Do you see what O sees?

The answer to the titular question may well be "no". Last evening, he managed to find two white objects against white floors and walls in a darkened bathroom.

I've read that babies have fully developed vision by about six months. Nonetheless, given the large amount of brain given over to visual processing, it's impressive to me that he should be able to see so well, particularly in comparison to other seemingly simple actions (eg, clapping, walking, moving food from table to mouth).

PS: One of the found objects was the pull cord to the mini-blinds. This called to him with dual dangers - pulling the blinds six feet down on to his head and wrapping the cord around his neck - so, admittedly, it's a slightly lesser testament to his visual skills.

Owen among the Brobdignagians

Kerry, I, and others frequently comment on how big Owen is. And while it's true that he's big relative to his own recent past, he's certainly not big on a more general human scale. This is instantly clear when he climbs the stairs. He's very good at it, mind you, but watching him clamber up thigh-high steps, he actually looks rather tiny. (I'm sure that he would appear even smaller if I were at the base of the stairs versus one step behind him, but it would be hard to see him through the heart attack.)

Life with a mischievous Smurf

One of Owen's favorite hobbies is proving Dad wrong. He likes to wait until I've made a pronouncement about his behavior, then do the opposite. So it's no surprise that, within 48 hours of my declaring the decline of "gukh", the word again dominates Owen's speech. We're tuned into WGUK, all gukh all the time.

Life with a Smurf

For about a week, Owen's word was "gukh". About half of what he said was "gukh", often quite emphatically and definitively. We couldn't figure out exactly what it meant; given the amount he said it, I have to figure it had multiple meanings, depending on context. "Gukh" was "smurfy" for Owen.

This is written in the past tense, as Owen seems to have moved beyond "gukh". (His quick changes make timely blogging difficult.) Indeed, in the past couple of days, his vocabulary has expanded a startling amount. He's making all sorts of new sounds, finding new combinations of vowels and consonants, and mimicking us as well.

What we're not videoing

I expect that, at some point down the road, I'll regret not taking more video of Owen. I'm sure I'll want to see or hear how he used to say "ggggggg" or the army crawl he used to get around for two months. (Or was it only one? Or four? With more video, we could check and know for sure.) But the thing is, what I really want to video are the moments like these from last night:

1. Owen's always helped with the laundry. At first, when he could only sit in the bouncy chair, he'd direct the sorting, identifying clothes that should be washed in cold or on gentle, should be hung to dry, etc. As soon as he could pull up, he discovered the joy of banging on the front of the washer and dryer, great drums that they are. Now, he's taken to pulling the clothes out of the dryer. So last night, I stuck the basket next to him, and he merrily pulled things out of the dryer and dropped them right into the basket. (Given his fascination for the dishwasher, I ought to be able to get him to do the dishes by 15 months.)

2. We were sitting by the front door, sorting the mail, and Owen got the rubber, choking nub off the end of the doorstop. He was enjoying it, but I'm a little leery about the choking, so I took the nub and held it in my hand. First, I would hide it under a finger, and he would pry that finger away to find the nub. Next, I held it in my closed fist, and he would open my fist to find the nub. Then, I would pass the nub from one closed fist to the other and present him with two closed fists. He would open the fist that originally held the nub and stare in wonder at my empty palm. Then he would turn the empty hand over and around, convinced that the nub must somehow still be there, adhered to the back of the hand or something.

Those are the things I'd love to have a video of, but I don't know how to do that without videoing every moment of his life, which would seem to interfere with making such moments (not least because of his hamming it up for the camera). So I write these little notes and hope that I remember to read them down the road, and that they're half as wonderful then as they feel right now.

Oh, and speaking of wonder, Owen's wonderful sleeping of the last week (regularly until 6:30 or 7:00) seems to have gone bye-bye. Yesterday morning he was up at 5:30; today, after staying up late (making those moments I'm so keen to remember), he was squawking and standing at 5:00.