Eldore turned fifteen months on the nineteenth of February.
As I’m typing, the little man himself is busily darting from one end of the room to the other. He has a washcloth in his hand. He runs this way, then that way, then sits down by the door, then disappears for a second (Mom! Dodo’s in the trash! Clive yells at me.) Then he’s running back near me again, now with one of my hair ties, and he’s trying to fit in on the back of Elvie’s junior chair.
Then he’s got pencils, and I tell Clive to get them from him. Eldore complies willingly, like it’s all part of the game, then goes straight back to drawer where he found them in the first place. “No, Eldore!” He looks at me for a second like I’ve grown another head, then throws himself down to the floor on his belly, stretching his arms in front of him and his feet in the air. He never breaks eye contact when he does this. I’m not entirely sure what the gesture is supposed to communicate.
He’s finally got the hang of saying mama, and uses it frequently in heart-wrenching situations, like when I’ve put him to bed and he doesn’t want to go to bed, or when I’m trying to cook and he’s pulling at my legs, wanting me to pick him up.
He’s taken a crack at everyone else’s names, too, the easiest of course being Momo, and even if he won’t say your name he knows who is who. What he will say, though, that has surprised me to no end, is his own rendition of may I be excused, please? which sounds like may-do-dee. We didn’t teach him this; he just picked it up from observing his siblings. He’s also been harassing me for eating utensils, lately, though I hadn’t planned on giving him any yet. He’s not keen on being the odd-man-out at the dinner table.
He always has something to say, but he says it all as zhe-zhe-zhe-zhe, and so we’re never quite sure what he’s saying, though he does help us out occasionally by pointing or patting the thing he’s discussing so we can respond appropriately. (He’s not keen on one-sided conversations, either.)
(Here my typing was interrupted by Eldore trying to shove a copy of The Hobbit into the fireplace. NO, Eldore! He did not flop to the ground, but beat a hasty retreat.)
He is a hilariously efficient toy-snatcher. Now that he can run, he’ll grab whatever’s in your hand and take off before you’re completely aware what has happened. (And by “you” I mean one of his siblings–usually Elvie.) Sometimes he returns the item good-naturedly, sometimes he screams and flops to the ground. I can only assume that this is because sometimes he snatches things because he really wants them, and sometimes he snatches them just for the pure joy of snatching.
His hair is uncontrollable. I finally had to chop off his bangs last week as they were perpetually in his eyes. It is a very poor haircut, now completely mismatched with the rest of his head, but he doesn’t seem to mind too badly. He is too wiggly for me to do much else at the moment. Maybe one day I’ll try the clippers on him–but then I won’t recognize him. His hair grows so very fast, and has always kind of been his trademark. It’s the first thing the nurses remarked on when he was born.
After months and months of not using a pacifier or sucking a thumb or finger when going to sleep, he suddenly started sucking his index finger when he’s sleepy. The other index finger goes in his belly button. I know when he’s tired, now, when he sets these two fingers in their respective positions. It’s a nice indicator for the season we’re entering; he’s likely to drop to one nap, soon, and it’s always handy to know if a toddler is sleepy or not.
Last night I took him to his room at bedtime, sat on the loveseat, and rocked him. He sat quietly, sucking on his finger, staring at the ceiling, when he suddenly popped the finger out of his mouth and waved at me. “Night-night,” he said, emphatically, grinning. I took the hint and put him in his crib, where he settled himself happily and waved as I left.
That’s fine, Dodo, but don’t grow up too fast, ok?
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