Ussins

Here are some audio files (plus some other ones) of him I recently said I’d post.

First here he is ooing and cooing I think a month or so ago.. at mabye 7 or 8 months old (~ 1 minute).

And here he is with me bearing zurbets, and growling and grunting back and forth with me (~ 2.5 minutes). In one part you can hear him make a very low repeated chest grunt in a duet with me. This and the following are all at 9 months old -

Singing (~ 2 minutes), bouncing (~ 1.5 minutes), and exhuberantly bearing my tickling (~ 1 minute).

He has four front teeth - two top and bottom. He has had the extra two since.. two weeks or so? We thought just a third was coming in and the fourth came really fast.

Yesterday he bit my nose and cheek affectionately. When he wakes up sometimes he’ll go for the stuffed animals just out of reach on the shelf beside his crib (we’re going to try to get them in reach) - recently he was pulling at a stuffed frog between the bars, clacking it’s hard plastic eyeball against the crib repeatedly.

He called for me today saying “da-da.” “Ma-ma” is very frequent. When Tia brings him to me on mornings that I sleep in a bit later he grins and pants like a puppy and sometimes wrestles my head. He does the same to Tia when I bring him to her in the morning.

.. he kicks his legs a lot and wiggles all his limbs when he’s very excited.

He enjoys walks in the stroller - just contentedly looks at everything.

Joseph Smith was born 200 years ago today.

Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah!
Jesus anointed that Prophet and Seer..
..
Hail to the Prophet, ascended to heaven!
Traitors and tyrants now fight him in vain.
Mingling with Gods, he can plan for his brethren;
Death cannot conquer the hero again.

The day before yesterday Tia called me at work and related this. He was on the kitchen floor - which my siblings-in-law very charitably changed from an old olive green carpet (in a kitchen?!) to a marbled brown-grey vinyl floor last Christmas - fussing from boredom and wanting to be held and played with while she cleaned it with a swiffer. When she was done she turned around to do something else and the fussing stopped. She turned back around and his face was planted on the floor, contentedly licking the sweet swiffer flavor on the floor. She stopped him from this and went back to what she was doing and it happened again.

She relates that yesterday she was Christmas shopping and picked out a large lion stuffed animal for him to play with. Usually he’s happy to play with things in the store and put them back, but when she put this back he made some dispondent babble, so she gave it back for keeps (to buy). He then nuzzled and slept on the lion, sleeping while she was shopping, which is a first.

I haven’t said this, but I can no longer withhold it: He is so cute! I want him to freeze for ten years so I can have him just as he is now. .. in an Eden where he never learns or grows. Every time I despair that his cuteness has reached the apex and it will go downhill from here, he defies expectation!

The last two nights I came home too late to see him to bed, and I can tell he misses me - the usual morning happiness was mingled with cathartic babble and fussing. Tia was preening in the bathroom while I slept in in the bed, and he wandered from his toys in his room to the bathroom with alternate happy and fussy babble and calls. I came to him and he beamed and laughed, but when I picked him up he leaned for his mother, then pled for us both: “Ma-ma.. Pba-pba.”

He crawled a short distance the day before yesterday (as different from the “army crawl” or scoot) and is starting to sometimes do it briefly. He is still a mild, happy, often beaming baby who also blathers fun nonsense, growls, and coos at pretty things like lights. Recently he was having a great fun time wrestling and rolling around with a large stuffed bear animal, and he still often beams when he sees large creatures that are or could be alive.

I think it was the day before that he woke in the morning crying and calling “Ma-ma! Ma-ma!”

He laughs when I “zurbet” his naked belly, toss him up and catch him, or make silly sounds.

Recently I was chanting something to his amusement between zurbets:

Baby Mago
Baby Mago
Where you gonna go when you go, go, go?
(Poop!)

It occured to me that this works perfectly with the Winnie the Pooh song, and is also an innapropriate (and therefore desirable) pun on the bear’s name.

He was also singing (or ernestly attempting it) recently with me - I recorded both these things and I’ll post them in a bit.