SPL's Blog

At last, the narrative to accompany the video for SPL’s 20th month:

Conversations and story telling were big this month.  A few of the stories that were among the "most played" were (quoted parts are SPL’s):
— stories about daddy:
"daddy."  Where’s daddy?  "office."  "Growl." (to represent the Mozilla dinosaur 🙂

"Office."  what do you do at daddy’s office?  "ball" + throwing motion of his arm.  Who do you throw the ball to?  "Ruff" (meaning Samantha the dog @ Mozilla).

— stories about friends:
Points to high chair.  "billiam."  "Pan."  Points to other chair: "courtney."  [Interpretation: we had "Billiam" and his mom over and they had banana bread w/ us :-)]

— General stories:
"Umbrella.  Ahh poop."  Yes the umbrella in our backyard fell down.  [kids on the trampoline in the neighbors’ yard catches his eye]:  "jumping."

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Games we play
Runs to couch "nap??"  Invitation to play the nap game which means both of us lying on either the big stuffed dogs or the couch and pretending to sleep.  Then one of us pops up w/o notice and announces "good morning." 

"I’m gonna get you" is still big as is "peekaboo."  Those never get old, it seems.

He also loves to pretend to cook and we frequently make both real and imaginary banana bread.

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SPL’s sense of humor:
This has been a fun part of the month.  SPL now has  a couple of jokes that he tells — and some funny interpretive actions that his dad taught him. 
SPL:  "nap?"
Me: who’s taking a nap?
SPL:  "Lenny" (the pomeranian @ the dry cleaners).  "Ha!"
SPL:  "Mao mao?"  (the word for cat in Mandarin)
Me:  Yeah, mao maos love naps.
SPL:  "Ha!"  with a satisfied smile on his face.

and  his favorite joke, who’s upside down? 
Usually it starts out with either Nana (John’s mom) or Gigi (John’s grandmother).  then he’ll say "Noooooo" with a sly smile.  And then he’ll move on to grandpa and grandma, and grandee, and then sometimes our neighbor’s dog, Abby — which he thinks is hysterical :-). 

John’s taught him a couple of funny things too – -like what an eagle says (SPL bears his hands like talons 🙂 and the following series of fill-in-the-blanks:
John:  An elephant has a long……..
SPL: "Nose"
John:  A giraffe has a long……
SPL:  "neck"

and to show his sense of humor:
John: A walrus has long……
SPL: "Nose."  "Ha!"
SPL:  "Teeth."

He also knows the response to "give me some hungry chicken" thanks to his dad (a shout out to an old Scrubs episode exchange between best buds Turk and JD).  (if you’re not familiar, the response is to put your hand out flat, like SPL’s going to give you  5 and then he makes his fingertips come together, pointing down, as if it’s a chicken’s beak and pecks at your hand).  Next time you see SPL in person, make sure to ask him.

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Obsession of the month: big trash can
This is what we call the cans that we put outside for the trash trucks to pick up.  SPL loves to pick up small pieces of trash or bark from the yard and declare "big trash can".  It’s become such a focal point for him, that I’ve instituted a "3 big trash can run" policy when we’re working in the yard.  🙂

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Big discovery:
Early in the month I got home from the gym one Sunday morning to find out my world had changed.  The conversation went something like this:
John: "come here and see what SPL can do."
Me:  "Uh oh.  This can’t be good ;-)"
John: "SPL, show her what you figured out."
SPL:  walking over to our "baby-proofed" drawers and cocking his index finger, he opened it until it stopped with the latch.  Then he, with concentration on his face, pointed his index finder at the lever and pushed down, releasing the locking mechanism, a look of triumph spreading across his face.

I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. 

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His favorite book was still Cars and Trucks and Things that go and he managed to quickly find all the Goldbugs.  He also learned about warthogs and hyenas.

Stay tuned for 21 months as it’s just around the corner.  🙂