For the last few months, I have felt like Wessy was skirting the border between infant and toddler. At around a year, his walking was non-existent and then sporadic, and up until a few weeks ago he had a fairly small vocabulary. All that has exploded in the last couple of weeks and he is definitely leaving his baby ways behind. He's now a confident if not coordinated walker and a non-stop babbler if not enunciator of actual words. But now there is no mistake: We have a toddler.
I think it all dawned on me yesterday. Dada had worked overnight, so I aimed to take Wessy out of the house all day so as not to disturb. First we went to church.
For the last several weeks Wessy has struggled with the nursery at church. The minute we walked into the door, he would start clinging to me like a scared little monkey. If I put him down, he would fire up The Silent Scream. Then he would whimper and sniff his way through the rest of nursery on one of the nursery lady's laps. Last week, his protests were fleeting and eventually he was able to get engaged in playing with some CAHHHH! and did well. This week, apart from a subtle tightening of his grip on my shirt when we walked in, he showed no sign that he minded the nursery at all. I left him playing happily with CAHHHH and returned to find him playing happily with CAHHH. He seemed to enjoy being around the "big kids" and was happily part of the fray.
After church, Wessy is usually bushed, so I take a stroll around the Cow Hollow area while he takes a stroller nap. This week he was especially kind to me, and I was able to sip an entire hot coffee and read a book chapter.
After that, we got sandwiches and headed to Alta Plaza Park. This is an amazing park that is perched on a hill with a stunning view of San Francisco. It is quite popular, and yesterday was packed with kiddos and parents playing and having gatherings.
Wessy again jumped right in to playing with other kids, some of them two or three years older than him. He played in the sandbox and climbed the play structure. He spotted another kid with a big CAHHHH (one of those push cars that a child can ride in while the adult pushes) and lobbied successfully for me to help get him in it and ride him around. While I pushed him in the little car, he looked like a radiant little beauty queen, smiling happily at everyone in his vicinity.
When I sensed that he was getting hot and tired, I plopped him in the stroller and we strolled down fillmore st. I popped into some of my favorite stores there (Crossroads and Goodwill, not your "typical" Fillmore establishments). Wessy was drowsy and didn't really mind, but at some point he woke up and started grabbing the arms of hanging shirts and laughing at the hilarity which ensued while I deflected annoyed gazes from the salespeople and high-tailed it out of the store.
At that point, DADA texted to say he was awake, so we went back to Alta Plaza to meet him. Stevo and I watched amusedly as Wessy played in the giant sandbox with a clutch of other little ones. He actually scaled the little sand table in the sand area and conducted his affairs from this perch. It was then, seeing him playing intendedly and communicating with the other kids (mostly through emphatic babbling and body language) that I realized that, whoa, Toto isn't a baby anymore.
He's our dynamite little guy. He's got a lot of thoughts and opinions and is better and better at expressing them. He is still very demanding of attention but he is becoming independent enough to amuse himself for several minutes at a time. It's such a fun moment in his development and I am trying to soak up every minute!
Current words
-BOOKAH BOOKAH BOOKAH: Always said thrice, this is an evolution of the previously mentioned term "buh." This term is specific to books, and buses remain "buh!!" This term refers to books but is also a strident request to read him a book, STAT.
-Waffff: waffles
-Aawah or wawa: Water, often he can't decide whether to say it in Spanish or English so he does a mish-mash
-meee meee meee meee: I'm not sure of the literal meaning of this word for Wessy--possibly means ME or is a bastardization of please--but he emphatically says this when he wants something, usually food you are currently eating
-PEEEEE: Please or penis, depends on context. If he is trying to ask nicely for something then he is probably saying please, and if he is grabbing at his diaper it's probably the latter term.
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