Xander Update, 21 months

I've been a little late with this update because you've been, well...a little overwhelming. I kept thinking that maybe you were having a couple of bad days, no? Well, maybe a week? No...okay, it's been a while, I guess it's just how you are now.

That's not to say that you're not still charming and endearing and vastly entertaining. We're just in one of those frustrating phases where there is an extreme failure to communicate, and you get more and more pissed off because LADY, CAN'T YOU SEE "APPAH!" MEANS I WANT SOME CHEESE? And no, I don't see, I don't understand at all, and you continue to escalate until you're choking on your own tears and there is a veritable river of snot running out of your nose.

Most of the time you can be diverted with Elmo or maybe a ball or running water or, as a last resort, the Great Outdoors, but there is a certain finesse to it, wherein I somehow have to trick you into thinking that oh! hey! It was your idea to watch Elmo, I meant to do that. I chose to stop screaming. But if I don't hit the right note?

Well. Then you choose to KEEP screaming.

At which point I just ignore you, and eventually you get hungry or forget why you're yelling. But sometimes that's not really an option, like when the entryway of a restaurant has vending machines with fucking BALLS in it, and you lose it because obviously you want one, but maybe you'll forget if we get to the table in time. Except then the stupid hostess (Okay! She's 18! She doesn't know any better BUT STILL) seats us at the table, the only table, with a direct view of said vending machines.

Then we get to teach you the valuable, though inadvertent, lesson that if you pitch a fit in a nice restaurant? You get fast food! WITH TOYS!

Bah.

(I do seem to have more success if I mention the upcoming unpleasant event - bedtime, or diaper change, or whatever - about 40 thousand times in the hour before. Then the transition is easier for you, or you assume it's your own idea. But that's not always feasible, either.)

Anyway, aside from that you're doing lots of great things. Your favorite thing to watch right now is a DVD of Sesame Street with Stomp, and you're really into the rhythm thing. You like to drum on things, all things, and find new things with which to drum on other things in the hopes that they'll make a different noise. You merrily slap away at your knees and torso and on the coffee table, dancing with your butt bobbing, and it's just about the cutest thing ever.

You're still our little hippie child who loves the Great Outdoors. We have to let you out at least once a day, and not for any lame little walk to the car, either, thankyouverymuch. This has been difficult some days as our summer so far has been pretty sucky in terms of weather. I mean, YOU don't seem to care if you're soaked to the bone, but I do.

Your language skills still seem to be lagging a little behind your ability to run, and climb, and fall, and jump, and fall again (you're currently sporting a scab next to your eye, a huge bruise on one cheek, scrapes on all limbs, and a lump near your hairline). But you do have a few new words, one of which pretty much sums it up:

"Mess! Uh-oh, mess!" *


*Pronounced 'meth'. Of course. Because it's freakin' adorable.