With special thanks to a commentor for reminding me about making lists, here's a list of LE's favorite things. I only wish I had thought about doing something like this long ago, when his favorite things included stuff like moving lights and things that made crinkly noises.
1) Pushing buttons. He's almost Rain Man about it. Any button he sees, or anything that looks like a button, or even a picture of something with buttons, he's compelled to push it again and again. One of his few words is "push." He says "poosh" whenever he sees a button, or thinks about the possibility of buttons. I've even heard him murmuring it in his sleep. One of the first things I do in the morning is make sure 555-5555 is the most recently dialed number on the house phone, otherwise he'll hit the redial and call the water guy or one of BE's friends 1,000 times a day.
2) Tums. This started by mistake when LE discovered my dad's bedside Tums. We freaked out the first time he ate one, but a little research seems to say it's okay. Calcium, right? Then he discovered where the Tums were, and would run to the bathroom pointing to the cupboard shouting "Ah-haaa! Ah-haaa!." Upon receiving the Tums, he holds it up in the air and shouts and parades around the house showing it to everyone. It took him all of two days to discover where we keep the Tums in Turkey.
3) The Wiggles. The insanity doesn't stop. In stores he even developed the ability to spot a Wiggles tape or CD amongst all the others. About 18,000 times a day, he points to the movies and says "Yo yo!" or "Wuh wuh!" When you take one down he jumps up and down and screeches with pure joy. He has the same reaction, in fact, whenever he sees the Warner Brothers logo.
4) Flushing the toilet. LE's gotten pretty good about pooping in his potty, but every time the littlest thing comes out of him, he jumps up and says "Ah poo Ah poo!" and waits to flush it down the toilet. A normal potty session can take up to8 flushes. The neighbors must think we've got issues up here. When the water goes down he says "Bye bye poo poo."
5) Danino. Danino are these brightly colored little cups of something like fruit-flavored cream cheese. The kid won't touch fruit-flavored yoghurt (only plain will do, the little weirdo), but even though Danino tastes a lot like fruit-flavored yoghurt, he's just nuts for it. His request for Danino is "Noooooo!" so it's very context-oriented. It sounds just like "Noooo!" as in, "I do not want my diaper changed, get away from me, devil woman!" Incidentally, he somehow got the Headway-perfect RP pronunciation of "no." For those who don't find this description helpful, imagine how an old dowager in an Oscar Wilde costume drama says "no," add a couple more syllables, and there you are. Where the hell he got this from I have no idea.
6) Whatever I'm doing. It wouldn't matter if BE were in the kitchen driving a car and juggling and making waffles with blueberries, LE would probably be in the bathroom with me watching me take a dump.
7) Laundry. This is an offshoot of #6 as well as button-pushing, but it's a good thing he likes helping with the laundry so much because there's so damn much of it. He goes "wash wash" whenever he passes the machine, or sees clothes, and he seems to do a lot of wasning in his dreams. We're working on a rule about not touching the washing machine while it's running. It's going slowly. Nonetheless, I'm enjoying this brief time where he thinks it's super fun to help me with the laundry. I should be so lucky in ten years.
8) Balls. LE thinks balls are great. Whenever he sees anything round (in the world, on TV, in pictures...), he gets really excited and shouts "Ball!" 'Ball' was his first word, after 'Mama' and 'Baba.' One day at baby school when I came to fetch him, he grabbed my hand, pulled me to a tub of balls, and said "Ball," all cool and smooth like he'd been saying things for years. If we bring LE's ball to the park, he drops it and forgets about it but if other kids try to touch it we have to have a lesson about sharing. If another kid has forgotten his ball in the park, LE snatches it and plays with it like it's the most wonderful thing on earth. If the kid decides he wants his ball back, there's another lesson in sharing, though LE is a lot less reluctant to share other people's balls with them.
9) Bubbles.I've hidden them. I'm sick of blowing them for a little while, and LE hasn't quite got the blowing thing down yet. I was shocked when LE said 'bubble' because I'm pretty sure he hasn't heard that word in months.
10) A tie between Water and His Knees. Yeah, okay, that's two things, but the kid's really into both. His and my goals for hand-washing are quite different. Same for baths. Actually, I think it's the combination of water and pushing buttons that makes flushing the toilet so appealing. As for his knees, whenever he sees them he mentions it to me. 'Knee' was among LE's first five words. Shortly after, he learned 'diz,' making it the first word he learned in Turkish and English. Most recently, he said 'bath' to me and 'banyo' to BE, making it the first time he's said a word in both languages to the appropriate parent. He clearly really wanted that bath.
This top ten quickly turned into an account of LE's baby talk. That's probably because all day long, these are the main topics of our conversations. All day long, I'm letting him do one of these things, stopping him from doing one of these things, and reassuring him that we might do one of these things later on. Here's one example of a conversation:
LE: (grunts and offers me his glass of water)
ME: No thanks, that's your water.
LE (grunts louder and offers me the glass more insistently)
ME: Ew, no, I don't want that. It's all full of your backwash.
LE: (running towards a sink or a washer) Wash wash wash
The truth is, I'm positively enthralled with every shred of his developing language. I'm sure you couldn't tell.
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