Simon has recently entered into Being Two with … more vigor. Most notably, at the dinner (and breakfast, and lunch) table.

Simon’s always been a picky eater, but lately he’s added to that the idea that the best way to reject certain morsels — or even to announce to everyone that meal time is over, right now — is to throw his food on the floor.

There is a certain sensibility to this, of course. Food down on the floor certainly isn’t going to be eaten by anybody, and throwing it down there conveys a sense of finality far greater than merely signing “all done” (especially since Simon’s “all done” is not infrequently followed up by his continuing to nosh; perhaps he thinks the sign merely indicates a pleasant fullness).

We’ve tried several ways to address this, at first with varying types of punishment. Which met with varying types of failure. Simon is every bit his Papa’s child, and more than a few times after a punishment was enforced, Simon would merely stare me in the eye as if to say, “Oh, is that all?” And then I’d stare back at him as if to say, “Um, yeah. I was kind of hoping for a show of remorse, or at least annoyance, here.” (It’s a very complex stare.)

So, failing all that, we’ve shifted tactics and are now attempting outright bribery. Again, like his Papa, Simon loves him a chocolate chip or thirty. So we’ve taken to offering him a few of them at the end of dinner, provided that his food stays off the floor.

And, as is our wont, we have set this proposition to music. Simon frequently enjoys signing along, even if he infrequently enjoys fulfilling his part of the deal.

In the somewhat unlikely case anybody feels the need to use this music in their own family (or for their next hit single) it is also available as a PDF.

Julia enjoys asking Simon what he wants for his dinner before she begins preparing it. I’m never entirely sure why, as this seems to Simon to mainly be a time to practice his signs — it’s never clear if he also realizes he’s giving assent to the menu items he’s signing back:

I will also note that, when he’s distracted by the potential fun of his tractor, he can get really sloppy with his signs (“yogurt”, in particular here, being nigh unrecognizable).

But the fun comes in when, inevitably, Simon sees us watching and enjoying videos of him, and wants to watch them himself. He’s quite accomplished at doing this on our iPhones, knowing how to scroll through the videos and press the play button (and, when he’s bored, exit to the home screen and look for something far more exciting — i.e., more forbidden).

What’s funny is that he reacts to our voices in the videos as if we were asking him the questions anew. Or, more charmingly, he appears to be coaching Video Simon on what he should say. This is all captured in this excruciatingly complexly cinematographed video of me, holding Julia’s iPhone, which is playing the above video of Simon, while Simon, now eating the dinner he had previously agreed to, coaches Video Simon on how to respond.

Layers upon layers. Wheels within wheels, my friend.

Our child has twenty teeth. Yes, all four pre-molars. Yes, all four two-year molars. Yes, he is an early teether. I am so relieved that this is over, because now we have a break from tooth-related crankiness for at least three years until the incisors get loose and/or he starts sprouting six-year molars at the age of four. Phew!

He may, however, be the only baby in the history of ever to complete his pediatric dental capacity before learning to walk. We’re still working on that one.

Because of Simon’s congenital hypotonia (reduced ability to initiate and sustain muscular contraction), walking has been a challenge. For whatever reason, he’s not super interested in walking by himself, and (because of that?) his core muscles are weak, making independent standing and walking extra hard and extra unappealing. So we’ve been forcing him to walk (holding our hands) around the house, which hasn’t been very popular, but it is working. My goal is to have him walking by his second birthday in about two months. Go, Simon, go!

In other news, Simon has really taken an interest in Play-doh. His Auntie Kimb gave him a set of ten mini dough-cans for Christmas. Like his mother, Simon his very taken by collections of identical items of different colors, so he frequently spots the play-doh box and asks to play with it. Until tonight, though, he was kind of averse to actually touching the dough itself, but one by one, Simon asked us to take out every color of play-doh, so eventually, we had all of them out on the table, and Todd and I started making cubes and spheres (and tetrahedra) out of them. Because we’re nerds.

