oooOOO

Little Buddy has started patterns of recognition, and these have started leading to desire. I mean, I guess he has had them all along, but this is becoming clearer and clearer to me with time. I talked last time about his love for ducks; recently, Hayley taught him to wave his arm like a trunk and go bargua like an elephant. In practice, he just kind of waves his arm and goes oooOOO, but it's always recognizable. If you try to get him to do this, it's not super consistent, but it you mention the word "elephant" while he's in the room, he does it; if he happens to see an elephant, he does it. (He happens to see a lot of elephants, because his baby shower/nursery theme is "African savannah.") One of his changing pad covers has an elephant on it, so you'll be placing him on it for a diaper change, and he suddenly goes oooOOO; once I had him with me while I was moving his laundry from washer to dryer and he saw the cover in the washer and went oooOOO. Like with the ducks, he's able to extrapolate the pattern beyond what we focus on. His old rolly chair has a word-less Winnie-the-Pooh book about a heffalump attached to it; one day he grabbed it and went oooOOO.

I used to wonder if he would recognize a real elephant (as I wondered with ducks), but one day we were in the dining room and he suddenly went oooOOO. We realized that Hayley had left a DVD of a Nova episodes that she'd shown her class on the table-- and it had a photo of elephants on the cover.

But sometimes recognition leads to desire. One day I picked him up from daycare and then we were running errands on our way home; because Hayley had hand, foot, and mouth disease things were kind of in disarray on the home front, and she suggested we pick up a pizza for dinner on our way home. Little Buddy walked in with me, I paid for the pizza, and we were on our way out when he noticed the high chair. He was immediately super interested in it. I was like, Cool, he recognizes high chairs as the place he's supposed to be at a restaraunt. I was a little surprised, because I don't feel like we eat out with him that often, but I guess it's often enough. But then when I tried to get him to follow along with me, he got mad and started to cry, and then sat down on the floor next to the high chair, wailing. He knows he's supposed to get in high chairs-- and he gets mad if he doesn't! I was not expecting that.

Or the other day I brought him home from day care so Hayley could work late. He fell asleep in the car to the soothing sounds of All Things Considered, but when he woke up, he began crying as soon as I carried him into the house. He rejected all my attempts at soothing, so I put him down to see if that would help. He immediately went into our bedroom and began looking on the bed. This is apparently where he expects to find his mother if she's not in the living room! But she wasn't there, so he began walking in circles around the house, always stopping in the bedroom. I am pretty sure he wanted milk, but (as usual) he refused my offer of whole milk in a cup. Only puffs could get him to calm down.

He doesn't deal well with things not going the way he expects them to go. I guess this is a usual toddler thing... but it's certainly also a usual Steven Mollmann thing, so I am not very surprised!