wild*life

When I was little, there was this dog that lived next door to my friend Nealy.  I remember it being really yippy and it would chase the car up the dirt road every time we drove up to her house.  For some reason she would call it Fang Doooooggie!  It must have had sharp teeth.  I could never really see out the window that well.  I think its real name was Levi.  How do I remember these things?…

Maybe a little over a month ago Jake got all of his fang teeth, pretty much at once.  I’m probably not supposed to say that my son has fangs.  Cuspids?  Though it is almost Halloween….

Fortunately I think we have just four more “second molars” to get through.  Uh oh, Fang Doggie just woke-up.

Apparently it’s carrot week for Baby Cillo– 3/4 of a pound and about 10.5 inches long.  Or as James put it, 3 quarter pounders?  Yes, I’m sure BabyCenter.com is about to roll-out a new version of their e-mails, providing baby development size estimates based on your favorite fast food: from McNugget to BK Stacker.

I’ve felt Cillo bumping around in there for several weeks, which is good.  Unlike Jakey, I don’t really know when I first felt the baby.  Not sure if this is normal, but when I wasn’t pregnant, sometimes I felt phantom kicks.  I know, weird, right?

I feel better now though.  I’ve always been a bit freaked out that you can have something the size of an heirloom tomato in your stomach and not even be able to feel it.  Freaky.

Tonight Jakey said his very first sentence.  The day after his 19-month birthday.  And it was:

Read me book.

I’m pleasantly surprised that it encompasses such a positive theme and behavior… even if it’s a little commanding and abrupt.

If I think about what I might have expected his first sentence to be, I probably would have said something like: Let me out.  Give me now.  or maybe… Buy me doggie!

I’m very happy with Read me book.

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.

That’s what little boys are made of.

Sugar and spice and everything nice.

That’s what little girls are made of.

Mac & cheese, raisin bran, breakfast sausages, and rootbeer floats.

That’s what Jakey was made of.

Soup and seafood and panini sandwiches.

That’s what Baby Cillo is made of .

A frosty Newcastle.

That’s what Mommy wishes they were made of.

When Jake was a little bitty baby, he would take his hand and rub it back and forth across my collarbone like a windshield wiper.  My mom said it was weird.  She’s always rubbing her nose.  Pot and Kettle?

Then I had to be very careful because whenever I was holding Jake, all of a sudden his arm would be down my shirt… up to his elbow.  I had to wear higher collared shirts to try and maintain my modesty.  (This still happens so be warned.)

As I’ve mentioned before, when he’s tired, his little pointer fingers now find their way under the cuffs of his sleeves or the collar of his shirt.  Sometimes if he can’t reach for various reasons, he’ll settle for rubbing his belly at the bottom of his shirt.  My sleeves and collar seem to be equally satisfying.

Today Jake was a super grump, super grump, he’s super grumpy, Yow.  (This happens to be a song I sing to the tune of Rick James’ Super Freak.  My favorite line is, “the kind you don’t bring home to mother.”)  Anyway, he was so tired, he had been rubbing under his collar and stretched it completely out, practically to his belly button.  That was our cue for an early bedtime.  Goodnight little Sleevie Wonder.

This is my last blog…

Not ever!  Just about the topic of all the words Jakey can say.  At 18 months, we’ve hit a vocab barrage.  What has made this especially challenging is that our little copykitten is now a parrot.  Honestly, he can say just about anything I can come up with: Halloween, School, Double ovens, Fireplace, Bread machine, Ocean, Cupcakes.  Even when we try to trick him with Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, he says “docious.”  So, it’s getting a bit difficult to know what words he actually knows, and what he’s just repeating.  These words pop up spontaneously, on a daily basis.

