Golden month-birthday

I thought you only got one golden birthday in your life, but that's if you only count birthdays in years. Today is Jack's golden month birthiversary: 17 months on the 17th! He spent the morning with his Oregon grandparents before they caught their plane home and then had a quiet afternoon around the house with mommy while the rains came down outside. Here is my big 17-month-old boy, bangs in his eyes, in need of cutting, scratch on his nose from doing a face-plant at the Greek Theater on Saturday because he is just in too big of a hurry to go everywhere, there is just too much exploring to do to waste time walking carefully:



He looks kind of dazed. I think he was bored. Rainy days are boring. Soon enough, he found something to keep him entertained, though.

This is his very special ra-ra. Ra-ra is Jackspeak for rabbit, of course. Ra-ra was a very frustrating pet for a long time. We had to keep him up on top of the bookcase where Jack couldn't get to him because whenever he did, he would inevitably trip up on the cord or wind it around himself somehow and then look up at me, infuriated that ra-ra had tricked him again. But now he totally has the hang of it, and takes ra-ra for walks all over the house. Which is to say, from the kitchen to the living room to the bedroom and back to the living room.

Jack has lots of new words since the last month-birthday record (and I realized I missed 16, since it went, as most things did, by the wayside in the mayhem of April). He already had boo for book and buh for bird. Adding to those, my off-the-top-of-the-head by no mean comprehensive list:

dada

mama

nana (my grandma/bananas/his blankie... although the blankie sounds more like neh-neh)

wa-wa (water)

ba-ba (bottle)

buh-bah (bye-bye)

tuh-tuh (tub-time!)

baboo (blueberry... not booba, which would make more sense)

shih (fish... he seems to be experimenting with some kind of verbal dyslexia)

shzz (shoes. and yes, the word very much lacks a vowel.)

woof-woof for dogs (obviously)

RAOW for lions and/or dinosaurs

raow? for cats (distinguished from the previous roar by the fact that it is unmistakeably a question when referring to a cat)

lots of farm animal noises for the respective farm animal

and his first REAL word in that it is perfectly formed and actually sounds exactly like the word should sound and not a code word for a more difficult to pronounce word:

baby

how cute is that?

He really loves looking at photos of babies (especially his cousin Ava) and announcing to everyone that there is a "BAY-BEE" there. He can even do the little cartoony drawings in books or on the sides of medicines or vitamins or what have you. I am intrigued by how babies make connections between drawings and the real deal. He is really good at identifying water, too, in all its various forms, and on video and in photos. How does he get that a photo of a lake, a video of a waterfall, the rain falling out of the sky, and the stuff in the tub or in his sippie cup are all the same thing? Amazing.

PS- I knew I would forget some! My other favorite, besides bay-bee is "uh-oh!" Not because of the word itself but because of the expression he makes when he says it. I have yet to capture it on film, but I hope I eventually do because it is too precious not to. He's taken to throwing something on the floor, then looking up at me with his eyebrows cocked and his hands up in the air, shrugging this enormous exaggerated shrug that seems to say "how on earth did THAT happen?" I don't know where he got that, but I've started doing it now. Is it normal to mimic your toddler? I thought he was supposed to be mimicking me.