical. :-)
Oh, and of course he is absolutely fine. Just being a rumble tumble little boy.
I just hit the final E-file button in TurboTax at 09:49 UTC on April 15th. Not cutting it close at all this year, am I?
Doing all the stuff took me just about 3 hours this time. Wish it was less, but I guess it could be worse.
It looks like for once the withholding ended up being almost exactly right. Refund, but a pretty small one. Enough of a refund to pay for the TurboTax fee, but not all that much more than that. Maybe enough to take the family out to dinner a few extra times. I guess that is just fine. A big refund is always nice (aside from the giving the government an interest free loan and all) but having even a very small refund is a much much better experience than finding out after you do all the TurboTax stuff that you are going to have to write a big fat check. I’ve had that happen a couple of years, and it was very unpleasant.
Not this year! Yea!
Now to bed. I have to be up and getting ready for the work day in just about 4 hours. Bleh!
Even though I just posted the Seven Month Video on Tuesday, thought I’d also do a quick text post mentioning some of the new fun things Alex has been doing lately. Lets see…
I neglected to post way back in early March when he first started feeding himself things like Cheerios and the like. He now likes a wide variety of finger foods and such of that sort, along with the other various sorts of mushier foods (and of course mother’s milk) that he’s had for quite some time.
He’s moved from pulling himself up to a standing position for the first time to doing such at every available opportunity using everything from desks to the dog as things to pull himself up with, and then once up almost immediately starts letting go to see how long he can stand before he has to grab on again (or fall).
He’s scooting all over the place. Not quite a crawl yet, as he’s not on all fours, and while it takes a lot of work and sometimes he gets frustrated, he is quite mobile and can easily get from one side of a room to the other if he really wants to. And of course if you give him a finger or two to hold on to, he’ll gladly walk all over the place (with that help) as well. That is just great fun!
On Tuesday afternoon while I was at work and Brandy was at an appointment and Amy was taking care of Alex, he decided to jump off the changing table mid-change, resulting in a three foot fall to the floor and quite a bit of crying for Alex, and quite a bit of worry and stress for Amy (and the rest of us until we got home), but without any actual damage. As a side benefit, when we were at the precautionary doctor visit a couple hours later, he stood on the grown up scale by himself for the first time rather than lying in the baby scale.
He is now also responding explicitly to a few types of requests he understands. So Brandy will say “Alex, stand up!” and he will pull himself up and stand and smile. And when you ask to pick him up he’ll put his arms out in the “OK, pick me up” position. And generally he is paying close attention to what we say, and responding in appropriate ways more often than not.
On Wednesday Brandy reported this story: “He was in his high chair and having an snack. Then he looked at me and said ‘Ning!’ I looked at him and said, ‘You want ning?’ and he got excited and said ‘Ning!’ We had a conversation, and understood each other completely!” (Alex says “ning” a lot when he is really hungry and wants to nurse… not quite a word, but he has been consistent in how and when he makes that particular sound going back quite a bit.) And there are a lot of “DaDaDa” and “MaMaMa” and such, but they aren’t quite always in the right context yet, so I’m not prepared yet to say he knows what he is saying. :-) But ning? When he says ning he means ning. :-)
He plays Peekaboo Barn on my iPhone and knows exactly how to make it do what it does: He carefully touches the iPhone screen to make it open the barn door and show the animals. Then he gets excited and smiles when the kid says the name of the animals. He also plays Laugh and Learn Peekaboo on our computers. Unlike the great care he takes with the other game, with this one he gleefully starts pounding keys on the keyboard as hard and fast as he can.
Anyway, all the usual stuff for this age I suppose, but lots of fun to watch the new things develop as they happen. Every day something new. He is learning and growing and figuring out this whole stopping being a baby and instead turning into a toddler thing very very quickly. It is just scary how fast time flies with this sort of thing. It was just yesterday he was born, right?
At 18:02 UTC today (11:02 AM Pacific, 2:02 PM Eastern) Alex will be exactly seven months old. Instead of just an “interview” here are highlights from Alex’s seventh month. Well, the ones we happened to catch on video anyway. Of course lots more happens off camera. :-)
