I've been really excited lately to see all kinds of new personality traits appear in Simon. He's finally starting to use words in a meaningful way, even if he doesn't get them entirely right. I mean, he says, "nigh nigh" when he goes to bed. Sometimes if you prompt him to say something, he'll blurt out something close. Thank God, because we'd love to say he says something useful before he's 2 next month.
With all of this emerging personality comes a lot of crying. Not actual tears, most of the time, but a super annoying whine. He mostly does it when he isn't getting what he wants, gets frustrated or can't communicate some burning desire. Diana and I both let it get to us to some degree, and it's hard to dial back and acknowledge that this is just part of normal development.
Simon also spends a lot of time testing boundaries, including a lot of arm swinging and hitting. That's even harder to process, because sometimes he does something that actually hurts. Most frustrating is bed time for the last week or so. He pulls out all of the stall tactics, and he seems to have lost interest in rocking in our lap for a few minutes before we put him down. That sucks for us, because getting a quiet moment at the end of the day to talk to him is something we both enjoy.
Fortunately, it's not all negative. Far from it! One of the most adorable things he does now is give you a kiss. He doesn't really pucker, he just kind of plants his face on you. When he's excited, he does it with his mouth open, which is like getting slimed. He also just pulls out a kiss at random at times. This evening, while watching Sesame Street in his pre-bed wind-down, he violently jumped up and climbed up on me to smooch. No idea why he did it, but it was super cute.
He has also taken up running laps around the living room, which is pretty hilarious. He'll go around a dozen times, giggling and having a great time. Tonight he outdid himself. He did one lap around, stopped, farted, and went around again. That's my boy.
Simon is also a helper. This is also something that requires patience on our part, because he often just gets in the way. But he likes to sweep in the kitchen, help with dishes, go get the mail and empty Diana's sink cupboard of every possible hair product for her to use.
He's really a lot of fun, and I need to be more proactive in recording his antics with video. Time flies.
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