3-5 word sentences are the norm all of a sudden. Occasional 6-word sentence, even. Today he told a joking lie. I asked whether it was the truth or a lie, and he said truth... Then caught my eye as a mischievous grin spread over his face. "Was *that* the truth or a lie?", I asked. "Lie!", he said, triumphantly.
Told Setri he looked very cute. "Gorgor", he replied, preening and grinning. "Moh-moh". "Modest *some* of the time, maybe", I told him. "ALL time", Setri shot back, grinning.
Yesterday after getting home I asked Setri if I could have a kiss. "No! Runna way!" he shouted, and ran off down the hallway at high speed. How Gam laughed! This morning I asked Setri for a kiss and he sweetly obliged, but afterwards giggled "Runna way!", and grinned when egged on by Gam. "Setri do you like Mummy to be happy?", I asked. "Laad!", he replied, grinning at Gam.
This morning Setri threw a tanty for no apparent reason (his premolars *still* haven't emerged from his bulging red gums, we don't have to look far for a reason, I think). After he calmed down I gave him a breastfeed and afterwards he seemed much happier. He said 'take Mamai lork (walk)' and fetched his toy named Mamai and wheeled it around the house to look at fans. When it looked like he was running out of things to do, I suggested he take Mamai to say hello to Dayday (toy plastic turtle). He took Mamai over, crouched down and held Mamai's face up to Dayday's face. He said "Hi-lo Dayday", then put his hand on Dayday and said "Hi-lo Mamai"! Awww :)
This afternoon we worked on Setri's dreadlocks a little bit, trying to encourage more along. Setri kept saying "annor (annoy)" and trying to wriggle away, but we bribed him with bus videos.
Just looked at the WHO child growth charts today, and with Setri's estimated height he is not far above the 50th centile and for weight just below 85th! How the mighty fall, given his enormous size at birth and growth rate up until about 5 months of age :)
He must be a pretty dense little guy, physically speaking, because he is looking fairly lean compared with how he used to look. His little coconut-shaped butt-cheeks are now perfectly normal-sized and his arm rolls, along with the pale-stripe tan line in the middle, are pretty much completely gone, with only a slight chubby bulge in the forearm as testament to Setri's former plumpness. He still fits in size 1 pants, although the legs on these are no longer comically over-long thanks to the steady elongation of Setri's short little pins. His hair, which we have not cut for 5 months, is starting to form little dreadlocks at the back. I was sad to cut these off last time, and this time I am hoping to cultivate them if Gam will let me get away with it. Who would have thought that tiny dreadlocks could be cute? Certainly not me! Probably he'll get lice at childcare and we'll have to shave him... D'oh!
I'm not too worried about Setri's apparent increasingly relatively small size, as Gam says that despite his enormous size at birth he was actually a fairly small and skinny kid until puberty. I was also short as a kid- second-shortest in my class right until highschool when I had a growth spurt and grew to the ever-so-slightly above-average height of 172cm. My mum's father was a tiny man, only 5'4 (or something like that) and Gam's father only the same height as me, so there are small genes lurking on both sides but hopefully Setri will be 6-foot-plus like Gam and his two siblings, or at least 6-ish-foot like my brother (I don't know how tall Richard is, just that he is taller than my 5'10 or 11 father?). Eh, it's not something anyone can control anyway so certainly no point worrying!
"Daddy pick me up" (past tense). Setri said that on the way home from the park. We hadn't taken Setri to the park for ages. A couple of months. He does go with mum very regularly, but for us there was a noticeable difference in Setri's strength, skill and independence compared with when we last went. After playing in the park he played at an exercise station, and impressed the father of a 3yo boy and 11-14mo-ish girl by pointing and reading aloud unprompted some of the numbers at the different exercise spots. "Eight! Len! Lie! Looo!". He still doesn't interact much with other kids, but he did make some attempt to interact with the little girl. Afterwards a bunch of bigger boys- siblings and a friend, I'd say- showed up. The youngest would have been going on 3, the oldest maybe 7. "Babies!", Setri announced, before reading the number '3' out loud and talking about his 'led bobboh-buh lauer' (red bottle-brush flower), possibly in an attempt to impress them. After that he found a new and beautiful variety of deep pink frangipani and insisted we pick one up to take home and show mum. Was a really nice way to spend the afternoon after leaving work early. When we got home, Setri obliged when mum asked him to show us how he can now say 'vinegar' properly... some of the time! Still reverts to 'vihivih' at other times. He also says 'bobo-vivih' for 'bouganvillea' (told you he was quite the baby botanist... It's a shame that I am so ignorant about different plants and flowers or he'd know many more!).
