Too Smart for His Own Good; The Memory & Skills Edition

Liam has a mind like a steel trap; he remembers every one & everything he does with those people.

Just a few quick things about that this gorgeous Sunday afternoon...

• Nana & Grandpa got Liam a Outer Banks sweatshirt while we were at the beach & he wore it at Auntie Leanne's when we were there the week later. I had it on his ottoman in his room to hang up & he saw it and proclaimed "Nana, beach-home". You want to tell me how he knows this? It's a little creepy sometimes!
• We've been watching [and watching...] train videos on YouTube [a lot] lately. He has always known that Mama has to have her hand on the mouse to make things work. But this morning, he took control over the mouse, clicked on the video he wanted playing & then (since I use Mozilla I have to click to initiate Flash) and then he moused over to the Flash arrow and clicked on it to make the video play. HUH??!?! That's just scary to me. I think we might be asking Santa for a Liam Laptop...
• He knows how to take pictures with my phone. The only thing I have to say about this is I don't even know how to do that without having to sit down & think about it.

Much Too Observant for His Own Good

Liam has always been a Watcher. He will just study what you are doing & then do it on his own. Usually these are things that you do not want him doing, like opening bottles, unlocking doors (and running outside), putting the recycling out (while rather helpful, also a bit on the dangerous side), running and getting the bucket to change the water in his fish tank, etc. etc. etc. But there are some funny aspects of all of this!

For example, he calls Corona's "Dada's beer". Even when we saw a Corona truck the other day at the bank ("Dada's monies"), he got all excited and was screaming "Dada's beer!" from his car seat. He calls wine "Mama's water wine". Now he normally only sees this as an empty bottle ready to be taken out to recycling (which is another word he can say), it's not like I drink in front of him. He also has started saying "bottle of water" but when he first said it I couldn't understand him & it TOTALLY sounded like "Barbara Walters" so I video taped him saying it. And I laughed my ass off. I could NOT for life of me figure out why on earth he was saying "Barbara Walters". It honestly took me a couple of days to catch on to that one.

If you happen to tell him you are going to the pool, he will run upstairs, get a swimmie out of his closet, grab his trunks (he says a Liamese version of swimming suit) and then go grab Mama & Dada's.

He says 'eggs' now cause he's finally EATING THEM! But it sounds like "Highs" and he will walk around, after we've cooked them, saying "Dada's high, Mama's high" and this makes us giggle.

He has been saying "broom" for a while now but since he also now says "bum" (!), one day he kept telling Dada about Mama's "broom" but Dada thought it was Mama's "bum" so he had to bring him upstairs to tell me all about my "bum". I had to correct him & tell him sadly, he was not talking about my bum but that I had just finished sweeping the kitchen and he was telling him so.

He says "red light" & "green light" when we are stop lights but also is mildly attracted to the green and red blinking lights on our PCs & will randomly attack them leading to him turning off our machines. Not so fun.

He calls all cereal "dada's la la". He says river, lake, boat - mainly thanks to Race for your Life Charlie Brown - and when he wants to watch that one, he says Charlie Brown boat. He says football & asks for It's Your First Kiss Charlie Brown by saying Charlie Brown football. He does not like Oprah and will actually turn the tv off when he realizes she is on. All slides are called "hot" thanks to that one fateful day he insisted on going to the park in 100 degree weather and went down the slide. Whoops.

He likes to play a new game called "put Mama to bed", he's played this with Nana also but I get to play it almost everyday. He will get me his pillow, or mine, his blanket and cover me up, make sure I've got my head on the pillow (Mama here) and give me a kiss and run out of the room.

He has now also taken to removing the lids from his sippy cups and drinking like that. You can see how this might be a problem. He found out this morning as he took it off while lying down on the couch and attempted to drink. The look of shock on his face was priceless.

He is still dumping & throwing his toys but at least now the second half of that game is to go collect all the pieces (usually Legos) and put them back away.

His coffee pot has been taken away for a few days now because he was putting his apple juice (squirting directly from the juice box) or his milk in the maker, brewing it & then putting it in his kitchen sink. Which does not have a drain. It was somewhat on the gross side to sop up urine looking apple juice from a sink.

