Houdini turns two tomorrow.
I'm not a bragging kind of parent. In my effort not to bore or alienate or upset--or, worst of all, invite pity from--people we know by unconsciously lapsing into accounts of Houdini's feeding and eating challenges, I tend to self-censor when it comes to him and his accomplishments, a lot more than most parents do, and it's become a habit with me. Also, I come from a family where talking about your child's achievements it considered, well, rude and rather boorish behavior, so that kind of mentality has been ingrained in me, anyway.
That same family is the first to tell me now, though, that I should celebrate who Houdini is and what he does, and I think that a once a year out and out bragging, to an anonymous audience, is acceptable. So, in no particular order, here is all he has achieved and learned and become, in the past year... (and I am bound to forget things or run out of steam long before I am done or both).
1- The main thing we've learned in the past year is that there is no rushing Houdini. He will do something when he wants to do it and not a second before. More than mere stubborness---and lord knows he is plenty stubborn, which is not a surprise, given what Lemel and I are like--we've come to realize it's a result of how he learns. He has what I've come to call an almost perfect right angle learning curve; he basically shows little interest or inclination or indication that he knows or wants or is even trying to do something, and then suddenly he's doing it, pretty much flawlessly, and that's that. That's how he was with his gross motor skills--sitting, crawling, walking-- for example: there was no real teetering or tottering, no wobbling, no spectacular failed attempts. For all of those, he spent maybe a few hours, over a couple of days, figuring them out and then just went at it. It's the same for learning, and especially saying, new words. He'll say a new word once or twice, but mostly listens to us repeat it (instead of parroting it, which is what my niece used to do, for example, as do the other kids his age that I know), and just when we think he's never going to say it, he does and usually with pretty good enunciation (we rarely have to 'translate' a word or word combinations he says to anyone, and it's been like that from the get go).
2- He has a fairly decent vocabulary. He's not putting sentences together, but I'm almost willing to bet good money that like everything else, he's just going to wait until he can string a correct, multi word sentence together, instead of a two word or three word one. (I say almost willing, because the paranoid mother in me is worrying a bit that he is still mostly using single words and gestures to get his point across, even though I know he's certainly not lacking in either cognitive or verbal abilities.) He knows all of his general colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, brown, black, white, purple, pink, white, silver, gold), plus a few more offbeat ones (magenta, aqua, chartreuse, vermillion) thanks to Blues Clues. He knows a good number of body parts (I think 13 or 14, at last count). The animals I know he knows for sure are dog, cat, duck, turtle, elephant, panda, tiger, lion, cow, sheep, monkey, bear, penguin, horse, and pig. I should probably list hippo, koala, lizard, dolphin, and a few others as well, but since he only says those when prompted, I'm not sure if he remembers them. He can list a good number of everyday objects--I am not sure how many, but I do know I can give him at least 2-3 word examples for each letter of the alphabet, apart from the colors and body parts and animals that he knows, and he knows them all . He knows his numbers, correctly up to 20 and conceptually for good bit after that (more on that later). He knows the shapes circle, triangle, square and star. Probably his weakest area is anything in the food group (surprise, surprise) and that's probably because eating has been such a battlefield, that he doesn't want to even acknowledge he knows what the things we try to encourage him to eat are called. (Even so, there's about 15 food/drink items that he will actually name, so it's not that bad.)
There's some other main categories that I am probably forgetting, but I want to wrap this up some time tonight!
3- He knows all his letters, upper and lower case, and has known them for quite a few months. Not just by rote, either; he can call out a letter wherever he sees it and has been spelling words (even though he usually has no idea what they mean) of late. He can also type words on the computer if you spell them for him. (Side note; He also knows how to shift from lower case to upper case and vice versa, using the Caps Lock key. And he knows how to get rid of pop-up errors or notifications using the Escape key. And he loves the Delete and Backspace key.) I know this is going to sound horribly pompous, but it's almost like he learned the letters by osmosis. Okay, so I admit there was a week or two, after he was sick last November, that I kept him amused by writing the alphabet over and over on his doodle pad. And yes, we watch Lingo religiously every day. So, okay, maybe not so much osmosis. I can tell you, though, we were really taken back when we realized he could read the letters, because he wasn't even 20 months old. In the last month or so he's come to understand that the words he knows each begin with the letters he knows and so it's no longer enough to just read the alphabet anymore. Hence the whole game of listing words that begin with each letter--he's getting pretty good at it, to (we go back and forth). I also think our days of spelling things so he won't understand what we are saying are going to be over before they've really begun: today he said, "S-T-O-P, Stop! Stop! Stop!", and he totally knew what I was talking about when I asked my mom to hide his B-U-B-B-L-E-S, because he started carrying on and clasping the bubble bottle to his chest and wailing, "Noooo...my bubbles...my bubbles".