This morning Setri had slept off his sleep-deprivation crankiness and was so good and lovely. Upon waking he repeatedly announced "Like Daddy" and "Luddle" and "Gish" and "Good day, Daddy". I asked Gam for a kiss too and Setri briefly misunderstood, leaning forward with his lips puckered to give me a kiss. I tried to take advantage and have a kiss from him too, but Setri realised his mistake and grabbed me by my shoulders then pushed me up towards Gam and made me kiss Gam instead like I had originally proposed! After Gam had left for work and I was walking with setri to the bus stop so I could go to work, Mum and I were talking about Gam and Setri piped up with "Like Gam. Like Gam"! In the evening he asked for something off the spice rack and I told him to "take it over there and sit down", and he parroted me, saying "Take ova there lit down", while toddling off to sit at his allotted spot next to the pantry. 5 word sentence! Not one he made up himself, but boy is he still ripping along with his language development. We handed in his enrolment form at childcare yesterday, and will have the opportunity to start taking him along for play visits from now on. Discussed what will happen with his toilet training there, bearing in mind he may initially be too shy to tell his carers when he needs to wee. While we were talking with the centre manager we saw a 3-4yo boy in a green shirt brandishing a plastic cricket bat over his head, chasing another boy. The manager went to investigate the ensuing wail, and the boy claimed that the other boy had either thrown the ball at him or wouldn't give him the ball (the other boy was cowering against the fence, clutching the ball and shaking his head, his language skills obviously not as good as the first boy). It could have been a one off, but I swear when we arrived at the childcare centre and got out of the car I had seen Green Shirt Boy at the other end of the playground, menacing a smaller child- looking like he was trying to take the toy ride-in car the child was in. I saw only perhaps 2 seconds of interaction as we crossed the road and didn't see any physical contact, so dismissed it from my mind until the cricket bat incident, but I have a horrible feeling my instincts for spotting a little thug are still good. Thankfully that particular kid looked old enough to perhaps not be there next year!
Today was a horrendous stream of constant tantrums. Setri cheerily stayed up until 9pm last night, only to wake at 6am and slide out of bed this morning. He insistently said "Get up!" over and over, throwing a tantrum when I didn't comply (I'd gone to bed after 11pm, just so I could have some time on my own with Gam). Worried about Setri unnecessarily waking everyone, I got him to settle down and then got out of bed. Was convinced he would later have a decent nap- how could he not? No such luck. He napped for half an hour and the latter half of the day was also filled with innumerable meltdowns (including during a bbq when 'Auntie Nicole', 'Uncle Dave' and 'Auntie Cass' were present. When my mum and dad arrived home from visiting a friend, Setri was so grumpy and anti-social that when he spotted them coming up the front path he shouted "No Mam-ma! NO Mam-ma!", and he has *never* done that before. Usually, as we like to say, Setri is quite a reasonable baby. But today he was just too tired to reason with. There was one lighter moment when Setri toddled off to feed some lucerne ('Lulu'- he is quite the botanist these days) to the chickens while Gam and I watched from afar. After he held out the lucerne to the wire he started walking backwards, holding his hand out in a 'stop' sign and saying "Stay back! No more beck!" to the chickens. It reminded me so much of what Bec told us last week that kids get taught at Xander's day care it just cracked me up. Poor Setri did get pecked twice on the bellybutton a couple of weeks ago, but this is the first time I have seen him do something like that.
That reminds me, we were offered a place for Setri Mon-Thurs at our preferred child care from mid-Jan. Time of upheaval for all of us, not looking forward to it. At the same time it's better than not getting a place and sending him somewhere we didn't like so much.
