Though this post is late, the pictures are not; the words may mostly describe Eldore the almost-eighteen-month-old, but the photographic evidence is of Eldore the newly-seventeen-month-old, almost on the nose.
The first difference from his last update that you may notice: he got a haircut. It is still not a Good Haircut, but it’s better than the Horrible Haircut. One day I plugged in the buzz-cutter (what’s it really called? I forget. Clippers? Maybe.) Then I sat down, took him in my lap, gave him a (closed) mini-can of WD-40 to look at (true story) and buzzed off all his hair, down to maybe a half-inch or so. He didn’t make a peep. When I was finished, I wondered to myself:
1) that he didn’t care if I used the electric hair-clipper-thingy
2) why I didn’t think to use them on the other boys at this age
3) that his haircut aged him unforgivably, and
4) that it also made him look far too preppy, which I confess hurt my heart a little. But that’s neither here nor there.
Earlier this month, he invented the sweetest sing-songy refrain that was both hopelessly endearing and completely non-sensical. He would breathe a long phrase in his own tongue–ah-zhe-zhe-zhe-zhe–and then puncuate it with ma-ma. The first phrase began at one tone and then descended with each syllable, the last of which hung in the air as he would pause briefly before saying ma-ma on the same note as the last phrase ended, and he would linger on the second syllable so that the whole thing did sound like the line of a song. And he would do it over and over again. Sometimes he would blow spit bubbles while saying ma-ma. If you have a toddler, you probably are familiar with the method.
He doesn’t do it anymore, except when I do it first. Then he grins and we will do it together. Mama is still his favorite word, and he uses it frequently, even for the Baby, which I haven’t quite figured out. I try to get him to say baby but he just grins and shakes his head.
Speaking of shaking heads, he has become an avid head-shaker, though I’m convinced he doesn’t totally know it means “no”. Sometimes he shakes it when you know he’s saying no, and sometimes he shakes it when you know he means yes, though honestly when “no” means “yes” he doesn’t quite shake it as hard as he does when “no” means “no”, and he also gets a somewhat desperate, eager look in his eyes, as if he knows he’s making the wrong gesture but doesn’t know how to stop. So maybe he does know the difference after all.
He also has a little steppy-stompy-dance he does when he means “yes”, and that’s helpful to make the distinction between the two nearly indistinguishable head-shakes.
He’s still doing the finger/belly button routine when he’s tired; we call it “Belly Finger”. We all think it’s funny and he knows we all think it’s funny, and so he continues to do it.
He was sixteen-and-a-half months when Baby Beatrice was born, and though I honestly expected him to not care two shakes about his new baby sister, he has surprised me with how much attention he pays her, to the point of bringing me her things and blankets, and then grousing at me when I don’t give them to her immediately and in the manner in which he intended (he is especially particular about the position of her blankets). In the morning, when he gets up, he runs to her basket in my room to see if she’s in there. I haven’t observed this level of interest in any other toddler-turned-new-older-sibling, except maybe Elvie, but she was four months older when Eldore was born. Eldore and Beatrice have the smallest age gap of any KransKids.
There is more I could write, but given the late timing of this post, if I did I would surely have very little to write about in a couple of weeks when his next update is due. So I will leave this here.
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