growing baby

Mateo recently started saying “Abue” (that’s what we call my mom, short for Abuelita).  Yesterday, he touched my mom’s cheek and said “Abue” at the same time–so sweet!  Now, for Ilya’s sake, I hope Mateo’s next word is papa!

Mateo loves following lines. It’s a fairly recent observation, though he could have been doing it for a while. If he sees a line on the sidewalk, he’ll go out of his way to align himself with it, and keep walking right on top. If the line curves or turns, he will probably curve or turn with it with it — I’ve seen him follow shapes on a basketball court.

All of a sudden, Mateo’s relationship with blocks changed.

Just two days ago his only response to blocks was to wait for some adult to stack them high, and then rush at the stack to knock it over.

Well, no longer. Yesterday before bed, Mateo saw an errant block lying on the floor. He picked it up, went over to the box of blocks to put it back… but instead, noticing the other blocks, something clicked in his mind. He took out another block, put it on the floor, and put the first block on top of it.

And then he repeated it over and over again, with more and more blocks. He would stack them two high, three high, four high, five high. He would stack rectangular prisms on top of cylinders; cylinders on top of cylinders; cubes on top of those stacks. He wouldn’t mind when things fell but instead just tried again and again and again.

For a tired boy, spending 10 minutes doing things with blocks was pretty amazing. We ended up delaying bed time a bit until he got tired of the blocks. Still, we were pretty impressed by the sudden realization of how block stacking worked, and his dedication to this task.

A newly acquired skill: kissing.

Mateo hasn’t mastered it yet — it’s really much more of a “touch puckered lips to cheek, then move away” kind of a move.

But he knows it, laughs about it, often answers a request by the parents to give a kiss to one parent or another (a request honored in both languages, too).

Yay for kissing!

Mateo says exactly one word in English. He’s got a few words in Spanish, and I’m working on that Russian one. He’s certainly got enough understanding in those languages to follow some pretty complex multi-step commands.

His word in English is pretty straightforward.

It’s “baby”.

But, due to some lack of foresight, an accident of history, and repetition by his parents, this word does not mean what you may think.

No, my friends.

Baby, you see, means “computer”. Any computer will do — desktop, laptop, turned off, turned on.

And it is a nice, high-quality word. Most other things he says in a typical baby fashion, using only one syllable when there are really many (for example “lota” instead of “pelota”) or using an onomatopoeic word like “pshh-pssh” to mean a microwave oven (for the beep it makes when food is done). But not “baby” — that is a one hundred percent, fully verifiable, perfectly intelligible, definitely applicable vocalization.

The etymology of the word is fairly simple. Since Mateo was little, I’ve had him bang on a computer keyboard, sitting in front of this program that takes over the computer, displays a blank screen, and whenever a key is pressed makes a noise and displays a shape. Mateo loved it. The program, is called BabySmash. So we used this name, and at some point — notably after Larissa had a couple of hours with Mateo — the name stuck.

Except for Mateo doesn’t really need the program to be there to use the general name “baby”. He just needs a shape of a computer. Just like he can recognize his “pssh-pssh” anywhere he goes, even if the microwave oven doesn’t look at all like ours, same with computers. He sees these babies everywhere, from TV stores to friends’ houses. He knows enough to reach to wiggle the mouse or try to press something on a keyboard if he can reach over the edge.

And the little man is insistent. He can go around and around us working, asking and pleading for access to his baby.

So the other day, we gave him a baby.

It’s a rather sad little baby, a computer whose lifeforce has been extinguished many years ago. It’s a very frail thing, really only able to survive when plugged into power — thus limiting its use while under supervision. It has no chance of running BabySmash (or even starting an operating system).

It’s not always there, since the unreasonable baby-hogging parents control when he can visit with his baby, but he has it, and it’s his, and he can press all the buttons in the world and abuse it as he wishes — it will even make (protest) noises from time to time, as he hits the wrong keys.