And then Simon saw the white sphere. And he started signing “egg.” And I just about fell out of my chair. He knows what eggs are (from his “Magritte’s Imagination” board book, where they are shown in hard-white-ovate form, and also from the breakfast table, where they are soft and yellow scrambled things). He can point at “egg” in his book, and he will sign for “eggs” at the table, but I’d never seen him sign “egg” for the hard-white-still-in-the-shell thing. So maybe I’m the only one floored by this, but it was a kind of mental leap I hadn’t seen him execute before. Next week: the calculus.

In other abstract-communication news: At some point, Simon learned or made up a sign for “bib” without cluing me in. One afternoon he and I were home from work and day-care, sitting on the kitchen floor eating corn chips (which is a semi-regular occurrence, don’t judge), and he started making some sign (very insistently), and I had no idea what he was asking for. I told him I didn’t know what he wanted. So he crawled over to the drawer where we keep his bibs and pointed at it, said “Mama!” and made the sign again. So I put a bib on him, fed him dinner, and he ate up all his food, poor hungry thing.

While Simon’s still not talking, really, he has gotten more interested in imitating our sounds. As I was undressing him for his bath tonight, he heard Todd start running the bath water, and he got really excited and signed “bath”. I said “ba-ba-ba! Bath!” He looked at me like I was stupid. “Your turn!” I said “ba-ba-ba!” He looked at me as though to say “Oh! My turn!” and started saying “ba-ba-ba!” Of course, he wouldn’t repeat it for Todd, but he sure was proud of himself for saying it the right way.

He was also really proud of himself, and extremely delighted, because he kept tooting as I was undressing him for his bath. Honestly. It’s like he’s a little boy or something.

It’s been, what, six months since I last wrote an update?

In some ways, there are no new major baby milestones to report. Talking, walking, the calculus: we’re still waiting. But he has certain strengths/obsessions, which we’ve been happy to indulge.

Simon is really, really interested in what things are called. And not just the words for everything, but also the signs. So I made a list of all the signs he uses. The details will probably be interesting only to people related to Simon, but it’s as much for me to remember as anything else:

• Bottle (signed with great fervor and whining)
• Sing (he made this one up himself, after apparently watching us bob our heads from side to side while singing to him)
• Dance
• Please (he now combines this with other signs, and will always respond with “please” if we ask him “Can you ask politely?”)
• Thank you (only when prompted, but usually given with gusto)
• Eat
• More (when he started at his new day care, he refined this one so it looks more like the real sign)
• Want
• Book (“More books please!” was one of his first sign-phrases, and he will usually choose books over a snack.)
• Cheese
• Ham (“Want eat ham pleeeaaaase!” he signed, wailing at the deli counter in the grocery store, and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t understand.)
• Bread
• Raisin (his word for all dried fruit, the only kind of fruit he will eat)
• Up
• Help (“want help!” he signs when his toys roll under the couch)
• Shoes
• Hat
• Bath
• Water
• Cracker (he was delighted to learn this one while visiting grandparents, and hasn’t stopped using it for one solitary moment)
• Fork
• Rain
• Yogurt
• Bye-bye
• All done
• Clean up
• Blow kisses
• Fork (unfortunately, on my end, fork gets mistaken for raisin most of the time, and he gets frustrated)
• Medicine
• Bubble
• Falafel
• Coffee (it’s a banner day for Simon when we have a coffee date and the roasting machine is in use at the coffee shop)
• Tea
• Light
• Sorry (only when prompted and only when we have grave expressions)

He’s been quick to learn how to combine signs, and he surprises us with the things he evidently spends time thinking about. “Want coffee you! Over there! Please!” “Mama! Drink tea!” “Want shoes please!”

Of course there are also times when he thinks he’s signing something profound but it looks like “Cheese fork hat!” to us.

