Mr. Talks-A-Lot

Drew took these pics a few weeks ago. Today felt like a good day to post them.

I also wanted to mention, simply because I haven't talked about it at all lately, that Silas now speaks in complete sentences, pretty much all of the time. I guess that's not surprising, given the fact that he's now over two years old. People always say that such things seem to happen overnight. But I feel like this transition has been very gradual, from him occasionally completing a sentence, perhaps 4 months ago or so, to now, when he most often talks in complete sentences.
And the things that come out of that boy's mouth! In particular, he seems fond of the phrase "shall we..." "Shall we read a book?" "Shall we eat crackers?" And when at the zoo: "Shall we go find L?"

He must have picked this up from his Dad as the word shall isn't exactly in my daily vocab repertoire.

Silas just got up from his nap and is sitting right next to me. To give you an example of how he talks, he just said "Daddy's in studio to work on something. Washing machine's beeping. Not working still (it's been partially broken for a while). Daddy's in studio! Mommy's typing something. Kitty's just upstairs sleeping. To sleep in bed. Cuz mouse upstairs. Mouse doesn't have any mommy-milk. Mouse upstairs sleeping. Sobin's upstairs sleeping too. Kitty's sitting upstairs. Kitty's upstairs. Mommy-milk. " Uh-oh, that's my cue to go. :)

House of Kind Words

Silas took this picture. This is the view of our front yard as seen from the bay window in our living room. Silas stands at this window to look out quite often. When I come home from work, I see his sweet little face waiting for me at this window, and it is always a joy to see him break out into a big smile when he realizes I'm home...

...So, when I last posted, I mentioned that I wanted to write more, but mommy duties cut my computer time short. I wanted to write a bit more about what I had been thinking of that day.

Silas is a great kid, but he's also a normal toddler and this means he has moments of frustration, anger and over-excitement. These moments can lead to hitting, biting, and outbursts. We are always striving to find ways to stop these moments before they start. The loop reward system (mentioned a few posts back) has been very successful thus far. He really gets it and so we are trying to give him loops when he has been biting/hitting/tantrum-free for a long period of time. Sometimes, I think Silas is simply frustrated because he feels he can't communicate his needs. I remind him to use his words because, really, he has quite a large number of them and in truth can communicate much of what he needs too. We are also trying to redirect angry energy by doing "mad dances" to stomp away angry feelings rather than hitting. When I write this, I feel like I'm giving the impression that he is a little terror who needs serious behavior modification therapy. I assure you, that's not the case. We are simply trying to reward for good behavior and deal with fixing the cause of bad behavior before that behavior even begins.

Anyways, I could go on and on about all of this, but the real point I wanted to make, before I blab too much, is this: Learning how to parent Silas, to gently discipline him, to raise him to be a thoughtful, compassionate person, has really forced us to reexamine ourselves. We know any negative behavior we exhibit will rub off on him. We know we aren't perfect people, or perfect parents. We are perhaps hyper aware of this and therefore, we've really become focused on awareness of our own issues and actions. One thing Drew said recently really stuck with me: "How we react to anger is a choice." Anger doesn't have to be met with anger, and keeping a cool head when your toddler goes berserk...definitely helpful. And that is where "house of kind words" comes in. If you want a peaceful child, you must have a peaceful family, a peaceful home. If we are quick to anger, Silas will be. If we are judgmental towards each other or towards Silas, he will be judgmental. If we react to stressful situations or outbursts with anger, he will grow up to do the same. I know this is all obvious on an intellectual level, but in practice, it takes constant reminding. It is so easy to forget Silas is in the room when we talk about certain things, but whenever we speak negatively, we now remind each other that this is a house of kind words.

As a family, we share the same goals: we all want to live peacefully with each other, have a happy home, and enjoy each other's company. I suppose it helps that Drew and I rarely rarely argue, but this is just one piece of the puzzle, and we are still striving to deal with some of the issues all people face. I am incredibly grateful to Silas for showing us that it's not just the toddler in this family that needs to learn (or maybe unlearn) a few things!

On a different front, yesterday, Silas said another complete sentence. Out of the blue, with no prompting, he announced "I like salsa." Yep. He may look a lot like me, but he is his father's son. He also learned the word iPod this week (it was bound to happen). He can now be heard saying "mommy's iPod, daddy's iPod, sync iPod!"

22 Months Old!

Silas is sitting on what remains of our eucalyptus tree, which fell a few weeks ago right next to our house and narrowly missed hitting the sheep cote.

Silas is awesome at turning just about anything into guitars, including sticks:
And, chillin' inside:
Giving pointers to Buddha:
Silas combines words all of the time now and occasionally makes something resembling a complete sentence. If I had hours to write, I could go on and on describing in great detail the strides Silas is making with language lately. Since I only have a few minutes...I'll just describe a few instances that stand out in memory.

