Fifteen Months

Marcus has nine teeth now--his four top and four bottom (one just partial, but there), plus his lower left molar. That tooth is giant! It's just beginning to poke through, but it takes up such a large area that it's sort of startling when you look in his mouth. Also, this week Marcus--who loves brushing his teeth and will walk around the house with a toothbrush (or a cinnamon stick, or a wooden dowel from his stacking toy, for that matter) for ages--actually needed to brush his teeth: there were little bits of broccoli stuck in the lower teeth.

We've had some more nice weather, up in the 60s, so got in more playground and outdoor time, and as a result, Marcus can say "bird" now, and he seems to divide animals into two classes--dogs and birds. Elephants (in books) are dogs. Penguins are dogs at the moment, but we’re trying to reclassify them as birds. Squirrels are usually dogs but occasionally birds, depending on what we saw just before them. Dog-walkers are our holy grail, of course: this week we saw a dog-walker on Columbus with eight dogs. Wow. Marcus went crazy naming them all.

Baby has also started figuring out what things are for this month.

Buttons are for pushing: He’ll turn on the Roomba and parallel play with it, both at our house and at Helena’s.
Baskets are for holding things (or people): He’ll dump all his toys out of his toy basket, climb in it, and then pile the toys back in on top of himself.

Phones are for talking on: He’ll hold the phone up to his ear and walk around the house going “eh? eh?” into it.
Tissues are for wiping your nose: Although he still doesn’t like having his nose wiped, he will sometimes grab the tissue from us and swipe it across his face, even blowing a little (usually not really effectively, but getting the idea).
Lids are for putting on things: He loves to cap and recap water bottles, the big plastic jars we use to keep some of his toys, and the little squeezable packets of applesauce.
Paper towels are for wiping up stuff: After watching me clean up a mess on the floor with a paper towel, he found another paper towel and started swabbing down the dining room floor. (Robert found that one really funny.)

We’ve done so many exciting things this month: we went to the Children’s Museum on Veterans’ Day—oh my, I will never again go there on a school holiday. It was chaos! A madhouse! But it was lovely to get together with three other Isis babies again (a reunion of sorts) and learn that one of them is expecting a younger sibling next spring—wow! Marcus loved the museum, even the huge netted climbing structure in the lobby. He threw himself into that, and although the giant (yes, ten-year-olds are giants) shoes and hands and feet and bodies of other kids coming so close to my baby—the structure was positively teeming with children, like some sort of terrifying Pied Piper thing—nearly gave me a heart attack, he seemed very satisfied with himself, and held his own and crawled around and went in and out several times.

One weekend we went to Sean’s house/gallery at the Roslindale Open Studios—Marcus even wore a shirt matching Sarah and Sean’s to advertise for them!—and ate arepas and played with cups and all sorts of other things. We also practiced in my new shorty (2.6-meter-long) wrap, doing some back carried and rebozo-style carries.

Video of the month--Marcus watching a dog video: