Random tidbits

This post is just going to be a bunch of recent Noah tidbits. I haven’t posted in a while (been CRAZY busy but that is another blog story for another day) so here are some of the recent things going on in Noah’s life…to catch up the grandparents and any other sleep deprived friends and family who actually read this blog in the middle of the night for lack of anything better to do!

A quick recap on Noah’s “favorites”—his favorite color is still “blue”, favorite number is still “2”, favorite letter is still “L” (we don’t know why), his favorite living being is still our cat (we really don’t know why on that one—she’s hates him), his favorite TV characters are still Elmo, Curious George and Clifford and his favorite words are still “uh-oh” and “daddy”—in no particular order. Basically none of that has changed.

He is no longer such a picky eater. He has recently discovered spaghetti and her shovels it in with both hands as fast as he can. I never realized cleaning up after a meal could be such an arduous task until now. I now know why some moms strip their kids naked before they let them eat dinner. I can’t believe I used to complain that he didn’t like spaghetti. I can’t believe the mess this is causing. I fear his skin will turn permanently orange.

Instead of saying “All done” at the end of a meal now, Noah often puts both arms up in the air and yells “TOUCHDOWN!” While we as parents (diehard football fans) were thrilled at this new skill, we were so confused at first as to why he always did this in the highchair after eating and not in front of the TV while we are watching football. We then remembered the first time we tried to get Noah to say it, he happened to be sitting in the highchair at the time so now instead of associating it with SEC football he associates it with eating….oh well. At least he is learning useful vocabulary terms.

Noah’s language skills are starting to explode and he is learning more and more words everyday. I tried counting the other day the different words he knows and says and I got up to 40-50 which just seems crazy to me—where has the time gone? Sometimes we don’t even teach him the words so I’m not sure where he picks them up (who says kids don’t learn anything from TV?). Last week he pointed to a giraffe in one of his books and yelled “Giraffe!!!”. A couple of weeks ago David got him to say his first 2-word sentence and unfortunately I was there to witness the awful occasion….I say awful because MY son’s first 2 word sentence was “Goooooooo Dawgs!!!!” Gee, thanks David. That really warmed my heart. The worst thing was my parents were here visiting and they had to hear it too. I’ve never seen 2 grandparents look so appalled or downright disappointed. I’m really working on “Go Gators” with him but so far no luck. He did say “love you” the next day to me which really made me feel better knowing that “Go Dawgs” wasn’t the only sentence in his language vault.

Noah still flat out refuses to call me Mama, mommy, mom or anything related to the maternal population. Not sure why. I haven’t talked about it much in my blog because I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a sore subject with me. He is completely able to say mommy, he just refuses to. He used to call my mama and mommy all the time and then just abruptly stopped sometime in May and started calling my Daddy…all of the time. He also calls David Daddy of course. When I walk into the room he runs up to me screaming “Daddy, daddy daddy” and no matter what anyone does he only calls me that. When I point to myself and say “Who is this?” he proudly says “Daddy!” When anyone points to a picture of me and asks the same question they get the same response: “Daddy!” I really don’t get it. I spend nearly every waking hour with him but somehow he manages to forget my name 100% of the time but manages to remember the names of PBS tv show characters, the cat’s name, correct football terminology and the names of all his favorite animals and foods. He also somehow has managed to learn all of his ABC’s. My father eloquently pointed out to me the other day “Funny how you can get a 22 month old to learn all 26 letters of the alphabet but you can’t seem to teach him how to say “mommy.”
Yeah, funny.