I honestly don’t know where I’ve been for the past few months — my mind is beginning to blur time and space to the point that it’s a wonder I can finish my sentences (and I can’t even claim to be able to do that a lot of the time). I certainly can’t finish anything else.
While I’ve been ‘away,’ various things have happened:
- Zen has begun to talk, which is awesome, and makes life with him a lot more interesting and challenging. He has opinions now, and ideas about how things should be, and specific requests that he makes every other minute — some of which are even intelligible: “Mama? hide? chasing? inthere? aglair?” (meaning, Mama I would like for you to begin chasing me around the house by running into the kitchen this instant, and please take this clacking alligator with you so I can hear you if I can’t see you) or “Gamma? tree? foot? on?” (meaning, Grandma I would like to climb the Christmas tree, please). He also has arrived at a wonderful point of being able to assess his own well-being, so he can answer pretty accurately when I ask, “are you ok?” after he’s fallen flat on his face or banged his foot against something or whatever. And the answer is usually “yes!” — which I find remarkable, because it means he must have some sense of context that’s been established over the past 21 months, some basis for judging whether or not it’s the end of the world that he’s just smacked his chin against the table and bitten his tongue.
- Zen has also learned 92% of the alphabet (we still have trouble with Q and J, unsurprisingly), which is just bizarre since he’s not even two, for chrissake, and though we’ve encouraged him it’s not like we drill him daily, or anything. He likes to perform for praise, so he’s forever pointing out letters and numbers in the world. He’s not too fussed about the order of things, and doesn’t spell words out, and the alphabet song doesn’t interest him — but he has favorites (B, and the number 8, which look alike, I suppose) that he never fails to call out when he sees them.
- We’ve all discovered the unfortunate efficacy of youtube for amusing a toddler, in the absence of television. I think I blame my father for this, since he showed Zen a video a few months ago that immediately became an obsession (“Walrus? Dziadziu? Big? Tusks! Sara?”) — and after that we found ourselves rooting around for hours on youtube looking for other videos of walruses, and then dolphins, and Knut, and more Knut, and lions, and pandas, Mickey Mouse, and finally now Elmo, more Elmo, Cookie, and yet more Elmo.
- I’ve “finished” working for PF (which means, I don’t go into the office, and I’m no longer being paid, but there’s still work to be done tying off loose ends on the stuff I was working on, just no real time to do it). Trying hard to wrap my brain around the idea of my job/responsibility being full-time toddler and home care. I feel a little like a 1950s housewife (“Come on, Zen, we have to go home to get dinner ready for Daddy when he comes home!”) but I’m not very good at it, and I can’t be bothered to invest my personal sense of well-being into how spotless my house looks (which is, not too effing spotless, let me tell you). The interesting part of this challenge is going to be making ends meet, actually. (Budget? what budget?) Heh.
I have some resolutions for 2009, mostly involving the standard self-improvement goals pretty much everyone has — but I really do hope that before too long I can work out my time- and priority-management so that I keep the company moving and don’t forget to get things done. I need to start making lists again. And blogging. Writing it all out helps tremendously, if only to flush out the dead leaves from one’s brain.
It seems to me in comparison with other kids he’s a quiet little guy, and he smiles a lot at adults, looking for smiles back. It’s hard for me to judge, because we don’t know that many one-year-olds, but the few we’ve played with have mostly been more active and vocal than Z, or so it’s seemed to me. Very hard to tell. I need to get this kid some playmates, sigh. He spends too much time with me and G individually, and only children that we are we’re not always aware of how little we’re actually speaking when we’re playing with him, since he doesn’t talk. We’re both so accustomed to playing silently by ourselves, and we’re inadvertantly raising our kid to do the same.