There are 2 weird utterances by Setri that have us puzzled, and I think he only continues with them because they confuse us and he enjoys leading us on. He's been doing them for months now. The first is "Ivy". He says "I-vee. I-vee", like he is calling out for someone named Ivy. We have asked what is Ivy and he replies "Ivy". We ask "Where is Ivy?" and he will point and say "Ova there". So we will walk in that direction and he will point somewhere else and say "Ova there!". If we are inside he will then usually say "Out-lide", and if we are outside he will usually point and say "In-lide". Then we give up and Ivy remains a mystery. The other thing he says is "Goo-goo. Ah-bah". He doesn't pretend that Goo-goo Ah-ba is some omnipotent being like Ivy, but it's a mystery also [UPDATE: I *think* it's kookaburra, mostly said when he wants us to sing the kookaburra song].
Today I made myself a glass of orange juice and added some iron supplement and the juice of a whole lemon. Setri asked to taste it, so I gave him a sip. He smacked his lips thoughtfully and didn't ask for more. He then pronounced his verdict: "Really big lauer (sour)"!!
--> Ok he is on some kind of linguistic growth spurt today. Tried to get some video of him saying stuff earlier and he stuck fairly strictly to 2 and 3-word utterances and some incomprehensible babble, which he almost never indulges in. After I turned off the camera he played with the (battery-less) lawn mower, pretending to mow the lawn. "Mow lawn. Mow lawn. Make lawn happa (happy)". I turned the camera back on and tried desperately to get him to repeat what he'd said, eventually resorting to saying "Setri, does mowing the lawn make the lawn happy or sad?". "Laad", said the cagey little monster. Later he said something similar while watering the garden with water from his 'splashy pool' using a jug from the kitchen: "Olp Mam-ma. Lorlor gargar. Make Mam-ma happa (Help Grandma. Water garden. Make Grandma happy) ". Prior to these he had come out with two other things. The first he started a couple of days ago using the word 'our' to describe 'our car' (previously 'Daddy car' or 'Daddy Mumma car'). Today it was "Our lawnmower". And when I tried to help Setri down the two stairs from the patio at the side of the house to the front path he brushed me aside, announcing "Do by lelf (self)"!! Oh and the alambic in the cupboard isn't plain old 'Lambic' any more. It's "Lambic dor" (the writing on the bottle says Alambic D'or. I've never said it, Gam doesn't participate much in 'Mell maimai' and says it wasn't him, Dad denies calling it that during his spice-smelling sessions with Setri, so I can only assume Mum must have said it at some point. I asked setri did he read the bottle or did Grandma tell him and he said "Lell me".
We dug out 2 old books from my childhood the yesterday. 'Go Dog Go' and 'Green Eggs and Ham'. Setri sat through one reading of Go Dog Go and appeared to like it. This morning he showed up on his push-trike at the bathroom door while I was doing my makeup. "Hi-lo", he said. "Hello Setri, what are you doing?", I asked. "Do not", said Setri. "Do not what?", I asked him. "Do not like 'at. GoodBYE!"... And having recited one of the classic lines from Go Dog Go, he scooted off down the hallway on his little trike.
Not so cute this afternoon... We got home and Gam inadvertently blocked Setri's path out of the kitchen (and hence to the bedroom for a breastfeed). Setri shouted "Get out! Stay out!!" and used both hands to push Gam backwards out of the kitchen. We were so shocked we just had to laugh.
This morning, Setri said to Gam as usual "Good day, Daddy", as Gam was about to leave for work. "Thank you, Setri. Goodbye", said Gam, leaning down for a cuddle. "Stay back", said Setri, pleading for Gam to stay home. Awww. I very nearly suggested to Gam that we simply chuck a sickie and stay home :)
Also this morning, Dad told Setri he shouldn't be playing on the black lounge (Gam and I don't mind) and Setri replied "Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah". I shouldn't laugh at that one, he'll be doing it to me soon. Later dad was talking him through some computer stuff and he parroted dad, saying "minimy that". ??Then he came and helped me with my makeup and asked to give me and mum a kiss (Gish Mam-ma... Gish Mumma), then said "like mumma" and when Mum and I went all clucky and said "awwwww" he started making this awful keening, groaning noise and told us that's what we sounded like, then scoffed at us!
Pronouns seem to have undergone a sudden improvement/extension: This morning he said "I get uvva one". Yesterday he said "I get in lauer (shower)", "lic (pick) me up", and "me gorgor (gorgeous)" while he was trying on my earrings.