Now are playing 52 Card Pick Up with his Winnie the Pooh colors & shapes learning cards (thanks, Target $1 Spot!). That's another one of my Favorite Games.

Currently, one of his play pots is residing on our stove-top. Complete with water & a hot dog (a pretend hot dog, naturally). Cant' fault him for that, it's totally correct.

I'm sure I can come up numerous other funny-to-me things Liam is up to these days but I have to leave myself some material for new posts, right?!

It's called Pretend Play for a reason OR Why I made a mad dash to Toys R Us yesterday

Liam has always been really interested in our kitchen stuff, he makes a cuppa coffee with Dada every morning, knows how to work the microwave & loves the toaster oven but lately this has become a dangerous obsession of his & I had to put a stop to it.

Coupled with this new love of all things dangerous, he has firmly entered the Terrible Twos Territory so when I ask him (nicely or not) to get down off the counter & stop turning the oven on, or leave the coffee maker alone, or constantly turning the toaster oven on to hear it ding, he YELLS "NO MAMA NO" and shoves his hand/fist into his mouth and either bites down or just stifles himself, I'm not sure which one it is. So this was going somewhere Bad fast.

Now he has a kitchen, a tea set & play food stuff but it just wasn't cutting it for him in the Real Live Kitchen Arena. So under Single Parenting Duress, I called Matias & told him we were going to Toys R Us ASAP to get him some toys that would quench his desires.

Let me just tell you how much I love the Just Like Home line that I think is a brand specific to Toys R Us. First off, everything hovers around $9-$11 placating my Cheapness dearly and second, these toys do everything Liam wants them to do. We made out like bandits & it was like Christmas in July August for this kid, but did he ever need it.

I got him a grand total of SIX new toy sets. That's, sadly, probably the most we've ever gotten him in one shot.

He got the coffee maker that drips water into the pot & makes a brewing sound. He got the microwave that rotates, has a light inside, has a actual working digital timer, various time settings & it dings (also came with food stuff). He got a cash register with monies, a conveyor belt, a scanner that dings, a scale, a credit card swiper, a working calculator as the main component of the register & a neat dinging drawer opener button. He got a dish set of like eleventy billion pieces with his own sugar bowl, tea kettle, creamer (all things he was going batshitcrazy over in our Real Kitchen and causing Mama to go into 'don't you dare break that' mode), etc. And he got a veggie & fruit chopping, dicing & slicing station complete with a cutting board, a knife & foods that you can cut in half.

Those last two items I didn't put out last night but put under our bed to save for another day. He found them THIS MORNING. I put the chopping board in my closet (sssh, don't tell him) & brought out a few pieces from the dish set for him. I'm going to have to find a really good Christmas present hiding spot if he found those in under an hour.

Liam has always been a huge Participator in the kitchen, he loves how things work, what you can make with things & using tools but since we've encouraged this participation in him now that the Terrible Twos have arrived he thinks he's big enough, bad enough, and right enough to go on and do all those things that he participates as a spectator by himself. Which, hello, no. I have never seen him play so well, so long & so happy with toys in my life as he has last night & this morning. He's quiet, thoughtful & engaged. Just like he should be. But I also have to deal with Matias & his buzzkill tendencies towards toys, the amount of them and the general existence of them. But yesterday, I couldn't take the danger, the tantrums and the Twos that were going along with his actions so I took my Single Parenting ass out and bought the farm. And I could not have made a better decision for EVERYONE involved here. This morning when I was making coffee, he went over and made coffee. That is how it's supposed to happen. Yes, it's good to show him Real Life Stuff but not at the expense of his ability to play properly with toys OR his safety [and my sanity]. He even takes it so far as getting tea bags and steeping tea with his coffee maker brewed water. You cannot ask for a more perfect outcome of Real Life & Pretend Play - harmless, adorable & intelligent.

Now can someone just recommend The Best Way to Store all this Crap Bounty?

Nurse Liam

When Liam has a fever the only true way for us to get a good reading to do the good old rectal reading. He's very well behaved throughout, as opposed to when we try the "easier" oral & pit method so we just continue on with the bum-shot.

Since he's had a few fevers lately, we've taken his temperature a lot. I keep his thermometer up on a shelf above his changing table to keep it out of his reach & safely with in mine when the need arises.

