October 16, 2009: Seventeen Months
Nikola is becoming a man of many hats. He has grown into the following titles in the last few months:
- Communicator: Nikola has finally begun talking in earnest (instead of using his patented shriek for everything) and uses the words he knows very enthusiastically and often. Here's a list of his words, in approximate order from most to least used:
- Wooooow/Whooooaa
- Thank you ("Dadu")
- Hi!
- Bye! (he can also say Bye, Teetee! to his babysitter)
- Sit down ("Di-down"—probably his first words, in retrospect)
- Push! (when he wants to push a button, flip a light switch, etc.)
- Kakao
- Mama, Papa, Noni
- Cookie
- Gohlke (sounded a lot like "cookie" but I counted it)
- Dancer: Nikola joins his older brother and sister in their love of dance. He dances spasmodically, bouncing and bobbing his head kind of like a rooster while slowly rotating, to all the songs and TV shows he knows (Pippi Langstrumpf theme song, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme song) and even things he doesn't know that have a good beat. When Mama picked him up from the YMCA babysitters a couple of weeks ago, they told her that he had danced for the entire hour.
- Joker: Nikola loves to laugh and when he does something that he notices makes us laugh, he'll repeat it until he can't wring another laugh from us. He initiates games of peek-a-boo and also likes games that include chasing and hiding. He can hide pretty well occasionally but even when he's clearly found, he will gaze intently at the floor under the assumption that if he doesn't look at us, we can't see him.
- Engineer: Nikola's persistent exploring has always been a source of frustration for us but Mama made an important point the other day—he never purposefully destroys anything, he just like to explore and find out how things react when he does things to them (flipping the light switch, taunting the dog, pushing buttons on the microwave, etc.). This has helped me understand his actions and be encouraged by his curiosity but not to feel any better about his future conducting experiments on everything in his path. His Deda was another notorious tinkerer as a child and constantly in trouble, although I suppose there are worse people for him to take after.
- Lover: Nikola continues to be an affectionate young man. Every night when I come home, I get a big "Hi!" and a leg hug from him at the door. That's what I work all day for.
Posted by papa at 10:50 PM