18 Months Old

Jonah turned 18 months old on Sunday. Thursday was Thanksgiving, and Michele and I know that we have much to be thankful for.

Here are the stats. Jonah is 33 1/2" tall and he weighs 23 lbs., 10 oz. That keeps him in string bean range, at 83rd and 20th percentile for height and weight, respectively. For anyone keeping track, he has doubled in length and tripled in mass since birth. Tall and thin is in, despite a food rampage over the past week. The photo here is from the night after Thanksgiving, where Jonah discovered the wondrous combination of ketchup and cranberry sauce. I just kept thinking, "brains, more brains".

I learned some interesting things at his 18-month "well baby" checkup. First, there is nothing wrong with harnessing Jonah's love for everbody's favorite tomatoey condiment to get him to eat his vegetables. In fact, Michele just informed me that tomorrow's lunch will include ketchup with brocolli -- a tasty treat that even Ronald Reagan would be proud to serve in school lunches.

Second, a flu vaccine needle looks really big and scary next to my 33 1/2 inch baby. Jonah was one brave dude, taking three shots in the thighs today. What must be going through his mind when he's pinned down by mom and dad on cold doctor's office butcher paper -- even before the first poke? Then after the first...and after the second...and after the third? The emotional scars of childhood!

Lastly, it really is important to wean your kid from his pacifier. Michele and I have had a love-hate affair with the "na-na's". Before he was born, we decided we didn't want to get him hooked. A nurse convinced us otherwise with a stern look as he wailed and wailed the first night of his life. I plead only partial guilt, since we were both sleepless and clueless. Anyways, our pediatrician convinced me today that the longer we wait, the harder it will get. Perhaps it's just been a fantasy that one day Jonah is just going to leave his pacifier on the floor somewhere and never turn back -- as one day he will leave home, parents strewn on the floor, and never turn back.

Sick Kid

Jonah is sick. He's had a cold for the past three or four days. No fever, just a very runny nose and a cough. I'm pretty sure that his illness is more distressing to Michele and me than it is to him.

In fact, he's usually in a good mood when he's sick -- and he's not even old enough to get to stay home from school. Unlike his mom and I, who worry about how long we're going to be sick, how it's going to impact us at work, whether it is going to prevent us from running marathons, and the like, he is just unfazed emotionally. I'm not saying that there are no added stresses. Jonah is clearly upset by coughing fits and mom continually wiping gobs of mucous from his nose. But those things are transient. When they're over, they're over. It's not clear to me whether he lacks the foresight to know that the booger wipings are going to keep coming or whether he's just better at not resenting short-term pain than I am. In any case, I admire his resilience.

Despite his illness, he is talking and thinking ferociously. He finally seems to understand that animal types ("dg", a perfect "cat") are different from animal noises ("fff", "mee-ah"). In addition to Goodnight Moon and Happy Baby Things that Go, he has plunked down in our laps with an atlas and with Thich Nhat Hanh's Teachings on Love. He now says "pk" (park), "pack" (pack -- we're in the process of moving), "tuk" (truck), "Peet" (as in Peet's Coffee, where he and mom go), and coolest of all, "me" (the real self-reference) -- all in context.

So, as bummed as I am to see my child sick, I am overjoyed with him and how he changes every day.

Speaking in Consonants

At about 17 1/2 months, Jonah has had two big changes in his talking. First, he has started saying words that have two consonants instead of just one. The last few months, we've heard babbles of "baa" (bar, bath), "ffff" (fish, hoof), "sss" (star, snake), "moo" (moo, moon), and more.

Last week he came up with "tck", which means "tickle". Jonah and I have a daily routine when I come home from work and go to the bedroom to change my clothes. I throw him on the bed and tickle him. He tickles my belly button. He also started saying "cck" (cookie) and "dt" (dessert). Jonah gets five Sesame Street alphabet cookies after dinner every night -- if he eats enough beans, tofu, or "me" (meat) -- and asks for it.

The other great change in Jonah's talking is that he has started parroting Michele and me. He is willing to tackle any word that we ask him to (tonight he tried "fishing pole"), and a lot of the time he will say new words without prompting.

Jonah still has a long way to go before he is doing Hamlet, although he's not too far from "to be or not to be."

Halloween and Hoof

Jonah was a race car driver for Halloween. It was the first time he actually wanted to wear a hat (other than any hat I'm wearing, that is). We didn't trick-or-treat, and in fact didn't even have trick-or-treaters. Just not the right neighborhood for that, I guess. But Jonah got to go to two different Halloween parties and wear his costume to a couple of different classes. And, of course, he wore it around the house. Here, Jonah is in full costume, complete with car and the most important accessory for any race car driver -- a stuffed lamb.

Hoof was named by my wife one day when we just decided that this was going to be Jonah's attachment object. Hoof has survived now for probably close to a year of Jonah actually noticing him. He's been through many wash cycles and has had an eye job.

Okay, I have to admit that Hoof is actually a set of triplets. We realized not too long after Jonah started to hang on to Hoof that we needed some back up Hoofs for situations involving pee pee beds (diapers do leak sometimes), blood, snot, and mud. Hoof gets a sub every few weeks. Michele and I don't know if Jonah has caught on to this yet, although we have had some close calls where Hoof magically teleported from room to room. Jonah looks at him kind of funny when in the course of a diaper change (and some quick action from mom) gray, smelly Hoof becomes pink and fresh again.

The concept of a "lovey" that a child can focus on fascinates me. How did my son get so attached to this thing? I had my stuffed animals growing up, too, so I can relate. (Teddy still lives in my nightstand, 37+ years old, broken music box, band-aids, and all.) At home, Jonah and Hoof are rarely separated for more than the duration of a meal. When Hoof is hiding somewhere, Jonah walks around, searching, saying "Fffff. Fffff." It's really amazing to see so much love.