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I’ve been away from the Internet for awhile. I had two of my closest long-standing friends visiting, separately, for the last two weeks. I miss them terribly, though it is nice to be back to a normal schedule/empty house. Oh, and our car exploded in 90+ degree weather in a bad-ish part of Chicago and we waited for 6+ hours for a tow truck and had to somehow get home? From out of state? Without a car? Plus a small child? And then our AC was out in our house and has been and ay ay ay I don’t want to talk about it.

I have been so absent from my regular parenting-blog-haunts that I didn’t even notice (right away at least) that one of my favoritest bloggers actually mentioned me (ME) in a post, in reference to my record of our night weaning process (see here). On the one hand, it made me feel a little star-struck, while on the other it seemed perfectly normal, ’cause our kids are like days apart in age and identically sized (Hank is shorter, I think–that Sam is an Amazon). And both our children absolutely sucked as sleepers so in reading her for the last six months or so it’s always felt like we were on the same “team” or something. (I feel similarly about the Excellent Walker clan.) The point is, stuff happens when you’re gone, and you feel a bit disoriented when you come back.

All of this is to say, I hope you are all still alive/around/well. I have no idea, really. I’ll be slowly catching up with your posts in the coming days. Especially the ControverSunday posts, which I miss participating in. I may have to drop some incredibly late science on the various topics tackled in recent weeks. Or I may have to just move on.

Yikes. This is what happens when you are gone for long from the intertubes. You feel like you need to apologize or explain your absence. And you forget how to write anything of interest.

Let’s see. Hank was sick all this last week, the kind of sick that precludes child care, so I got to spend some quality home time with him which was pretty excellent. I feel very lost in terms of my dissertation but I don’t really care. I’m leaving town next week, without him, for the first time, and so I’m glad we got that time.

Having only said “Hi” probably less than five times in his life, the kid is suddenly saying “Hello.” And it sounds very proper. And kind of alien, in a way I can’t describe, both due to its proper-ness and his pronunciation. The funny thing is that he seems to have in one day finally “got” the whole greeting thing, so not only is he saying his very polite “Hellos” to anything and anyone, he’s also waving and saying “Bye” as well. All of these things he’s technically done before, but seriously like once a month and mostly out of context. Another oddity–now that he’s saying “Hello,” he is a lot more calm in his pretend phone conversations, which have historically been heated. I’m mourning the loss of the angry stock trader like one mourns the loss of an adorable speech impediment.

The whole language acquisition thing is pretty amazing. At 15 months, Hank has something like 50 words (not counting names of people, stuffed animals). (And when I say “something like” I’m being overly casual, because I actually have a word document that lists all his words because I’m THAT mother, apparently). I didn’t expect it to be this rapid, knowing as little as I did about babies, and remembering the sluggish (by appearance, anyway) newborn period. I’d say he only uses 20 of them daily, and probably 5-10 of them are somewhat unconfirmed (only heard once or twice or very inarticulate).

It’s so HELPFUL, you guys. (Of course those of you with older children know this already.) I can sort of figure out what he wants. He can sort of tell me what he wants. We can have proto-conversations. I can distract him from tantrums by suggesting we go look for dogs or talking about how Dad will be coming home. I can tell him to clean up his toys and for now it’s a wonderful game.

Of course, things are still pretty limited. He may suggest “Mo’ berry?” to indicate hunger, but then he often doesn’t actually want berries, and will then shout “no!” while running to toss them down the heater grate, “DOWN!!!” (we rarely use our high

chair anymore–more on that later). He can say things like “Ow! Toe!” and point, to his mysteriously bloody toenail. But he can’t explain to me how it happened. And of course he can now break my heart with a sharp and accusatory “ow!” when I bonk his head for the frillionth time trying to get him into his car seat.

He sings the tunes of various nursery songs, but with his own made up words; he dances to even the most rudimentary beats (produced beatbox style his parents); he “nurses” and bottle-feeds his baby doll; he sweetly kisses blocks, puts them abed in shoe boxes and sings a quick “night night” lullaby; he then grabs them, throws them across the room, and cackles evilly.

He mimes sipping out of a play tea cup and hams an elaborate “ahhhhhh!” of refreshment. He knows on which page every dog, ball or baby can be found in each of his books and shivers with excitement the page before, stuttering “b-b-b-ball!” etc. when you turn the page. When he sees a lion or certain dinosaurs, he gives a hearty “row-aaarrr.”

He’s getting a taste for the absurd. He likes to climb atop his toddler table, take a prone position, close his eyes, and say “night night!” then spring up, shake his head and say “no,” laughing at the ridiculous prospect of treating a table as a bed.

He knows many of the basic body parts, which is neat in the way that this kind of learning is pretty neat. It’s sweet when he pokes you and says “naz!” in his tiny high pitched voice. It’s not so neat when it results in your getting poked roughly in the “eysh!”

Toddlerhood is so, SO awesome.