Instance #1: About a week ago, Silas woke up, climbed over us and got out of bed. It's pretty standard for him to say things like "up, up. light. on. power. on. coffee. up, up, up" until we finally oblige him and get up and turn the light on. That particular morning, he said "turn on light!" I laughed and told him how funny it was that his first complete sentence was a command. He replied by saying "Please!"

Instance #2: Tonight before bedtime, we were playing together on the bed. I was kneeling and he was running around doing bellyflops onto the bed. He misscalculated and flopped down too close to me, slamming his cheek into my knee. After many tears and kisses to make it better, he had calmed down and was ready for "mom milk," as he calls it. He climbed into bed, looked at me, and said in a sad little voice, "Mommy's knee hurt Silas." "Oh, poor baby!" I said, "but excellent language usage!" I comforted him some more, but not before running out to the kitchen to tell Drew what he'd said.

We are SO close to having him speak full sentences as a matter of course!

Silas' List of Thankfullness, '08

I've decided to start our own Thanksgiving tradition: Each year, Silas will make a list of what he is thankful for. Here's this year's response to the question "What are you thankful for?" Commentary and translation from Standard Toddler to Standard English, when necessary, are in parenthesis. Repetitions of words have been removed to keep the list from becoming book-length.

1. Mommy (I like how this is beginning!)
2. Pen (said while trying to grab the pen I'm using to write the list)
3. Ga-bige-a (bike)
4. Car
5. Tea
6. Coffee (You know your child is a native Northwesterner when this is one of the first words out of his mouth every morning)
7. Daddy
8. Fah (fire)
9. Ki-eeey (kitty)
10. Puppy
11. Gamma (grandma)
12. Pa (grandpa)
13. Pa-kwa (Patrick)
14. Shaaahn (Shannon)
15. Dolly
16. Llama (or maybe he ment Dalai Lama?)
17. Gummy (vaccuum--a story for another blog post)

And there you have it. We hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving. I'll post some pictures from today soon.

Harmonica, take one...

I expect we'll capture better videos of Silas playing the harmonica in the future. Right now, it's a little tricky, for two reasons. First of all, he only started playing about a week ago, so he tends to only play in small bursts, though he does occasionally go crazy with it, playing up and down the scale. Secondly, he has to be pretty distracted (as he is in this video), not to notice the camera. If he sees me pointing it at him, he stops what he's doing and yells "baby, baby" while grabbing for the camera. This is my fault, really. I made the mistake of showing him the pictures the camera takes and not surprisingly, these pictures are mostly of himself (the "baby" in question). So, he now associates the camera with seeing pictures of "baby."

Anyways, here's our aspiring musician at the spring of his career. One more thing to mention: He recognizes both guitar (he calls it "tar") and harmonica (he pronounces it "gumma") when it's being played in the music we listen to. He has been playing air guitar for some time now, and now he plays air-harmonica as well, holding one hand over his mouth and fluttering the other hand in front of it, and moving his head back and forth. Maybe I'll try to capture that on video some time too.

"Attention: this fence is electrified" and other signs

I've been meaning to archive Silas' list of signs for some time now. This list is incomplete, but it's better than just deleting it from the sidebar and forgetting many of the signs he once knew. He leaves each sign behind when he learns the vocalized equivalent. "Puppy" and "kitty," two of his most common signs, for instance, are only spoken now. "Bird," on the other hand, is still only signed. I have a feeling that "milk" and "more" will be the last to go.

(Incomplete) list of Silas signs:

Hat, banana, baby, computer, hot, fan, bear, ball, music, bib, pig, sheep, daddy, mommy, frog, puppy, bird, Hi/bye, book, drink/water, kitty, milk, more.

It makes me a wee bit sad to think that soon he will no longer use any of these signs. After all, it was the first way we communicated with him, and we worked really hard on it. It was such a joy to see him learn a new sign, just as it is thrilling now each time he learns to say a new word. I suppose it's sort of like when your child outgrows a once beloved toy. The child moves on and doesn't even notice, but the parent looks at the toy and realizes they've developed a sentimental attachment to it on behalf of the child. I love when he says "puppy" but at the same time, I miss how he would enthusiastically slap his hand to his leg every time he saw a dog. It's only a matter of time before he's speaking in complete sentences, doing advanced algebra, dating girls who aren't good enough for him, leaving for college...

More on the feeding and care of Mr. Bear

Just look at those teeth! With 16 teeth now, Silas can eat a lot of the same foods that we do. There have been a few surprises regarding what Si will eat or will not eat.