Because of the not-talking (he quit making sound entirely for several months after recovering from his palate repair), we’ve been taking him to speech therapy. Since we’ve started, he’s been babbling up a storm (using about three or four sounds) at home, which is so much fun to hear. I also took an eight-week course through the Multnomah County Early Intervention program to learn some strategies for enhancing our communication at home. The consensus of everyone in the know is that no one has any idea why Simon doesn’t really want to talk, but that his communication through signing should bridge the gap until he’s ready to start.

Also, his receptive language is good. Really, really good. “Hey, please put that back!” I said to him one day, as he sat pulling shoes off the shoe rack. And he did. If I ask him “What do you want to eat for supper?” he’ll think for a minute, then usually sign some food words.

So it’s Communication Fun Times here at our house. Want coffee please!

Simon hit the fifteen-month mark recently, and his communication skills have…improved.

Simon likes:

• The number 8.
• Watching us cook.
• Putting small toys into large toys and shaking.
• Making circular things spin on the ground.

Simon loves:

• Transportation, especially downtown where you can see a bus, the MAX train, and possibly the streetcar all at once.
• Machinery (the coffee roaster, the Kitchenaid mixer, the iPhone, the lock on the back door).
• Reading books, especially if they feature the number 8.
• The ladies.

Watch out, ladies!

There we were, playing with toys in the living room: stacking, throwing, bopping. And then the cheerful baby just dissolved into tears.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, and he looked at me helplessly and kept crying. “Are you hurt?” Crying. “Do you need a new dipe?” Crying. “Are you hungry?”

“Ha-HAAAAAAH!” he said with a big smile.

“Do you want me to make your supper?” I made the sign for “eat.” It was an hour early for supper. He lunged toward me, index finger out, and touched my mouth. And then he scarfed down half a peach, four ounces of yogurt, and scrambled egg (in bacon fat).

I say here and now for the whole internet to read that when this child starts using words, I’ll never, ever say I wish he would sometimes be quiet. Because it will be so useful.

Simon had his post-op appointment with his palate surgeon today (and the craniofacial department added a post-op for the three-months-ago ear tube surgery as well as an audiology assessment). To be fair, we originally had a more timely post-ear-tube post-op appointment scheduled, but had to cancel when the boy woke up with a fever that morning.

So basically, Simon is doing awesome. Also, he is so clever.

1. Simon’s hearing is great.
2. Simon’s ears are clear of fluid. (Also, although he hates having his ears messed with, he let the doctor look in one side without complaining. The other side…not so much, but I’ll take what I can get.)
3. Simon’s palate is healing well.

Today was a crazy day at the craniofacial clinic. I’ve never seen so many kids in the waiting room, and both surgeons were running late. The first one, by only about thirty minutes, but the second one for over an hour. Clever mother that I am, I had brought no books or toys in the diaper bag.

The waiting room at the hospital has more books and toys than most pediatric places I’ve been, and the toys are great — large cube-like things, about two feet on a side, with various non-removable things on each face for babies to grab. Simon was pulling up to kneel a lot on the cubes, and did a little crawling around the waiting area. I wanted to tell everyone to look at my baby – HE CAN CRAWL NOW. Did I mention he can crawl now?

The books in the lobby: not so much. I can only read board books to Simon in public, since he always wants to rip the pages out of paper books. The only board book I could find was about kids dressing up for a costume party, then going to the costume party and enjoying looking at everyone’s costumes while eating snacks. Seemed kind of banal but tolerable given the situation, except the boys were all dressed as cowboys, aliens, and superheroes, and the girls were butterflies and princesses, and while I’m not that kind of feminist, it made me throw up in my mouth a little. But anyway.

We ended up playing a lot with the mama’s new iphone. Simon can now take pictures of himself (he knows where to touch the screen to capture an image), and when I go to the “photos” section, he can scroll back and forth to look at the different images. He likes photos of himself the best.

The exam room where we waited (for over an hour) at the end of the day had this wonderful toy (we’ve played with it before) with buttons for all the letters and numbers, as well as some shapes, some musical notes, and some basic tunes. It has different modes so you can just press the buttons and hear the name of the thing you pushed, or you can get more advanced and put it in quiz mode, or play a tune of your choice on the numbers one through ten. So Simon likes it because it has buttons, and Todd and I like it because we can make it say funny things:

• I F 2 P (I have to pee)
• S H L O (It’s a cello)
• U 10 Square A Circle Q E D (You can square a circle! QED!)

