Monday, August 18, 2008

Showing off for Oma

My mom just spent a week and a half with us. It was wonderful to have such a nice, long visit with her. Owen got into it, too, developing all sorts of new tricks in honor of his Oma's visit. A quick list doesn't do justice to her whole visit, but I need to get these down before I forget:

- Owen is walking. I think it was last Wednesday, but whenever it was, it happened that fast. One day, he was occasionally taking several unassisted steps; the next, walking was the preferred method of getting around. Exit homo infantus, enter homo erectus. Of course he still falls at unexpected times, and he needs something to pull himself upright on, but he's starting, stopping, changing directions - he's a walker.

- Owen is dancing. When he hears music, Owen starts bobbing up and down, and waving his hands side to side, as if conducting the music (or scratching records, as the kids do these days). Actually, it's not limited to music. He'll start bobbing along to most anything rhythmical, such as the sound of Dad chopping vegetables. He also hums.

- Owen likes to push adults around on the floor. This goes hand in hand with the walking. If you're in a crawling position, he'll stand up and push on your hip or butt, finding it high comedy when you crawl away or collapse under his mighty strength.

- Owen has always liked it when I give him big, squeezy hugs. He's started giving them back. Of course he can't really reach his arms around me, so he just curls up, jamming his knees into my chest and his head onto my shoulder. He also says, "Rrrrrr," like I do, to make clear what he's doing.

- Owen may have picked up words for "cat" and "truck". I'll buy "Ka!" because it comes in a high pitch and almost only when there's a cat around. "Tuk" I'm a little skeptical of, as it's awfully close to his universal word. (A stopped watch is right twice a day.)

- Not only can Owen unlock and open the dishwasher, he's now learned to turn it on.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I trust that Kerry or I will remember later.

2 comments:

Wm said...

You have jogged a important thought: I trained Dakota to operate our home entertainment unit (I am using the old and busted receiver as a video switcher and the new and not as sophisticated DVD player as an audio switcher, it perplexes nearly everyone but Dakota, who, as I've explained, is trained) but I never trained Jason. The result is that Jason presses button and puts his fingerprints on DVDs and video game discs at inconvient and unpredictable times.

In training Dakota, I ignored advice from other parents in the IT department who taught their children that the home entertainment unit was off limits. I also didn't do that with Jason. Basically, Jason has received no training on AV. Poor boy.

I taught both kids to be deathly afraid of the stove, and to a lesser extent, the garage.

In contrast, my mom taught me to use sharp pointy knives starting at about three and the stove starting in Kindergarten. Using the stove included "how to put out a grease fire with a greasy dishrag without setting the dishrag on fire" (My mom is awesome).

In any case, now that O William can operate the dishwasher, he will be wanting to operate all sorts of household equipment from the bathtub faucets to your blackberry. Let the good times roll!

travis said...

Your examples are dead on, though the timing is a little off. Owen has been a fan of the faucet for a while now, and the berry has long been a favorite transistor-containing device. I don't give him the berry often, because he gets so engrossed and then very sad when I take it back (when he starts chewing on it), but if I didn't lock it on those limited occasions, he would have emailed everyone in my address book by now.