Sometimes he stands up on his table (sit down! now!) & reaches for things up there - most everything he can "play" with so it's not a big deal and he knows they stay up there when we are done with changing his pants. He's learned that the thermometer is up there recently though & I learned recently that he knows how to take his own temperature!

He will actually attempt to put it in his little bum! He, thankfully, misses every time but ends up gouging his boy parts & stabbing around in that general area. And that just never seems pleasant to me, but stab away he does!

I think it's quite amusing (it's the little things that get me through the day) that he knows enough & watched us closely enough to understand how to administer the thermometer himself! I wish though that he wasn't so rough when poking around down there ;)

Too Smart for His Own Good; The Crayons Edition

I could go on & on & on & on about Liam's new skill of whining but I won't - I need to focus on the positive, the cuteness & the ohmygodness of him for today was a tough day! Even Dada thinks he was off today without me saying it first - so you know it must have been bad.

Instead, I'd love to talk about how gosh darn cute he is with his crayons & coloring!

I have a cute little pencil box that I gave to him cause it's just exactly perfect for his need - he discovered how to unsnap it & then slide it open to get his crayons out. When he's not throwing them all over the place while madly swiping at the paper attempting to strew it all over the floor instead of table, he will calmly take one crayon out at a time & decide if he wants to use that particular one - very cute, indeed. I keep the crayons up on my desk behind something so that he cannot just grab then whenever he pleases (I tried that, it didn't work out very well) so he comes over & asks for what sounds like "colors" and he goes over to his table after I hand them to him.

Then he will always ask me to draw him a MEOW so I oblige and he proceeds to color all over it. Another very cute moment. Also, as an aside, I think it proves my drawing cannot be as bad as I think it is since an almost 19 month old (WHAT??) can recognize my rendering of a MEOW. The next time we come back to coloring he will ask to see the MEOWS and either color over them again or ask for a new one - sometimes he even hands me a crayon for me to start creating.

The coup de gras of this Too Smart for His Own Good Edition is the time Matias was coloring with him & he was all done but took off running with some of the crayons. Matias called him back & said "go give Mama your crayons & put them away" - so he came over, got his pencil box & while I held it for him he put them all away & snapped it shut! All without anyone giving him any instructions beyond "put them away".

It's amazing me on a daily basis how well he comprehends just about everything we say to him; I cannot believe how much is he progressing & learning right before my eyes. It's so fun to watch! Also, it's fascinating to just see it all click that way - and I do realize that everyone goes through this (this is sounding familiar so I've probably already mentioned this) but can I just get a collective wow when you see it happening with your child?

Too Smart for His Own Good; The Remotes Edition

For a good long while, I've been stuffing the TV remote behind the couch cushions to hide them from my little sea otter - he likes to bash them on the hard wood floors to get the batteries out - just like a cute, adorable sea otter bashing his clams and such upon rocks.

Lately, the boy has been pulling apart the couch in search of the remotes! Foiled again! He is now typically searching for the DVD remote which holds the power to play his Elmo's Top Ten Countdown DVD. I'm going to have to come up with another spot to hide them...we have a basket that they would normally live in, on the shelf of the end table but he has learned to dig into there when his search proves futile behind the pillows.

He has gotten much better about his sea otter-esque actions but now if he finds them he just begs non-stop to have ELMO played & I just cannot live through that - I would rather have a busted up remote & dings in the floors than listen to his begging. So I would prefer to hide them on him rather than give in or have my ears start bleeding.

Where is your favorite hiding place? Keep in mind it has to be somewhat accessible & very easy for ME to get to cause I'm also lazy very, very tired from all this Fellow Mothering.

Too Smart for His Own Good; The Grocery Store Edition

Liam's a Watcher, an Observer, a Studier. Then he's a Doer & a Helper, no doubt about it.

Lately, he's been catching on to Things You Do in Steps; his favorite being the Grocery Store Check-Out.

He will now help load things onto the belt, calling the item by name, if he knows it & it's all very helpful until he tries to load something like the milk & then we all get a little nervous. I let him try & offer my help with the larger or more delicate things (think eggs) but he's very determined to do it all on his own, which I do let him do with as much hovering as he will tolerate.