Gam has got Setri practising 'p' and 't' sounds, and he can do them really well. He still hasn't really got the hang of using them in words out loud, though he can sometimes say the words properly in a whispery voice. For example, for 'tea' he will say 'teh teh teh LEE!'
Every afternoon lately, when I get home and take Setri to bed for boob, he gives me a series of big cuddles afterwards and says "Like Mumma". I just about die of happiness!
On the weekend we went to a water park at Springfield Lakes and saw Bec and Xander and baby Joshua. Xander and Setri are still about the same size, though Xander is noticeably heavier. He still has just the same quirky personality as he did when we last saw him 10 months ago, only with more words. His 6mo brother Joshua is an astoundingly placid, good-natured little guy who didn't just tolerate being held by me (a complete stranger), he actually gave me cuddles! Such a beautiful chubby, smiley, cuddly baby. Bec said he makes a wonderful demo baby for practising baby-wearing with slings etc, and I couldn't help contrasting him with Setri at the same age- Setri would have given just about any stranger who attempted cuddles a massive dose of sadface accompanied by a barrage of wails! Gam was not-so-secretly hoping Joshua would give me a reason not to be clucky, perhaps an explosive poo or a good sized vomit while I was holding him, but Joshua is not a good baby for curing cluckiness. He saved his little spew for when he returned to Bec's waiting arms :) Xander and Setri didn't really play together (neither of them seemed particularly interested in each other, despite Setri's fondness for viewing pictures of Xander on facebook) but they gave each other a very cute cuddle goodbye. I was surprised that Setri wasn't more interested in Joshua, given Mum's reports of his avid interest in babies. The only time he seemed to have an opinion was when he made it clear that instead of cuddling Joshua I should be taking him back to the park to play. Gam was probably very relieved :)
Just realised this morning that at some point recently, Setri started using the word 'another'. So, to use this morning's example, if a book has a moon depicted on a scenario on one page and a different scenario with a different moon on another page, instead of saying "Uh-wun moon (other-one moon)" or a variation (e.g. "Uh-wun moon. Dihidin" -different), he now says "Anuhnuh moon", perhaps followed be a description of the moon's colour. I don't know that he uses the word if the moon is obviously meant to be the same, though.
Setri still refuses to say goodnight to people if he is not ready to go to bed. After a late evening (8pm) of running around like mad and showing everyone his 'big playdough', I asked him to say goodnight to mum and dad. Setri's reply: "No! *evil cackle* Runna laay!" (Followed by him taking off at speed and protesting when caught).
Just lately he has started exclaiming "NO!", rather than simply saying 'no' to simple questions (e.g. "Would you like a piece of toast, Setri?"). His previous nos were prim little pronouncements in the Queen's English (in stark contrast to his bogan 'Yeeh' for 'yeah'). I don't think it's him trying to be rude, but by golly it sounds rude! When prompted to say 'no thank you' instead of 'NO!' he will comply only to the letter, and out will come "NO! AHNK-OO!".
I just remembered something I meant to write about last month but didn't, but Setri has expanded the practice now so it's even funnier. He started out by finishing our sentences for us whenever we tried to counsel him to take care with his actions lest he be injured doing something. Any sentence staring with "Be careful...", "Setri put that down...", "Don't touch that..." etc. etc. would result in Setri chiming in with a sing-song "Ow-ow" in a 'heard it all before' kind of tone. Then in the last few weeks he started replying "Ow-ow. Waah-waah-waah". Then it progressed to more specific responses depending on situation. If I told Setri to be careful and he was in the shower at the time he would say “Lip ova. Ow-ow. Waah-waah-waah”. Or if I told him to be careful while walking down stairs by himself (holding on to side rails) the response would be “Lall down, ow-ow. Waah-waah-waah”. An instruction not to touch the barbeque because he never knows when it might be hot (he is really very good about this) would be met with “Might get burn. Waah-waah-waah”. Etc. etc.!
"Lit go lie down". 4 word sentences are a common part of Setri's communications with us these days. Not yet a majority, but frequent. "Go back back lan (go back to the black fan)" is perhaps the most over-used sentence- a repeated request to return to the 'black shop' (an African foods shop with a black-painted shop front) that contains many fans. Setri knows which of the shops on both sides of beaudesert road have ceiling fans, even the ones he has never been in.
