So a Baby Walks into a Bar...

Paxton is entering the phase of exploring his inner comic. He has been excelling at his use of words for months, but now he's mixing it up a bit for humor. The other day, as we were lying in bed, he stood up and tapped the headboard. "That's a headboard," I said. He tapped it again and repeated "headboard". Then he squatted down, lifted my bangs and tapped my forehead. "Forehead board," he said. I laughed at his observation and agreed.

Later, bored in the car, he was sipping his milk and practicing some of his sign language. He held the milk in his mouth and did the sign for "bubbles". Then he held his milk gingerly in one hand and did the sign for "bubbles" again. "Milk bubbles," he said. True, true.

He has often pointed out car anomalies. If a car has a bike rack on the back of it, he calls it a "car bike". If it's pulling a trailer, it's a "trailer car". Now he likes to stack one Hot Wheel atop another and create a new word for his metal monster. "SUV bus". "Pickup truck car". "Ice cream copter". I can't tell if he's trying to be amusing, or if he's really wondering if these are possible words I've neglected to teach him. There are, after all, so many out there.

He still shows extreme interest in sign language. When I don't know the sign for a particular word, he feels confident making one up. He's decided that the sign for "fish" is probably better suited for the word "flag". I still haven't looked up the correct sign for flag, but I tend to agree with him. And when we took him to the aquarium in Corpus Christi, he insisted that the sign for dolphin had to be putting your hands close to your body and then shooting them out in front of you. He did it over and over, as he said "dolphin". When we saw the trainers use that same sign to get the dolphins to swim across the pool, Chris and I looked at each other in awe. Sometimes we think the kid may be a little touched. He has skills that knock us off our feet daily. Turns out the sign for dolphin is completely different. I've since learned it and taught it to him, and he's willingly replaced his misinformation with the correct info.

We've been attending Music Together classes for nearly a year now. With the class, we get a cd of the songs we sing each week. Paxton has his clear favorites and doesn't hesitate to demand that I play them again and again when we're out running errands. "Shoo-Fly, Don't Bother Me" is the current number one hit in our car. Today, Paxton decided to try his hand at writing his own lyrics. He sang happily, "Shoo-car!". Then he replaced "fly" with whatever else he saw around him. "Shoo-lady!". "Shoo-shoe!". "Shoo-leg!". He was quite self-congratulatory at his own cleverness.

I suppose the "shoo-fly" alternatives were inevitable, as he has been filling in the blanks of the "Hello" song for weeks now. The song goes like this--"Hello, to Paxton, so glad to see you...". That's it. We sing it to every kid in the room, and then to the mommies as a group, the daddies, the grandmas and so on. Paxton started singing it at home a few weeks ago. I hear his wobbly crooning over the monitor. "Hell-ooooooooo to Mommy". Now he sings it to whoever or whatever crosses his path. Every one of the pets has been blessed with their own version. So have the trees outside our house, our cars, Paxton's Hot Wheels, his stuffed animals, and anything else he lays his eyes on. It's more cute than it sounds, just because I get to hear my little boy make his first efforts at singing. I'll either be recounting this story to Oprah someday when he becomes a world-renowned crooner, or I'll be commiserating with his wife that he's always been a little off-key despite his love of song.

Wherever his future talents lie, I know that this little person is going to do great things in this life. He has the will and the intelligence to go far. I can only hope that we instill in him a heart to help people, because with his persistance, big changes are going to be made in this world! Resistance is futile! Paxton's on the case!