Here are a few things I was absolutely convinced he would love, but instead has rejected the multiple times I've offered them:

Peanut butter (go figure)
Cheese (clearly he was not born in WI)
Butter (Seriously, Silas?)
Scrambled or fried eggs (but boiled eggs are one of his favorite foods)

And on the list of foods I thought he'd hate but instead loves:
Raw broccoli
Fresh salad greens

He's already a better vegetarian then I am.

I was going to write more about language since he's been doing really well with that lately, but I think I'll save that for another post. Pretty soon, the list of signs I keep on the side will disappear since I haven't been updating it anyways. He has picked up several more signs, like thank you and scared, and he still uses baby sign often. However, we've been mostly concentrating on spoken words now that he seems ready to vocalize more.

So, in closing, I will leave you with an extra picture. It is strange because we've never emphasized gender specific toys, but regardless, he loves "boy" things like balls and vehicles. Here he is, fulfilling a gender stereotype, playing with his truck, or "cah" as he calls it:

In the Garden with Buddha

This is our garden shrine. Patrick taught him to bring flowers to Buddha and we taught him to gasho (palms together and bow in respect). He will say "Buddha" (sounds like "B-dah") and also will gasho when we say "Buddha" or when he walks past the shrine.

Interestingly, he's taken a liking to a picture of Robin that we have in the house. Today, he picked it up and said "B-dah, B-dah" over and over again, and then hugged the picture. I then took the picture from him and he made the gasho gesture. Both Drew and I just stood there with our mouths open staring at him in disbelief. Don't know what to make of it really, except to say that it was a precious moment for us, given how important Robin was in our lives.

Fear, thy name is...Lawnmower?

Silas is no fan of loud noises, so it's not a big surprise that he's afraid of the lawnmower. But like other things that he is afraid of because they are loud (the vacuum, the sheep), he is also strangely fascinated by the lawnmower. Here he is, standing at the window, whining softly with his lower lip pushed out and his eyes wide. As Shannon drives the mower near our house, he can't take his eyes off of it, no matter how scared he is.
I didn't capture the scaredy-face, unfortunately (it's pretty irresistible). Instead, he has his fingers lodged in his mouth to give him comfort and help ward off the coming doom as the mower circles ever closer to the house.

Meanwhile, one of us still has to walk Silas outside while the other vacuums.

But, we are making headway with the sheep. Until quite recently, Silas was, well, sheepish with the sheep. He was okay unless they started Baaing loudly. The suddenness of this was enough to send him over the edge. Now however, I'm happy to report that when they baa, instead of crying, Silas says "baa" back. In fact, he now seems to refer to the sheep as "baa." This, my friends, is progress. Perhaps when he can start imitating the lawnmower and vacuum, he will overcome those fears as well.

Parents, music, and sneezes

I assure you, nothing has happened to Silas' left arm. It's somewhere behind the Tibetan singing bowl he's carrying in this picture.

Right then, on to some of the other language things I've wanted to mention on the blog.

First up: mom and dad. These are two separate signs, obviously, but not in Silas' world. He uses the same sign (pointing to his forehead) for both of us, and for Patrick as well. For lack of a better word, we'll just call it his "parent" sign. What we've noticed him doing lately, however, is combine two different signs to differentiate between his mom and dad. He'll sign "parent" and "music" to indicate Drew, and "parent" and "milk" (go figure) to indicate me. He by no means does this all the time, but every now and then he will.

Another combo: Now that he's learned the sign for computer, he will sometime say "computer music" to indicate that he wants us to play music through the computer. And while we're on the subject of music, for a while now, he's signed music when he sees a violin or guitar or another instrument, but that's not surprising. What is, however, is that he's figured out that a musical score is also related to music, and so he will use this sign when he sees notes or musical notation as well. Huh. I don't think we taught him this, but he figured it out somehow.

One last thing for this post: He thinks it's the funniest thing when we sneeze and will try to copy the sound. Usually, it will come out sounding like "aaii-yaah" or "aa-taah." If we sneeze again, he'll just laugh.

And, your Saturday afternoon bonus shot: best buddies.

Say What?

Ever since I studied language acquisition as an anthropology major in college, I've been fascinated by it. For instance, did you know that someone once proposed an experiment in which parents would bring their toddlers to an island to live for a number of years and only speak a form of pidgin to them so that they could observe how a creole language developed. Brilliant idea in theory, but highly unethical in practice. Anyways, now I've got my own little experiment in language development running around the house. I've been taking lots of notes. Here are a few observations:

Silas still mostly signs rather than vocalizes. He is beginning to say a few words, and I'll get to that later. Sticking with signing, it's been great to see how it helps reveal the inner workings of his mind. For instance, let's take the word "bird." Silas signs when he sees birds or pictures of birds. But he also signs "bird" when he hears them. One warm evening, we were preparing for bedtime and the window next to the bed was open. Silas lay there and we heard birds chirping and so he signed "bird." Just a few days ago, we were outside and a small plane flew over us, rather low. Silas was really intrigued and his gaze followed it till it was out of sight. I told him it was an airplane, but he doesn't have a word for that, so after thinking for a while, he signed "bird." Well, it was flying after all, so it was a logical conclusion.