So... How many 19mo have kecap manis, pimenton, malt vinegar, grape must and star anise in their vocabularies? Plus a host of others. Garam marsala, nutmeg, Setri's spice-smelling hobby is fast becoming another obsession, to the point where being told 'not now' leads to tantrums (first thing he's been doing upon hopping out of bed- if he isn't asking to walk to the shops to see various fans- is requesting to 'mell maimai'). While it seems quite a healthy hobby for a kid to have, like fans and WOB it appears to be growing almost pathological.
Setri was in the shower this afternoon and I was chatting to Gam when we noticed that Setri had gone quiet and was staring at something between his legs. "Is everything ok, Setri?", Gam asked. Setri was poking at his scrotum like he was trying to get something off it. "Is there something on your scrotum, Setri?", I asked. Setri was facing away, so we couldn't see very well. "Yeah", said Setri. "Uh-wun. That". He pointed to his scrotum again. "No, there's nothing there", I confirmed. "That's just your scrotum". "No, *that*", Setri insisted. He pulled at the ridge of skin running down the centre of his scrotum. Good god, that's a bit specific, isn't it? There probably is a name for it, but blowed if I know. I told Setri that when he can read he can look it up on Wikipedia.
Setri has laid off the beer jokes over the last month or so. Maybe he took my advice on wearing out a joke to heart. Since then, however, he has learned the words 'vodka' and 'whiskey'. We use a bit of whiskey in cooking (e.g. Gam's bbq sauce and chilli sauce) and had used vodka in a cocktail on a couple of recent occasions. It's one thing to be in a doctor's waiting room and have your 18mo toddler cheekily (and loudly)answer 'beer!' to a question as to what he would like for a treat following his needles. Probably even less favourably viewed would be a 19mo in a bottle shop pointing to bottles and asking to "mell whiskey" or "tate Voh-vod"... God forbid he ever uses those phrases outside our kitchen. And NO we did not allow him to taste the vodka! He didn't ask to taste the whiskey.
We went to buy fish and chips for dinner yesterday. We parked near some air-conditioning fans. When we re-entered the car park with our purchase, Setri pointed off into the distance (the car not being visible, at least not to me). "Car near lan (fan). Ovo there", he said. Giving directions! Clearly he got Gam's sense of direction and not mine.
My Dad has come to visit again. Setri has decided to call him Grandad (with prompting from my parents) because it's easier for him to say than 'Grandpa'... The way Setri said it previously, not having mastered the 'p' sound, it sounded almost exactly like the way he said Grandma (i.e. Something like 'mam-ma', though he said a perfect 'Grandma' twice yesterday). Dad brought a nice old-fashioned red rose (the nice-smelling kind) with him from his garden. When I got home Setri told me all about it. Setri can identify quite a few types of flowers now, so he told me the story of the rose's origins as follows: "Lauer. Led loh. Gandad lar (Flower. Red rose. Grandad car)".
This morning Setri asked to "Mell more maimai (smell more spices)" after I had given him a jar of ground coriander to open and smell , and I told him "Not now, Setri, we'll smell more spices this afternoon". He sat on the floor with his coriander after that, chanting "Not now Leh-li! Not now Leh-li!". Just goes to show how perfectly the little blighter skewered me in the Wheels on the Bus verse he made up for me when he was 18mo.
Setri asked to have his giant toy dog 'Lulu' on the bed. He stood up on the bed and held Lulu's head up, while pointing at the fan. "Lan (fan)", he said. "Lulu like lan".
Lorro. Think I have mentioned before that Setri now sometimes spontaneously says sorry for things? Anyway, he broke the foam covering the armrest of Gam's chair in the study the other day and Gam gave him a bit of a telling off for it, having previously told him not to tug on it. Setri said "Lorro Daddy", very contritely. Several times a day since then, mostly when we've been in the study but once in the car and a couple of other times, Setri says, just as contrite, "Lorro Daddy". When we ask him what he is sorry for, he says "Lair". We have told him it's ok and not to worry.
This morning, sitting in the pram on the way to the bus stop, Setri expressed distress that the sun was in his eyes. I pulled down the shade for him and Setri said, sounding rather satisfied, "in dark".