It’s also good at proofs. QED.

Oh, Simon. You are a trooper.

Over the past week we’ve seen some pretty monumental changes in the little guy. Not simply healing and getting back to his old self, but also learning tons of new (overdue) skills.

A week ago, I noted on Facebook that Simon had started sleeping sitting up in the middle of his bed, not leaning on or supported by anything, and would stay that way for hours at a time. It was astounding, and even more so because of the balance he was sustaining despite his low muscle tone. If he fell over, he would wake up, then sit back up and go back to sleep. A few times, I tried laying him down, but it always woke him up. We just chalked it up to “oh, those crazy kids, what will they do next.” But after two days of the behavior, something just seemed not quite right, so I called the pediatrician, hoping he would confirm it was just a weird phase, all kids did it, and no big deal. Instead, he recommended we call Simon’s surgeon since normal kids don’t sleep sitting up. He was worried that Simon was having trouble breathing lying down, and thought the surgeon might want (another, this would be the third) sleep study.

So I did call the surgeon (well, indirectly, through the nurse practitioner), and they both said that the behavior was Definitely Weird, and that if it got worse, we should take him to the emergency room at the Children’s Hospital and they’d page the surgeon to come take a look at Simon. Sigh.

Of course, the act of calling medical professionals caused nearly immediate cessation of the behavior in question (is it just my kid or is this a thing?), and he’s been sleeping fine ever since. So hey.

Now, I will readily admit that I paid poor attention in Developmental Psychology class (and all my other classes) in education school. I have many justifications for this, and none of them are reasons I would accept from my own students. Development of the toddler brain seemed unrelated to any issue I could conceive of dealing with in the high school classroom.

People! No! It’s always applicable! You never know when you’re going to need that information!

I am getting to the point.

I feel like I might vaguely remember learning or hearing (or perhaps I am constructing a false memory to explain what I’m observing with Simon) that when kids are restricted in one area of development (like, say, having their arms restrained so they can’t feed themselves, move forward, or play with toys as they were accustomed to), they can compensate by developing in other areas. Of course, I wouldn’t know because I was paying poor attention, which I now regret.

Even if that’s not generally true, oh my goodness look at the neural pathways on Simon. Not only has he learned how to crawl for real (he previously just did a really fast army crawl), but also his receptive language and fine motor skills have…improved.

He used to be obsessed with Todd’s putting a jingle-bell ball into a stacking cup and twirling it around, but if we tried to get him to copy us, he would just throw the toys. Now, he’s putting every toy into every other toy and twirling them around. He stacks, he nests, he balances. He experiments with sizes and shapes. Small objects can fit into bigger ones but bigger ones don’t go into smaller ones. The  orientation of non-spherical shapes matters when you are using them as construction elements. And so on and so on.

He also responds appropriately when we ask him questions like:

• Do you want to dance?
• Simon kiss mama?
• May I have a turn?
• Where is Mama’s nose? Hair? Mouth?
• And of course “Do you want your bottle?”

“Bottle” in fact is one of three signs Simon uses (the others being “all done,” which he only sometimes uses correctly, and “dance,” which he always uses correctly). He talks about his bottle a lot, and I think frequently he’s just talking about it, not asking for it. For instance, I always change his diaper before giving him the bottle, so today, I said “Let’s go change your diaper,” and he signed “Bottle!”

And lastly, my favorite thing: he gives spontaneous kisses just to be affectionate, or to thank me for doing something he likes: taking him to the fabric store, to the airport, dancing with him in the coffee shop, or playing Flying Boy.

He is a wonderful baby.

Where to begin? The  palate is repaired, we’re home from the hospital, Simon is adjusting.

