Wife Without Borders: Look Who's Talking: 17 Months Old!

Forest is 17 months old and pretty soon he’ll be able to write these little guest posts himself. Baby boy is blurting out new words all the time and has even started stringing simple phrases together (Bye Bye Doggie, No cup, Hi Daddy, etc). I have a feeling it won’t be long until he can tell us exactly what his likes and dislikes are, but for now I am still doing my best to translate his toddler jibberish into adult language. He’s very patient (for the most part) with my lack of fluency in jibber-jabber. Anyhoos, I’ll pass him the mic. Here he is to tell you in his own words (with my translation) about his current inerests.

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Hiya folks! 17 months is a pretty big age. I feel like I only have one more month to milk this baby thing until I cross the threshold into full on toddler-hood. Being a toddler certainly has it’s perks but being a baby has it’s nice points as well. I kind of like being a hybrid for the time being. But here are some things I definitely don’t like:

1) Teething. Are you kidding me with this? Just when I let my guard down and start being mellow, happy, and taking good long naps, my two year molars decide to crash the party. Maybe they didn’t get the memo that these teeth are for 2 year olds, not 1.33 year olds. Sheesh!

2) Teething makes me dislike pretty much everything so it’s hard to say what things are really rotten and which things just seem terrible from the teething lens through which I am currently viewing the world. I better just skip the dislikes for now and lump them all together under ‘teething’.

Even through the painful haze of teething, these are the things I still love, so you know they are really good.

Likes:

1) Swim class.

My daddy and I finally convinced my mom that I’m much more likely to be the next Michael Phelps than the next Mozart so this Spring we’ve traded my music class for swim lessons and I couldn’t be happier. The first day the instructor was all, ‘do you think he’d be comfortable getting water in his face?’ (p.s. dontcha hate when adults talk about you like you aren’t even there). Anyway I showed her my ‘comfort’ level by diving head first right on into the pool and laughing maniacally after my mom pulled me out. Am I comfortable getting water in my face? You be the judge:

2) Baby Einstein.

Look, I know it may seem infantile but the Baby Einstein puppets crack me up. I especially love on Baby Wordsworth when the cat puppet makes the bed. I mean that’s just good quality comedy. And on Baby Neptune when the Octopus puppet kicks the soccer ball? HILARIOUS.

3) My toy lawn mower.

Just when I thought pushing things couldn’t get any more awesome, my grandparents send me this contraption which when you push it, it also makes bubbles.

4) Bubbles.

The downside of the bubble making lawn mower is I am torn between my love of pushing and my love of chasing down bubbles.

When my mom blows bubbles in the backyard I insistently sign ‘more! More!’ so she’ll keep ‘em coming. The other day at the gym daycare, my mom came to pick me up and rather than hanging out with all the other toddlers, I was standing mesmerized in front of the bubble machine. It was quite hypnotizing and I sort of wanted to tell my mom to go for another steam so that I could keep on watching. I think my mom was pretty impressed by my willingness to stand still so I overheard her tell my daddy that she may get a bubble machine for the house. Fingers crossed.

5) Samson.

This is nothing new but I sure do love that little guy. I show him my devotion everyday by laying on the sweet hugs and being in charge of treat-giving when we have to leave him home for an outing.

Every once in a while I get a little too exhuberant and overzealous in my love for him and have to be reminded to hug and pet him softly but for the most part I can tell Samson loves me too.

6) Running.

My parents knew when they named me 'Forest' that I’d have to deal with a few ‘run, Forrest, Run jokes’ in my lifetime but I don’t think they had any idea how relevant that mantra would be for me.