Words

Gavin is currently going through a bit of a language explosion, and it's a ton of fun.

A few weeks back, the only world he really solidly knew was "no". He said it to everything. He would shout "mama" if he was very upset, but he wouldn't say it on command. Everything was just no, no, no.

But now he's picking up words like it's his job. And the best part (to me) is that it's so tied to books. He's not reading yet, but this is certainly a sign of early literacy. So here are a few of the words Gavin knows and the circumstances he says them under.

• Runs into the kitchen saying "nanana" and pointing towards the fruit bowl. This means he wants a banana.
• In the kitchen, points to the island and says "ma ma", which means a teething biscuit (the brand we get is mum mums"
• Points to the fridge and says "ma ma". This means milk. The pointing is the key distinction.
• Opens a book to a picture of a cow and says "moo". This works with two or three different books that I know of, so it definitely recognizes cows.
• In Jimmy Fallon's "Mama" book, Gavin recognizes and says "ball" on the page with the soccer ball. He also identifies his own soccer ball as ball. It's unclear if this extend to other types of balls yet.
• In the same book, Gavin will point to the picture of the owls and say "whoo".
• In "Go Dog, Go", Gavin knows to say "dog" on the first page. He loves dogs. He knows that Kina is a dog, and he can almost always identify dogs and call them such
• I think he may also know "duck", but it sounds exactly the same as "dog" at the moment. But he will point to pictures of ducks, say "duck", and laugh when I quack. The goal is clearly to make me quack, so I think he knows the difference between the two words. He just can't quite articulate it.
• I can't transcribe this next one. It's about five or six syllables long, has lots of p's and t's in it and means "blow bubbles". He may also be able to say "bubble", but it sounds a lot like ball and he'll only say it about half the time. I don't know where this came from or why this phrase is three times as long as it needs to be, but it is very clear what he means.

This is all I can think of for now. It's so exciting to watch my kid figure out language. He still has trouble communicating sometimes, and more often than not it seems like his tears are because of his frustration about this. But he's getting there, and it won't be long now before he can express himself. He definitely understands almost everything Kevin and I say, and now it's just about figuring out how to do that himself.

Anticipation

Every year I donate to Pat Rothfuss' Worldbuilders annual fundraiser for Heifer International. My motivations are probably equal parts charitable altruism and anticipatory greed. Every $10 donated gets you entered in a lottery for thousands of fabulous prizes. Companies donate books and games, as do authors and individuals. This year the prizes also potentially included jewelry and collectibles.

Usually I don't win. This is my fifth year donating, and I've only gotten a book once. It ended up being a lackluster book. But there's always a chance that I would win a complete series by an author I'm interested in, or the collection of everything Del Ray published over the last year, or an autographed first edition of something cool. So I keep donating and being mildly disappointed when April rolls around and I realize that once again I haven't won anything.

Not super disappointed. I still donated a chunk of change to a good cause, and that's something to feel nice about. But prizes are nice, too.

This year, I got an email in late December letting me know that I'd won something but had forgotten to fill out my mailing address and could I please provide that. I got excited, sent off my mailing address and settled in to wait.

This is a long process. I cycled around from wondering what I had won to wondering if I'd been taken in by a phishing hoax to wondering if I'd even remembered to fill out the form or if I'd just been meaning to and forgotten about it. The organization finally announced that they were beginning to ship out prizes, and I resigned myself to the fact that I hadn't won anything after all.

Until my shipping notice came.

This is a new feature this year, and it's nice, because it pushed my anticipation right back up. I have no idea what I won, but I won something. And it will be here sometime in the next month (with all the prizes they ship out, they use the cheapest, slowest shipping available, which I can't even fault them for).

I'm incredibly excited to find out what I won, even if it ends being another book that I'm only lukewarm about. But maybe it'll be something exciting. It's a bit like Christmas, except I don't entirely know when my present will get here. This anticipation will probably be more exciting than the prize itself, so I'm going to savor it.

RIP Camry

Our Camry died last week. I knew it was coming. The Camry's been acting up for a while, and we've been putting off maintenance because we knew we were going to replace it soon. I was hoping it would make it through the safety inspection this month and last until September, because that's when we'll finish paying off the Elantra. But there was no such luck. While Kevin was driving home from work, it died. We knew we weren't going to pay to get it fixed. The tow truck driver accepted the car in lieu of payment for bringing Kevin home and presumably went to dispose of it.

It's a little sad. I bought that car not long after I moved to Virginia. It was the first car I ever bought on my own, and it even came with a free bible. But, like I said, we knew this was coming, and I've been looking forward to getting a bigger car for a while now.

We have some time before we need to buy a new car. Kevin's mom is leaving town for a month, so we can borrow her's. Then Kevin will be out of town until mid-March. So we have six weeks to do some research and figure out what we want. Which is good, because right now all we really know is that we want something with 3rd row seating, to accommodate our growing family and our kids' future friends. And the dog. It'll be so nice to have a car that Gavin and Kina can both fit in at the same time.

So now it's time to do some research and figure out our budget. I'm excited to get something shiny and new, and I hope it's not too hard (or expensive) to get what we want.

Tumbling Class

At fifteen months old, Gavin is now enrolled in his first class. We've got him attending a weekly tumbling class at a local gym. Part of me still thinks he's a bit too young for structure like this. But another part of me wishes we'd done this months ago.

Gavin is growing into an incredibly active kid. Ever since he started walking, he's been unstoppable. He runs and bounces, and worst of all he climbs. He can get up on most couches and chairs at this point, and he loves climbing up and then jumping. Or just standing close to the edge. He's completely fearless, so I'm carrying around double my share to make up for it.

We enrolled him in the class in the hopes that it would give him a safe space to burn off some of this energy and start providing structure so he's less likely to injure himself. It's been somewhat successful, though I probably shouldn't hope for results after only two weeks.

The class is a good mix of structure and free play. Gavin absolutely hates the structured parts, and he often goes running off to climb on the mats when he's supposed to be walking in a circle or singing a song. But that's to be expected with toddlers, and even if he's the worst at paying attention the instructor never seems too put out by it. I hope that in a few more weeks he'll get more into the rhythm of the class and have fun doing things with the other kids.

He loves the free play part. There are mats to climb on, rings to hang from, and a whole big room to run around in. The instructor brings out balls or bubbles or other things for a few minutes at a time. Last week Gavin loved running around under the parachute, which brought me right back to my elementary school days.

Gavin also loves the various flips and rolls we're learning to do. And even better, some of them are safe to do at home. It's a nice ace to have up my sleeve when he's on the verge of melting down.

We're only a couple of weeks into the class, but so far it seems like a success. I don't know how long this will last - if Gavin will ultimately become interested in gymnastics or not. But it's nice to have a thing to do with him and a place where I'm lass worried about him cracking his head open every time the urge to climb takes him.