He is getting better and better at parroting us. Yesterday the standout was him saying "'Ere-yeg-go mate", after I helped him climb out of the vegie garden.
Setri has been telling me all day that he is gorgeous. I explained what the word 'modest' means, and told him that he was indeed gorgeous- and modest too! No surprises that a 19mo can't see the irony in a statement like that, so he ran around the rest of the day telling me he was 'gorgor' AND 'moh-moh'. Just now I asked him "and what other fantastic attributes do you have, Setri", and he replied with absolute certainty "Leh-leh". I wracked my brain trying to think of what it was, before coming up with the answer: clever. He usually says 'mart', which is why I didn't cotton on right away. I still don't think it's a bad thing for Setri to have an ego the size of a house, but I suppose I'd better hope he also develops enough charisma to pull it off!
Setri did really well in his interactions with people yesterday and today. Last night he said 'thank you' and 'good night' to a lady at Bunnings who gave him some pencils. This morning he said 'good morning' to Kerri-anne, the lady who co-runs our favourite coffee-shop. Then, this evening he interacted playfully, albeit shyly, with friends who came over for a bbq, AND agreed to go with our neighbours, 'Auntie' Kahrin and 'Uncle' Simon to their house without us (!!!). Admittedly Setri is obsessed with their cat, Crackers, which is a major incentive, but he hardly ever agrees to go anywhere without me if I am around, even with my Mum. Once the number of guests hit about 6 Setri became a little more withdrawn and kept wanting to play some distance away, but once half the people had left he said 'good night' to Auntie Nicole and Uncle Dave, and a slightly more formal 'bye bye' to Nicole's father, Chad, who Setri only sees infrequently. During the barbeque he was answering the odd yes/no question from other adults and not being completely mute, which can only be considered a good thing.
Something else he's been doing lately is telling us he's 'gaired'. When Gam mucks around and pretends to be asleep before suddenly coming alive, Setri will put on a scared expression and whimper, saying 'gaired'... before demanding more! He also claims to be scared if something happens suddenly and noisily (e.g. Something unexpectedly falling to the floor). We can't figure out just how much he likes it, because we asked him if being scared was good or bad and he told us 'bad'! He has also woken up once or twice and told us he was 'gaired' and said 'yeah' when we asked if he'd had a bad dream... We're not sure he really knows what a dream is, but it makes sense that he would have them. One of my earliest memories is of a nightmare I used to have, and Gam occasionally still has them, so we don't want to discount the little guy's feelings. Another thing, tied to this, is that he has started requesting different facial expressions as a game. He will ask for 'hapba', then 'laad', 'gaired' and whatever it is he says for 'cranky' (a favourite- he finds it hilarious) and 'surprised' (another favourite... He can now frequently be observed toddling around the place, widening his eyes and pursing his mouth into an 'o' of surprise and squealing 'ooooh!').
Setri still does that pretending to do something naughty/dangerous in order to elicit a reaction. I wonder how old he was when I first mentioned that? His tricks are quite good. For example, if he pretends to drink something he knows we don't want him drinking because it's potentially dangerous/unpleasant, he will say 'drink', then mime drinking very realistically and follow it up with some wet-sounding lip-smacking noises. Or pretending to bite on a stone.
Watching Setri get older is kind of sad, knowing that one day he's going to be old enough that there will be more of a distance between us just because of the independence that comes with age. But really that thought is only ever fairly fleeting, because the rest of the time, ever since he was born, it has been like unwrapping the most fabulous present I have ever received. Every day we are excited to see a little bit more of Setri's personality, and the thoughts that come pouring out of that funny little head of his.
Today, while Gam and I were lying on the bed with Setri after Setri had a breastfeed, Setri gave me a big cuddle and said 'like Mumma'. It's not quite 'love' but it was spontaneous. It is hard to express just how lovely it is to receive that kind of uninhibited affection :)
Mum has been taking Setri to South Bank recently to play at the fake beach and visit the State Library. On the last visit there was a busload of Asian tourists visiting the place (mum didn't know where from). They got very excited to see Setri and wanted to take his photo. One lady attempted to pick him up and got as far as putting her arms around him before Setri broke out a massive sadface, Mum told me. He didn't cry, but she said the way they mobbed him she couldn't blame him for feeling overwhelmed!