Todd and I did the math on our way out of Doernbecher and realized we’d been in the hospital for about twenty-eight hours. It seemed both freakishly short for such a seemingly major surgery, but at the same time extraordinarily prolonged on account of all the adrenaline and lack of sleep. I think general relativity addresses this, but only if we were traveling some significant fraction of the speed of light, which may actually have been the case for all we know.

We (okay, I) were a little concerned they would want to postpone the surgery on account of Simon’s recently (i.e. the night before) developed cough. But apparently, the cough was just an upper-respiratory ailment and his lungs were clear, so they went ahead and operated.

Simon’s surgery was the surgeon’s first one of the day. So we checked in a little after six in the morning. By quarter after eight they were underway, and by eleven, he was done. It took him a while to wake up, and evidently did try to wake up at some point, but was very upset and “wild” (I imagine there was a lot of screaming and trying to hit people, since that’s what goes on at home) so the nurse gave him some medicine, which sent him back to sleep for a very long time, earning him the title of Narcotics Lightweight.

When he did wake up, he screamed a lot and tried to hit people, but since his arms were immobilized by the “No-No” restraints (more later), he couldn’t wind up a good swing, which just made him madder. We’ve learned that nothing really makes Simon madder than People Messing With Him and Being Restrained, both of which he was having to endure while coming off of anesthesia. “With a temper like that, you could grow up to be a surgeon!” the recovery nurse told him. Simon continued to scream as we were escorted to our private room, as we settled in, and until we stuck some Pedialyte in his mouth. Dude sucked it down (six ounces total – some kind of record we were told) and collapsed into sleep.

So we thought we had this all figured out. The Boy cries because he’s so thirsty. We give him Drink, and he returns to sleep to rebuild tissue and regenerate his stores. Neato!

And then we had a two-hour screaming freakout. Which eventually subsided. Which is enough said about that.

Our room had a bench-like bed for Todd and a pull-out chair-bed for me. The chair-bed was about six feet long and two feet wide, and comprised three sections, none of which were coplanar, and the head of which swallowed at least one pillow. This would have been endurable had Simon wanted to sleep in his own bed. And so it was that Simon and I spent the world’s longest night (technically, one of the year’s shortest, but we were traveling at 0.8c, remember) in the world’s narrowest chair-bed. He started out on my chest, I awoke around midnight, thinking it must be near dawn. The nurse came in to medicate him, and I assumed it was four in the morning. I realized I was soaked with something, felt his diaper, confirmed my suspicions, and was too tired to act. The nurse came in to medicate him again around four. It was very confusing. In the meantime, Simon had somehow shifted onto his back next to me, arms spread eagle, hogging the entire chair-bed. I wondered why his own bed would not have been satisfactory for this purpose, but whenever he would stir, and I would pat him and say “Mama’s still here” he would quiet back down and go back to sleep. So I guess it was worth it.

Now that we’re home, Simon’s demonstrating amazing resolve in getting back to normal. He’s required to wear his No-No (unofficial name) arm restraints at all times for four weeks, to keep him from putting fingers (his favorite) or objects (a close second) in his mouth and reopening the cleft. Each arm is encapsulated in what looks to most people like an oceanographically themed air cast (so most people, strangely, don’t ask about them). In reality, they’re thickly velcroed splits with a piece of sturdy substance (metal? plastic?) in them to keep him from bending at the elbow.

Do you know how useful elbows are? Simon does. He started off the morning pretty upset that all he could do was pick up a toy and toss it behind him. But by the afternoon, he was pointing, turning pages, patting toys, and hitting Mama in the face. Watching him negotiate eating, playtime, and reading time between morning and afternoon was like watching a time-lapse reenactment of his babyhood developmental milestones. I’m pretty sure in the next day or two he’ll learn to move from place to place (currently, he just looks longingly and whiningly at where he wants to go, but hasn’t figured out how to make it happen). At this rate, he will start walking, speaking, and doing physics before the month is out.

But anyway, it’s eleven at night and too late for this Mama to be up. I’m so very proud of the Boy and how well he’s adjusting to his new situation. Would that we were all so resilient.