Similarly, Silas doesn't know all of the signs for every animal. Often, when a creature looks like it might be a kitty (like a bunny or a squirrel), he'll sign "kitty" and when it's a bigger unknown creature, he'll sign "puppy." I took him to the PAWS walk last Sunday, which is a dog festival of sorts, and its goal is to raise money for our local animal rescue organization. He was in seventh heaven seeing all of the dogs, and he signed "puppy" over and over again, until, that is, he saw a corgi. He looked really close at that little dog, which didn't quite look like the other dogs, and finally decided it was a kitty. Too funny.

One of the things that has surprised me, is Silas' capacity to understand that a representative image of something is the same as what it's meant to represent. Sticking with "puppy" again: One day, I saw him open a book to a picture of a dog. This was a cartoon image, rather than a realistic painting or a photo, but he still signed "puppy" when he saw it. Likewise, he knows that the stuffed dog I made him for his birthday is a puppy (though an adult at his party thought it was an aardvark). Like the example I gave with "bird," if Silas hears a dog bark, he'll sign "puppy." He doesn't have to see the dog--the bark is all that it takes.

One of my favorite signing examples is music. Silas LOVES music, so this was an important one for him to learn. He signs it when a song he likes comes on. He signs almost always first thing in the morning to indicate that he wants us to turn music on. He also has figured out how to turn the radio on. It's set to the classical station, so he will often push the "on" button, sign "music," and then sit there and rock to the beat. Because we often play music through our laptop, he now equates laptops with music. One day, we were next door and he kept signing "music, music." There was no music playing, so I wasn't sure what he was referring to, until I saw him pointing to Shannon's laptop.

We have a definite morning routine now, and we usually all eat breakfast together before I leave for work. As soon as I get up from the table and start to gather my things, Silas signs good-bye. I love this, as it's entirely unprompted (though in a way it brakes my heart).

One of Silas' most common signs is "book." He used to use this sign to show that there was a book in front of him, but now he will also sign "book" when he wants us to read to him. If we read a book and then put it down, and he wants us to read it again, he will give us back the book and sign "book" very insistently.

It's hard to say for sure, but it seems like every now or then, Silas has been putting two signs together. the reason this is difficult to determine for sure is that he often says two or three signs in a row because he gets confused and doesn't say the sign he really wants to say the first time. But still, there have been several occasions (and Drew could probably relate more) when it seems intentional. One day, for instance, Silas pulled out a book with a picture of a bird on it. He signed "bird" then looked at it and signed "bird book." Occasionally, it seems like he's saying "more something" like "more milk" or "more music." One glorious day, I came home from work and he signed "hello mom." That. was. awesome. But it might have been completely accidental. Either way, I'll take it.
And that segways into the next topic--the spoken word. Si's vocal words are limited, but recently, he's had a breakthrough on the parroting front. He has indeed tried to imitate "duck dog" several more times since I reported the first occurance of it on Sunday. He's also been saying "daddy" for the last few days, and it's sounding startlingly clear. He tries to repeat "mommy" when I say it, and sometimes he gets it, but it often sounds like "ba-bee" instead. I don't know why. He most definitely knows how to say "mama" and for several months has seemed to be directing "mamamamama" towards me when he wants me or wants something from me (see the happy baby picture of Silas in the orange jacket for an idea of how he usually looks when he says "mamamamama.") It's only been recently, however, that he makes efforts to say words like "mommy" or "daddy" in imitation of us. Other words he'll attempt to parrot include read, bird, baby, pee, and butt. That's our boy!

Naturally, it is very exciting to hear him repeat words, or even just sounds, back to us, but what I'm most amazed by is knowing that without signing, we'd still have almost no ability to communicate with Silas. How frustrating that would be for him and for us as well! We obviously are still working with a limited vocabulary, but what signs he does know seem to go a long way. I think about how many times he was able to tell me he wanted milk, or the time when he signed "bird" to me and pointed out a bird that I myself hadn't even seen, or the first time I finished singing him a lullaby and he signed "music" to indicate that he wanted me to keep singing. I am just so grateful to have this way to communicate with him while he's still learning (and still largely unable) to physically speak.