Bragging Again

It's one of those mornings where everything seems overwhelming, and instead of tackling it one at a time, I just want to hide from it all and pray it goes away. I'm in the guest bedroom, blogging and watching LA Ink. The baby is upstairs napping, but the puppy is barking, begging for a walk. Soma just got tossed outside, because she was meowing under my feet for breakfast. And oh, the house is A MESS. Paxton was playing, and picking up little inards from toys the dogs shredded, or bits of Christmas tree. I may be imagining it, but I swear he looked at me with judgment.

I'll get to all that in a few minutes. First, I want to write about the new goings-on of my little boy.

He is not quite 13 months now. He tries to say words constantly. Chris and I can tell what he's trying to say, but I'm fairly sure that no one else could decipher his toddler speech. He tries to say "Bartok", our bird's name. He tries to say "stocking", which hangs still in the stairwell. He tries to say "clock", what Chris entertains him with when we're all lounging in bed. He says "Lula" pretty well, although sometimes it comes out as "Lola" or "Lala". That's our puppy. Whenever Paxton hears barking, he shouts "Lala!" to scold the dog. He still says "cat", although the "C" is a hard sound for him to make, so it comes out more like "dat". He sometimes surprises us by calling Chris "Dad" or me "Mom". He tries to say "truck".

He shows me all the time that he's always watching and studying what's going on around him. If he gets ahold of my cell phone, he immediately puts it up to his cheek and has a baby conversation into it. His end goes something like this--"gluck gluck? aww. guk". If he finds a hat, he puts it up to the top of his head. When he grabs a wipe, he pushes it down to his diaper, acting as if he's cleaning himself.

My mom and I went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Sunday, and Chris stayed home with Paxton. When I got home, we went for our nightly family walk, and Chris told me that Paxton had been walking more that afternoon. He went to a concert that evening, and Paxton and I played for the hour before bedtime. Suddenly, my little crawler was walking everywhere. He looked like a little drunk with a limp while he did it, but he moseyed from the living room to the dining room like he'd been doing it all his life. He would look back at me with a wicked grin, as if he knew he would shock and impress me. The next day, he barely took a dozen steps all day. Of course, that could be because the house is an obstacle course. Even a skilled walker would have trouble navigating our living room right now.

On Thursday, Chris and I took Paxton on a drive out to Pedernales Falls State Park, where my mom was camping to ring in the New Year. I was driving, so Chris happily entertained Paxton in his newly-front-facing carseat. When I drive alone with Paxton, he almost always naps. When Chris is with me, the whole trip consists of playtime. I always feel like I'm mom to two when that happens. I keep telling Chris to turn around and let Paxton rest, but in minutes, he's twisted in his seat again, afraid that Paxton is bored and needs entertainment. On this particular trip, Chris was trying to teach Paxton to play the plastic recorder that I gave all the kids as favors at his birthday party. Pax was humming into it like he learned to do with a kazoo. I instructed him to blow into it instead, blowing into the air to demonstrate. Within seconds, he was making music with his recorder. Chris encouraged him with applause, and he kept it up for a long time. We have no idea if other 12-month-old babies can make music with a recorder, so we're convinced once again that our little fellah is a musical genius.

I suppose I should go tend to the needs of all my other responsibilities. The animals have become suspiciously quiet. God only knows what I may find when this door opens.