This blog entry is brought to you by the letters K, Y, P and O, which, in the form of foam cutouts, Noah can now identify on the first go. Also Q, 2, A, and sometimes D. I never would have thought to even quiz him until one day he picked up the letter P and blurted its name. This at a point when he still seemed unaware that a word could have more than one consonant and vowel. I shuddered to think that he was already taking after his father -- 15 months old and more interested in language than in speech.
A short-lived hypothesis. Yesterday Liz carried him upstairs to the diaper table. He squirmed and thrashed. "Noah, I'm just taking you upstairs to get a new dipe," she told him, putting him down to arrange things for the change.
Whereupon he looked at her, stated "Downstairs!," and scrambled through the child gate and back toward the second floor.
Doubtless he had an object in mind. The second floor is where the kitchen trash can is. He has taken to opening the lid and tossing in toy trucks, stuffed animals, blocks, and the aforementioned letters to mix with the cherry pits and corn cobs. When you sign up for parenthood, no one tells you that you'll soon end your evenings by digging through old chicken bones to rescue Donald Duck.
Funny thing about mastering trash can lids: it awakens you to the principle governing toilet seats. The other morning, sometime after the little bandit's 5 o'clock wake-up shout, Liz emptied one of his diapers in the upstairs bathroom. Noah scampered in there behind her, grabbed her hairbrush, threw open the commode, and used the bristles to collect a lovely little dollop of his poop.
Really, it makes eating finger paint seem like an act of true restraint.