But Mateo is happy. He’s got a baby of his own.

I Kissed the Baby is one of the first books we read Mateo–perhaps the very first book way back in the day.  Anyway, he loves this book and last night he was flipping through the pages, found the page where the mama duck kisses the baby duck, brought his head down and kissed the book!  And he did it again and again.  Mateo kissing the book was just the cutest thing to see–and it was his very own idea.  I always kiss Mateo when I get to that page, but I’ve never kissed the book.  It almost made me cry, it was such a sweet sight.  This morning while Ilya was taking care of him, Mateo found the I Kissed the Baby book, flipped to the mama duck page and kissed the baby again.  What a love bucket he is!

In other news, Mateo went to the pediatrician for his first year appointment yesterday.  He’s 23 pounds, 2 ounces (50th percentile) and 29.5 inches tall (50th percentile).  His head’s still in the 25th percentile which is just on track for him.  Mateo was a total goofball at the doctors, he was walking all over blowing raspberries and smiling hugely.

Today was Mateo’s birthday. We started the day with a haircut, which was successful, and then went to a birthday party at Linda’s parents’ house — family only, and very nice. Mateo got a billion presents from everyone, and was even possibly overwhelmed by the amount of attention. With a lot of people, a lot of toys, a lot of food, and a lot of love, Mateo was having a supremely happy day.

We certainly don’t know anything really about raising a 1+ year old, and already notice Mateo get more assertive and require a lot more input and interaction than just carrying him around would provide. We are both super-proud to be Mateo’s parents, and are excited to be along on this journey with him.

Tonight as I was putting Mateo to sleep, he kept slapping my face.  I took his hand away and told him in a serious voice, no, no slapping mommy.  He unfortunately thought this was hysterical and started slapping me even more and laughing.  It didn’t hurt, and in fact was pretty funny, but I made a stern face and told him no again (more laughs).  Finally I just rotated him into a different position where he couldn’t slap me.  I hope this doesn’t become a regular occurance!

Mateo understands more and more.  He definitely says mama, papa and something gato-ish now.  He can also almost always correctly identify mama vs papa–even in a photo album.  He can also point correctly to a variety of words (in Spanish, perhaps in Russian too–Ilya?) like: books, heater, star, ball, in addition to moon, fan, cat, mama and papa.  He’s starting to be able to follow directions: I can say (in Spanish) let’s go to the washing machine, and he’ll follow me to the washing machine.  Once he led to the washing machine but got confused because I had to take a detour to drop something off in the bathroom.  If I say, do you want to read a book, then Mateo will walk to his bookshelf (if he’s in the mood to read).  Mateo also understands “no” and he’ll wave his hand back and forth to indicate “no-no.”  This doesn’t necessarily mean that he won’t try to do whatever that no-no is, though.  In general, we try not to say no unless it’s a dangerous thing for him to do–and, even then, we try to redirect him as much as possible to something that is ok to do.

One of Mateo’s no-no’s is climbing the oven.  There’s a drawer underneath our oven with a handle–Mateo will step on the drawer handle and hang on to the oven door handle (that opens the oven) and bounce up and down.  This is definitely a no-no!  Even though the oven’s locked, Mateo could still fall, not to mention getting far too perilously close to the stovetop burners.  (He can’t turn the burners on, though, because we put child safety lids over the burner controls.)

So instead we put bought an indoor climbing set/house that we put in his bedroom.  It has a small slide, but Mateo’s not good at sliding down yet.  Instead he climbs UP the slide, and then turns around and steps off the platform on the other end.  He hasn’t figured out that the walls are climbable yet (one wall has holes and the other wall has a steplike side), but I’m sure he’ll have fun exploring that down the line.

What will Mateo’s first word be?  Sometimes he says something that sounds like “gato” when he sees the cats; today he pointed at Ilya and said “papa.”  I refuse to concede that “papa” comes before “mama,” so I’m still rooting for “gato.”  Cats before humans!