Bundle o’ joy

This is a catch-up post about bears.

He is sixteen months old, and this is his favourite face.

See?

As I type he is ‘reading’ Monkey and Me to himself and dancing with glee. In a moment he will get bored of this and push the book at me, honking like a chip-crazed seagull, until I read it. After that, he’ll totter off to find another one. He has already emptied the two picture-book shelves onto the floor to more conveniently find his favourites. I have had to decide that I put them back only twice a day: 1) just before Tim gets home, and 2) once Teddy is unconscious. This is to preserve my own sanity, already hanging by a thread after reading Sarah and Duck Meet the Penguins three times an hour for the past month.

Books are Teddy’s cave of wonders. He can’t stop, because he never knows what might be in the next one. I do not need to tell you how much I love this, Sarah and Duck and the Blasted Penguins aside.

He finally started walking at about fourteen months, and watching him schlump into a room, all WHAT UP GUYS, still cracks me up. He’s losing his chub (sob!), but he’s still heavier set than his brother. All flying hair, beaming smiles, bull-in-a-china-shop energy. We call him the human demolition ball.

He said ‘Mummy’ before ‘Daddy’, and ‘yes’ before ‘no’, and both tell you something about him. No other words yet, though a lot of tuneless singing. Sometimes I think he’s a classic second child: mama’s boy to a fault, robust and easy-going, but with a yell loud enough to make your ears bleed when he really wants your attention. Other times I think that’s just him. He’s started being seriously fussy with food recently, and I’m reassured to know that some things are as constant as the sunrise, and that sixteen-month-olds refusing anything but yoghurt is probably one of them.

He still wakes up once a night. We do not speak of this. He’s moved house and popped out five teeth in a fortnight, three of them molars (seriously), so we’re holding fire on sleep-training for now. He loves Henry. He loves wandering around outside and finding dangerous looking stones to put in his mouth. He loves your face, almost certainly. Probably the only thing he doesn’t love is Any Item On A Spoon Which Is Not Yoghurt.

This, we can live with.