Now he has to hand the discount card to the cashier & shows his disapproval if you happen to forget this step & usually it's me forgetting since Dada was the one who taught him how to do it so I have to apologize & hand it over so he can hand it back to the cashier who always, very nicely, re-swipes it for his pleasure.

Beyond having to be in charge of the discount card, he now has to swipe the credit card through the machine all on his own or else the wrath you will face is much stronger than when you simply forgot to let him swipe the discount card. It's not pretty, folks. And you pretty much know you're up a river since you cannot very well swipe it again without messing with your transaction. Typically, when Mama has forgotten this Cardinal Rule the cashier is nice enough (we have some regulars who are very friendly with Liam and accommodate his cuteness) to pretend to swipe the card for him themselves.

And again, it was Dada who taught & encouraged this new behavior but Mama who always forgets cause she's too busy arranging everything else occuring at the same time so often times I simply forget to let someone else be in charge. I'm trying to be better about letting him participate outside the house - he's involved in everything we do around here (save sweeping & litter box changing [but that's another story actually]) so it's only natural that it begin to extend outside the home, I'm just [once again] slow on the uptake; whereas my son is light years ahead of me & will probably figure out my forgotten ATM PIN long before I do.

Too Smart for His Own Good; the Chupie Edition

Liam has 4 chupies that [are supposed to] stay in his crib after we get him out. We just throw them down after he's been picked up & there they stay until another sleep. Pretty simple, right?

He's got a blankie that he sleeps with & a thick blanket that I line the crib with to stave off the coldness from the cotton sheets - so usually his chupies are on the blanket.

When we play in his room & upstairs, he goes into his crib through the rails & grabs for his chupies - the new Too Smart for His Own Good twist on this is that now when the chupies are out of reach & on his blanket he just pulls the blanket through the rails until the blanket brings the chupies within reach!

In my mind this shows a lot of thought & action/reaction thinking on his part ~ first he knows he cannot reach it & without asking us for help he deduced how to get it on his own. He knew that by pulling the blanket, it would bring his chupie closer & that he would reach his goal. Gone are the days were he has to ask for big help with these things & can now sit & figure out for himself how to obtain his goal.

Of course, like every Mother, I just think he's brilliant but it is really exciting to watch it happen right before your eyes & I'm always thinking that he's doing these things way ahead of schedule but I fear it's just way ahead of my schedule!

Yesterday was a Smart Day

Liam had a really, really, good Smart Day yesterday & not to say that I don't think every day is Smart Day around Casa Nino but there was something about him that was just on fire!

Here's a quick list of the Smart Day Things he did yesterday alone:

• put his puzzle together multiple times + using sounds for the animals
• stacked blocks (3-5 blocks) consistently multiple times a day by himself
• goes to the fridge to ask for milk, goes to his drawer to ask for a bowl for food & goes to snacks to ask for snacks
• signed an entire sentence to me - it consisted of 'water, no milk then car' in my statement to him of "finish your milk then we can go in the car"
• signed 'fish' while checking out the bottle of white wine with a fish on the label in the fridge while getting his milk
• colored successfully without eating much of any crayons - only one bite
• tells me when he has a 'dodo' (dirty diaper)
• signed Mommy for the first time (!)
• helped me pick up his toys
• signed 'dog' for the first time
• starting to 'count' - especially before jumping/throwing himself backwards - usually he 'counts' to five before doing anything
  

His language seems to be in a growth spurt too these days - adding 'no' & using it appropriately along with 'water', 'the aforementioned 'dodo' (which I highly prefer over 'caca'), and he has started to sing more songs than the Elmo's World theme song. He enjoys Twinkle, Twinkle & the Empire carpet song ;)

I think he's sprouted up in height too, simply because some pants are fitting better in the length these days. We weighed him at Camp Carolina & he's just over 25 lbs. as of Christmas! I let his hair stay long for Christmas cause I know Nana! prefers it to be Little Boy Long but it's time to get the Big Boy Short Cut again cause his swirl is getting out of control & its hanging over his brow & ears.

I have no pictures to show from our Epiphany Celebration in CT because the camera never left the car. He did receive the sorting bags I wanted for him though from Cecilia & Butch and we are slowly working up our interest in them - it was a big plus that the circle bag included a clock!