Just remembered something Setri did a couple of days ago, as well as something he started doing last month that I forgot to include in the post... Yesterday Setri climbed into Gam's chair in the study and said "Olp Daddy. Yuyu (computer)". I asked him how he was going to help Daddy by touching his computer, and Setri replied "(P)Lay game"!
The thing I forgot to mention last month is that Setri has been giving his toys names. 'Dogdog' is now 'Lulu', a strange old-fashioned wooden wheelie toy that Mum bought from an op-shop has been named 'Mamai' (pronounced MAM-eye), and a green plastic turtle has been named 'Dayday'. 'Dayday' is also how Setri pronounces 'danger', so I asked if he had named his turtle 'Danger' (which would have been pretty badass), or Daisy (he used to watch In the Night Garden quite frequently) but no, it was just plain old Dayday. It's interesting to see the names he makes up. Only 'Lulu' bears any resemblance to a real name of a person we know (Lucy, pronounced 'Lulu' by Setri), and Setri denied that he had named his dog 'Lucy', even though he now says that Lulu the dog is a girl.
Something else worth mentioning is the shredder. We have a paper shredder, and we have only ever used it once, when Setri was not quite old enough to pull himself to standing- say, 5 months old, maybe early 6 months? We have needed to use it since then but haven't because it's kind of dangerous when he's up, and kind of noisy for when he's asleep. So Setri really shouldn't have a clue what the shredder is or what it does. Nevertheless, every now and then he approaches the shredder, mimes putting things in and makes a noise that is a pretty good mimic of the one that the shredder makes. How, unless he could actually remember?!
This morning Setri spied the nutella jar I had foolishly left in full view on the bench and asked to "tate nut-ella". I told him to wait and he could have some on toast, to which he replied plaintively "tate own?" (taste nutella on its own).
Playing with playdough and the letter-shaped cookie cutters we bought Setri last night, Setri attempted to make a letter 'S'. When it didn't go right I made one for him. When I handed it to him he said "Eh for Leh-li" (S for Setri)! It seems he knows just about all his letters now, from A-Z.
After telling Setri not to stand up in the shower because the shampoo he poured on the floor has made it slippery, Setri stood up and promptly slipped over (I caught him)...
Sarah: Do you know why you fell down (in the shower)?
Setri: 'Lip oh-wa
Sarah: Er, technically, yes...
Setri's latest obsession is 'helping'. We cannot go out in the garden without Setri announcing "Olp Mam-ma/Daddy/Mumma", while holding the hose or carrying a pot plant. He warbles "Olp chiki" as he does repeated trips from tomato plant to chook yard, clutching a single (frequently green) tomato to give to the chickens each time. Yesterday he 'olped' me get dressed, attempting to put my clothes on me in the same way I do for him, and then took my clothes to the dirty laundry basket for me. He is 99% angel, that boy. Unfortunately we still cannot visit Bunnings without a tantrum at not being allowed to stand and flap his hands 'round round' in front of the displays of fans, however.
I went out on Saturday night and Setri was so tired after accompanying Gam home that he went to bed without dinner. In the morning we got out of bed and as soon as we headed out to the kitchen Setri motioned to his mouth and said "eat". "Wow", I thought, "maybe I can get him to eat some breakfast for once!". "What would you like to eat, Setri?", I said. "Lolloh (coffee)", he replied, perfectly serious. Once we established that going to the coffee shop and having a coffee *and* some food was a good solution, Setri rattled off the names of the people who run it- 'Keh-keh-aaa' (kerri-anne), 'Jor' (John) and My-my (Michael), and announced that he was going to say hello to Kerri-anne and give her a kiss. I knew that wasn't true and at best she would get a coy smile and a little wave, but I was impressed that he remembered their names!
19m today. Setri was giving mum cheeky grins while he had a mouth full of boob, as he often does. "Are you trying to impress Grandma?" I asked him. "Yeah", Setri said. "Do you know why you are so impressive?" I asked him. "'Mart", he replied. THAT was an impressive answer. I tell him he's gorgeous/beautiful/funny easily as often as I tell him he's smart, probably more! I'm glad he knows I value him above all for his fantastic little brain and personality J