George has suddenly turned into a chatter box. He repeats every new word he hears, especially if he can see what it is. He is fascinated with his body parts, and has fun saying elbow, wrist, knee, shoulder, belly button, ankle, cheeks and penis in addition to the standard eyes, ears, mouth, nose, fingers and toes. (Toes was his second word, after dog). He sometimes gets his elbows and ankles and wrists confused, but he often knows just where each is. He also confuses neck and chin if you ask him about them. But he knows where his neck is because he often complains about "neck." It seems that shirt collars, jackets, seat belts, etc...all bother his neck. So he tugs at them and says, "neck!" He is still teething too. His lower canines have been trying to push their way through for months. Some days he points to his teeth and says, "Mowf, ouch."
While riding in the car, George is very aware of what is going on around him. He loves buses. Every time we see a city bus, he shouts, "Bus!" Then frantically signs for more while saying, "More bus, Mommy, more bus." He still thinks I can make things appear for him. He says, "School bus" when we see a yellow bus, and points out "big trucks" and "trucks" too. When we're stopped at a red light, I tell him red light means stop, green means go. When the light turns green he yells, "Go Mommy, go go go go!" If we pass a bicycle he says, "ickle" and a motorcycle is "ockle." He loves to pass "people walking" and "doggies!" If there are more than a few people, he'll say, "People. More people. Oh, more people."
George has just started putting together small sentences. It started last weekend when he was just 21 months old. We were in the car and he said, "I see bus!" I was very impressed. As the weekend progressed, he expanded from "I see bus/dog/car/ Poppa" to "I wanna see dog/bus/Daddy." When the phone rang, he shouted (as he has done for 3 months) "Telephone!" But this time he followed his pronouncement with, "Daddy get it." He has also been asking to, "Call Grandma." Yesterday we did, and he listened to her, said "Hi Grandma." He answered a couple questions with "yeah" and then said, "bye!" My mom is convinced he repeated, "I love you" to her. I think he said, "Hi Grandma." That is what I heard. Plus, I suppose I don't want him telling Grandma he loves her before he tells Mommy! Oh well. Grandma will hear "I love you," I'll hear, "Hi Gramma" and one day "I love you" will be clear to us all. For now I am thrilled that he takes breaks from playing and says, arms up to be picked up, "Want cuddle." I'll scoop him up and he'll wrap his arms around me and give a huge hug, and snuggle in for anything from 2 seconds to 3 minutes before saying, "down!"
George has also begun to have an opinion about many things. He now wants to choose what he wears. Sometimes I'll try to get a certain shirt on him and he will flat-out refuse. So I will pull out another and offer it to him. Sometimes we need to get to several before he finds one he'll allow me to help him put on. Last week he wore a red Hawaiian shirt, grey polka dotted baby legs, shorts and orange shoes. He takes after his Daddy when it comes to color and pattern mixing. Some days he gets very upset when I try to take his pj top off. It is quite a struggle as he cries and holds on to it with his little vice-like grip. He is strong! I suppose I should just go with it and let him wear his pj top to school if he really wants. I'll try that next time and see how it goes. He also loves to take his diaper and pants off. This seems to mean to him that it is time to run. I'll help him take his pants and diaper off (he can't quite do it by himself most of the time), and shoes too if he asks (he always takes his socks off himself). Then he says, "running!" and takes off running in circles around the house. He'll run nearly non-stop for 10 minutes, just taking breaks to pet a dog or get a quick "cuddle" (hug). Then he is off again, saying "running" as he goes. He does like to narrate what he does.
About a week ago, he came into the kitchen a bit before bedtime. He had taken his pj bottoms off. I praised him since he had never done that before by himself. Then he asked me to take his diaper off (dapper-OFF). I helped him get it off and he said, "Potty." We haven't started potty training, but have a potty chair in the main bathroom. He often sits on it (fully clothed) while I go to the bathroom in the mornings. I asked if he wanted to go potty and he said yes. So in we went. He sat on the potty for a minute or so and "read" a book, but nothing happened. He said he was all done, so got up to go play. He didn't want a diaper on, so I said, "If you need to go pee-pee or poo-poo, sit on your potty." I went into the kitchen to fix his supper and about 3 minutes later he came in and said, "pee-pee. potty." So I went with him into the bathroom where he had already sat and peed in the potty! I couldn't believe it. He was pretty baffled with all the praise he got. I even called Auntie Christine and Grandma to share the news. I wanted to call Nanas Wendy and Karen in England too, but thought they might not be thrilled to be awakened at 1 am! The next night he again asked for help getting his pants and diaper off and then used the potty again. The night after, George was running around the back garden while we watered the vegetables and picked greens for dinner. All the sudden he said, "poopy!" I asked him if he needed to go and he said no. A minute later we found the poop on the lawn. He had just gone, without bending or anything. A while later in the kitchen, he again said "poopy." I scooped him up, poop halfway out, and carried him to the potty. This kind of freaked him out, but he finished pooping on the potty, then peed. (We have an old potty chair from my sister's kids, and he can't get his willy in it, so he ends up peeing on the floor. This bothers him. So I got a great potty chair by BabyBjorn that has an oval opening and a little shield. He can sit on this and pee and it goes down, not over and out. Much better.) This little kitchen poopy adventure taught us that he is not quite physically ready as he doesn't seem to know he's going to poop until he is pooping. But he can tell us in advance when he needs to pee. Now most nights he tells us he wants to use the potty and he pees in it, on his own. Then after a while he asks for a diaper on. During the day he will often say he wants to go potty. If we're out and about, I tell him he can go pee in his diaper. He just says, "Oookay." He is a bit afraid of a regular toilet, so we're not pushing that side. And as he seems to be potty training himself, we're not pushing any of it. He'll do it when he's fully ready. My guess is he'll be fully daytime trained, if not overnight, by his 2nd birthday this August. But so far we have done no potty training. He just seems to want to do what we do.
