What does it mean?

Any Spanish used in blog posts is hyperlinked to its English translation.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Toddlerisms and baby growth

These are "Mickey Mounster" and "Mimi":


Until recently, "Mickey Mounster" was called "Elmo" (since Kid 1 doesn't know any Sesame Street characters except toddler-crack Elmo). I just like how "Mounster" neatly blends "Cookie Monster" and "Mickey Mouse".

Mimi is the name for Minnie Mouse in Spanish.

They are the subject of many poop jokes lately. Almost-3-yr-old humor, I tell ya.

It's been months since I wrote anything. Kid 1 speaks a ton of English, catching up almost to her Spanish. She also has this funny adaptation: If she doesn't know a word in English, she takes the word in Spanish and just sort of pronounces it in English. She'll do this by dropping the trailing vowel to Englishify her word, or just pronounce the word with American vowels. Like 6 months ago she coined "Biciclet" (sounds just like the French "bicyclette") this way. Last weekend, when a bunch of friends were over, she was trying to tell a story about her brother in English:
And then he pulled up on my....mesa... and then he fell and hit his head.
(She does know the word "table" but it just didn't come at that moment I guess.)

Kid 2, meanwhile, did eventually crawl but much prefers the army crawl. He now heavily favors one arm over the other for forward motion. He can remain sitting finally but he does NOT push himself into a sitting position ever. He is nearly 10 months and just moved into his 24m/2T onesies. 24m hats are too small, but some 18m pants still fit. He wears a size 6 shoe. For the last 6 weeks he's been pulling up on any and everything, and scoots along (pretty inelegantly still). This weekend we pulled up the walker toys and he is very excited about them. His favorite toys are still any sort of a ball or object that he can roll away. (Markers, toy teacups, toy eggs) He plays a sort of "fetch" with himself for 15-20 minutes at a time. He's got 4 teeth and a 5th will poke through at any minute.

Since my suegra buzzed his hair (like 1/8th" buzz!) in August, it's been growing out. He's had two trims (one around the ears, the other to clean up his neckline) but he's still got two huge tufts on either side of the top of his head that stick STRAIGHT OUT. Since the middle portion has finally decided to start lying down, he looks a bit like a baby Wolverine (the X-Man, not the animal) with 2.5" tufts on his little baby head.