I've switched from making his pureed foods while still keeping a few options in the freezer, I have officially switched him over to mostly store bought jarred toddler foods. We are continuing to have Major Dinner Struggles with him - not real sure what sets them beyond introducing new foods & new forms of previously enjoyed foods - but a struggle it is. I feel like I've copped out on this one to an extent though because my argument for the change was basically "I'm too tired & do not feel like making his food simply to endure this nightly struggle with him and remain happy about it". Although, I do not feel as if I will ever get over throwing perfectly good food out simply because of some issues with it - so that totally sucks. [another] Although, once you finally get him to eat the food, he DOES eat it all. Weirdo. It also helps to have an Elmo sippy of seltzer water for him - we play the "take two bites & you get some water" game with him & I think that's a fair trade-off for eating your dinner! Funny thing is breakfast & lunch as non-struggle meals AND he self-feeds himself breakfast! Dinner is my Newman. And after a long day of Toddler Wrangling, I cannot summon the energy that I sometimes feel it takes to be the Homemade Baby Food Queen of yesteryear. And I am OK with that!

Also, I think I've figured out that he doesn't like crunchy foods - nothing to heavily breaded or dry - like Cheerios or nuggets. But basically, like every Feeder before me, I know that we all figure it out in the end & make amends with the quirks each toddler has. Some days, I wish he ate every thing I put in front of him & other days I'm thankful that he's getting the proper nutrition & food choices that come along with planning things out & knowing what I'm putting in him. Sure it's neat & fantastic that some toddlers eat Chinese food & pizza but at what cost?

Dialing Back the Einstein

Ok, not really. But I do find it peculiar that Liam is picking up a LOT of words from his videos, mainly Noah's Ark but not saying words he has heard every single day of his 17 month life!

Two days ago, while eating lunch he was watching a video (not a normal thing but lunch coincided with the video already being on...) and when we got to the The Outback portion he spouted the following words, clear as day:

Wombat
Lizard
Koala Bear
Kangaroo

And he has continued to repeat them even without the video on. Aren't those words a little difficult to say? A little more difficult than "up" or "chupie" or "noni"? And yet he doesn't say any of those words! He's baffling me!

I also found in his Animal Alphabet Elmo (and still says LA LA and not Elmo!) a two page spread with a Koala, Kangaroo AND Lizard on it - I'm sure we are fresh out of luck with the whole Wombat options and he repeated them again while looking at different images of the animals. Which only leads me to correctly assume that he DOES know what those animals are & is not simply associating with the video. Why those 4 though? Wouldn't cow, pig or lion be easier? He's pushing the multisyllabic (wonder who he gets his vocab from!?!? HA!) words before his one, easy as pie, syllable words & it's baffling me, people!!

Also this morning he has started to pick up "turtle", "octopus" & "dolphin" from his bath toys Santa gave him - don't judge, they haven't made it up stairs yet.

And...is it wrong that I'm teaching him to say "ding! Turkey's done!" when his kitchen stove timer goes off?

More later, of course! I have lots to share - just settling back in AGAIN! Photos might be on the plentiful side as they are easier to tell my story quickly - so my apologies in advance for those who cannot stand the sight of Liam any longer ;)

Too smart for his own good

Did y'all know that the lids from the Gerber Lil' Crunchies fit on the Take N' Toss bowls (not sure if they are Gerber!)??

Liam figured it out yesterday eating his snackies & playing with the empty container/lid. I didn't realize it until he brought it over to me since he couldn't get it off. And I was all "holy crap" I had no idea those fit onto these bowls!

Another thing that kind of makes me think he's too smart for his own good is when he is playing with his mouse or some other old piece of computer ware he will go over to a wall outlet and try to plug it in. How on earth does it he knows it needs to be plugged in (forget that they don't belong in the wall) OR that this is where he would accomplish this?

He has gotten pretty decent at screwing lids back onto the discarded seltzer water bottles too. Still cannot really undo them so he asks me to do that for him but he's got the screw back on part down! I haven't really caught him doing this but I know he's doing it cause he's bringing it back over for me to unscrew again for him!

It's also quite cute to watch him take his mouse over to the laptop media station & move it around the table like he's making it work :) He clicks away & mouses it around just waiting for something to pop up on the screen.

Looks like we've got a little Geek in the makings here!