belatedly responding to Katie’s generous comment on my inagural post, here are a few things that little Z has been working on lately:
- walking. Z actually spontaneously walked across the room about a month ago: with no prompting from anyone, he got up and walked over to his great-grandma to hand her the toy he was holding, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And then later that same evening, when his daddy came home, in response to my “show daddy how you can walk!” he smiled, turned, and walked about 10 feet over to his dada, like it was no big thing; and then sat happily in his dada’s arms surveying the room, enjoying all the shrieks of amazement and slack-jawed holy-shit expressions on our faces. But then of course he refused to perform after that, and would only occasionally stagger a few steps here and there, preferring his crab-crawl to scoot from place to place — for weeks, he’s mostly been crawling. But then, since two days ago or so, it’s mostly walking. Which is, you know, Wow.
- eating. Berries are the food of the gods, did you know? All the baby gods love berries. Love to disembowel strawberries with thumb, forefinger and incisors, soak sleeves and shirtfront in berry juice, rub blueberry bits into hair and eyebrows and ears. (My mother points out that berry juice stains can be removed handily with boiling water. I thought of this as I regarded my berry-juice stained hands this afternoon, thinking, really? Yikes.) Z’s love for berries came to my attention a few weeks ago while shopping at Whole Foods — they had a free sample tray of mixed fruit offering melon and blackberries and I took a blackberry and absentmindedly offered it to Z, as I pushed the cart towards the next aisle. Looking down, I realized he had swallowed the first bite and was straining with every available muscle to reach the rest of the berry, which was tantalizingly just out of reach in my distracted free hand. So I fed him the rest of the berry, and I have to confess the mess his face was in afterwards was actually just as charming as his unselfconsciously physical enjoyment of the thing. Babies really get INto it, you know? Revel in the whole body experience of food. I’m reminded of that South Indian saying that eating food with a knife and fork is like making love through an interpreter. It’s like that.
- playing ball. His djido bought him a big pink nubbly rubber ball, and has taught him to play catch. For a one-year-old, he’s surprisingly good. Actually, he’s a goddamn prodigy. He can catch the ball on the up-bounce, and throw it to you. Most of the time. Clearly, we’re going to have to set him up with some ball-playing friends in a year or two. Midget midget soccer. Can you just imagine what that’d be like?
- humming. He doesn’t have much range, but he has an eerily good sense of pitch, and can most-of-the-time match the tone you sing at him, and sing it back. “uhhhhhh” — just a single tone, not a melody, but it’s definitely sung, not uttered. All that time his daddy has been encouraging him to bang on the piano may finally be paying off.
- getting bigger. Doctor’s appointment was today: Z is 30 1/2″ tall and weighs 21 pounds. All that black coffee I’ve been feeding him isn’t working, clearly.
No words yet, really. I read somewhere that babies focus on mastering one thing at a time, and that if they’re working on walking properly they don’t talk, and if they’re working on talking they don’t walk. Z’s been plugging away at the mobility thing for a little while now, but he’s also been driving us all crazy for weeks now pointing at things and demanding to know what they’re called, but then not really trying to repeat what we say.
“de Dah?”
“That’s a bottle.”
“de Dah?”
“Window.”
“de Dah?”
“Kitty cat!”
etc.
The other day I thought I’d be a wiseass and insist that he at least try to say “doorknob” before I’d let him play with it (his favorite thing to do while sitting in my lap in the rocking chair in his room — reach over and play with the doorknob. Go figure).
“de Dah?”
“Doorknob, baby, that’s a doorknob. Door…. knob. You can say it.”
“de Dah?!”
“Door knob!”
“de Dah?!??!?”
“Door… knob.”
I didn’t last but a few minutes into the screaming before I gave in and let him play with the doorknob anyhow. Small wonder he isn’t learning to talk, I’m such a pushover. 
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.
But then, wasn’t it Pascal who said that all of the evils of society are the result of men’s inability to sit quietly in a room? Maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all.
Nah, I’d rather he actually wander in the world, than like Pascal be confined, infirm and bitter, to the house. Get out there, kid. Play ball. Stuff your face with blackberries. Make new friends. Come home dirty, and tired, and happy. That’s the ticket.