4- He can count, again not just by rote, but truly count. As in, he understands the concept of counting. He's also grasping the concept of decimal counting system, for lack of a better way to put it; while he doesn't know or doesn't readily remember the word thirty or forty, say, he'll count three-one, three-two, etc. up to three-nine and then start saying four-one, four-two.
(P.S. if you call our house, our answering machine message is him counting from 1-13. He managed to accidentally record a new message a couple of months ago, and was counting the seconds being counted off by the machine on the digital display, before he cut himself off.)
5- He's left handed when it comes to holding a pencil or crayon, and seems to definitely prefer that hand and has done so for well over a year. Whether he's inherited any of Lemel's or his sisters' artisitic abilities remains to be seen, but he can draw a pretty decent circle and also a lopsided triangle pretty well! Oh, he also can draw a 'face': he'll draw a circle, and then put little dots in the appropriate place for the eyes and nose, a crooked line for the mouth, a line on each side for the ears and a scraggly line across the top for the hair. In that respect, he's already surpassed my drawing abilities.
6- Once again, at the risk of sounding even more pompous than before, he has a musical ear and I am almost positive he has piano pitch like me (I'll know for sure in a few years). This is one area where I am pretty comfortable knowing I am not just delusionally bragging and talking out of my ass, since I spent most of my teenage years being pushed into potentially becoming a professional classical musician by my father and my piano teacher, and I know what I speak of. Houdini has loved tinkering and plonking on the piano ever since he could sit on my lap and do so, and more so once he started to sit on his own. He hums every note he plays and, taking his range into consideration, does a pretty nice job of staying on key. He also picks up and learns music he hears very quickly and can usually hum/faux sing along with a tune after hearing once.
Of course, it would be my luck that he'll turn out to want to play the piano, instead of the drums I keep trying to interest him in, even though he can keep a beat pretty well, too. (Yes, I wanted to play the drums as a teenager and of course I am trying to live my dreams vicariously through him. Duh!).
He is also a dancing fool, but so are all kids his age. He's more into the lower body dancing, tapping his foot and shaking his legs and wiggling his butt, than moving or waving his arms. He also does not exhibit any signs of the 'white man overbite', yet.
7- Did I mention he is very active and physical and agile and flexible? He is also incredibly strong despite his being so skinny. He can out run us, both from an endurance and also sometimes a speed perspective. If he is beign stubborn and holding on to something or locking his legs around something or generally being a pain, the only person who can out-strength (is that a word? Probably not, but I am too tired now to think of the right one) anymore is Lemel. Even his doctors, who have seen all flavors of toddlers over the years, marvel at his strength (and again because you just don't expect him to be that strong from the looks of him). He LOVES to climb, and as soon as it is safe enough for him, I am enrolling him in a rock climbing class because I am getting tired of him trying to scale anything and everything, including our walls.
8- He is very affectionate but he is also a manipulative little thing who knows exactly what buttons to push and how far. So, since he is 100% sure that my mom and I are basically there for him no matter what, we get small tokens of his affection, and rarely get called by name (why call for someone who is readily available, after all) and my dad and Lemel get lavished with pats on the hand and pulls on the legs and heart-melting calls of their names.
Only my mom and I get the full body hugs and actual kisses on the cheek, though. The guys just get knee or neck hugs and kisses blown at them.
9- He is definitely an extrovert and LOVES LOVES LOVES people. Gee, I wonder which parent he took after, there?
10- He breaks my heart, turns my world upside down, and scares me every day--and I love him for it and when all is said and done, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Man, bragging is hard work. That's enough for this year. Here's to the next.