This boy. He’s been a little late with the milestones sometimes, but when he decides to go for something, there’s no holding back. We’re not sure if it’s been the cleft palate, the small jaw, or the low muscle tone (and associated low body-awareness), but the little man really wasn’t all that enthusiastic about eating solid food for, say, the first thirteen months and two weeks of his life. He rejected the “baby-safe feeder” nylon mesh bag. He rejected baby-mush from a spoon. He rejected delicious morsels on his high-chair tray. For a while, he would only eat Cheerios (and extra bonus if I planned ahead to dip them in something nutritive). At some point, we knew he could feed himself (because we’d occasionally see it happen), but he wouldn’t eat unless we put individual food pieces in his mouth.

And then, one day last week, there he was, in his high chair, shoveling his own food into his own mouth. His favorites are still cheese and carbs (a cheese pancake might conceivably be his favorite, but I haven’t quite worked out the recipe for that yet). But he will also eat fruit on purpose if that’s what’s on his tray. Especially strawberry. Especially Oregon strawberry.

Now, maybe to most families the transition from the bottle to solids isn’t very groundbreaking. But to us, it’s like the most fascinating, earth-shattering thing in the whole world. I can put food on his tray and watch him eat it, without feeding it to him one piece at a time. Really, this is revolutionizing our lives. I know I say that about a lot of things. But now I can eat my own food, while sitting near Simon, who is also eating, and have a conversation. It’s like a date, every time we have a meal. (Mainly, his conversation is still limited to  “mamamamamama! mamamoooooo! Ayayayaaaaaaa.”)

So while we were celebrating (and hoping that it wasn’t just a transitory preference) the new eating regime, a new toothbrushing regime started at our house.

We’ve been trying to be really diligent about brushing Simon’s teeth (he’s teething, like, all the time, and has lots of teeth, and they’re super-adorable, and also sharp), since his “toddler” formula is composed mainly of water, sugar, oh, and some nutrients. Now, let the reader understand, Simon is what professional people call “orally defensive.” I couldn’t even get my finger in his mouth let alone a foreign object (c.f. food). So toothbrushing time was mainly a family togetherness experience where one parent would immobilize the hands, while the other one, while holding the toothbrush, would squeeze Simon’s cheeks together enough to expose teeth, and begin brushing. At some point, this would infuriate him enough that he would open up to scream, handily exposing the molars, which would then also get brushed. At some point, he got wise, and started screaming with his mouth clamped shut. Still, we would prevail, but the whole process took longer. It always seemed a little incongruous to follow toothbrushing with our family prayer, blessing, and hymn. But then, really, do you do the prayer, blessing, and hymn, and then follow it with toothbrushing? There was no real solution.

And then. One day (at the same time Simon started feeding himself), he just started letting us brush his teeth. He opens up voluntarily. He barely fusses. He also likes holding the toothbrush and playing with the bristles, or chewing on it. He throws a little short-lived tantrum if we have to take the toothbrush away. It’s been a toothbrush-attitude-180-plus-also-love-affair at our house this week.

At this point, we felt like we were pressing our luck with one breakthrough leading to another. (And narratively, telling the reader how very advanced your child is, maybe can wear thin? But I figure we’re justified because he’s behind in his skills. I’ll be brief.)

So bathtime: He used to love it, then he started screaming the entire time, for no apparent reason. And then tonight we let him hold the toothbrush during the bath. Problem solved. Happy bath, happy baby, disgusting bath-toothbrush. But I bought a pack of four, so we now have a bath-toothbrush and a real toothbrush.

In other news, I’m back from the Science Olympiad trip. Simon and Todd did great on their own, and I may just have to go on another solo trip, to say, Veracruz (kidding, Todd). And my team got a fifth-place medal (out of sixty teams) in Experimental Design (one of the twenty-three events).

Oh, and Simon got a haircut and looks like a Big Boy now. At some point, we’ll post pictures or see you in person.