Agua.  Airplane.  All done.  All right.  Apple.  Arm.  Baby.  Baila (Dance).  Baba.  Ba-bye. Ball.  Bath time.  Boppy.  Bubble.  Button!  Birdie.  Bless you.  Brush.  Bucket.  BumpIt (Fist bumping).  Car.  Cheese.  Chin.  Choo choo.  Cracker.  Clap.  Da Da.  Dame (Give me). Dip, Dip.  Down.  Diaper.  Doggie.  Ear.  Eat.  Elephant.  Eyes.  Flower.  Fun!  Goal.  Hat.  Hi.  Halloween.  Highchair.  Hot.  i-Yo.  JJ.  Kit cat (Kitty Cat).  Key.  Light.  Ma Ma.  Mine.  More.  Nana (Banana).  Nigh-nigh.  No.  Nose.  Oh no.  Outside!  Owie.  Pan (Bread).  Pillow.  Phone.  Poo poo.  Pee pee.  Pumpkin.  Read book.  Running.  See.  Shoe.  Shower.  Soap.  Sock.  Spoon.  Stop.  Toes.  Towel.  Uh oh.  Up.  Wash hands.  Whatizit?  Open.  Sit down (while patting the floor).  Wow.  Yes.  Zana/Anya (Manzana)… 85.

If there happen to be canines around, Jakey’s ability to speak devolves to 1 word, “doggie.” And a lot of pointing.

In Italian, our last name, Fucillo, is pronounced Foo-chee-lo.  People who claim to know Italian say it means something about shooting or rifle or sniper?  I don’t know… contrary to the many compliments I get about my “namesake pasta.”

And since we decided the genders of our babies will be surprises, they of course have needed nicknames.  Jakey was more commonly known as Fooch or Foochi for the first nine months of his technical life.

And now, making his or her blogging debut, at 20 weeks, is (da da da Daaa): Cillo (pronounced Cheelo).  We had to spell Fooch phonetically for, um, obvious reasons given the potentially problematic first three letters of our surname.  (I’m always tempted to spell out something crass when asked to provide the letters of my name to telemarketing strangers: “-F- as in Frank, -U-, -C-…”  So far I’ve always chickened out.)

So, it’s hard to believe, but I haven’t really started blogging about Cillo until today.  Based on today’s BabyCenter.com e-mail, it’s already “banana week.”  Unfortunately I don’t have the energy to throw a half-way par-tay.

We’ve already been through poppy seed, sesame seed, lentil, blueberry, kidney bean, grape, kumquat, fig, lime, “medium shrimp”, lemon, apple, avocado, turnip, bell pepper and heirloom tomato weeks.  It has gone so fast!  I am now committing to a weekly produce blog.  Though I have to warn you now, I get a little freaked out when I see the “melon” weeks on the horizon.  Thank heavens last time I never made it to watermelon week.  I was honestly feeling panicky when I figured out I could click forward and see what was coming (http://www.babycenter.com/slideshow-baby-size).

So, happy first half birthday little Cillito.  I wish we had a cupcake.

For several months now, there has been new emphasis in our lives.  Frankly, almost everything Jake says is followed by that many times overly used grammatical symbol, the exclamation point.

It all began with “Oh no!” (combined with one hand on each cheek ala Macaulay Culkin).  This is still uttered at least skeighty-eight times a night at our house and has been around at least since May.

“Uh oh!” is also a reigning favorite.  I have learned that you should always stop what you are doing when you hear uh oh.  There is always a reason.  Something important has just been thrown out of the stroller, dropped from the car seat, or launched from the high chair.

“All right!”  A more recent exclamation from his new school, Saint Lizzie’s.  This week he exclaimed “All right!” as he climbed up and stood on a stool, a ladder, his stroller, and, get this, his rocking horse.  He held the handles on his rocking horse and got both feet on the saddle so that he was acting out my worst rocking horse nightmare, inspiring a flashback of that movie, Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken.

“All done!”  Again, this showed-up probably one week into his enrollment at his new school.  One of the most useful exclamations to date.

“Wow!”  Pretty much everything Jake does inspires him to say wow.  Many things I do also inspire an awestruck Wooooooooow.  It has really improved my confidence.  Apparently I’m quite impressive.

And last but not least, “Ta da!”  My favorite little fact about this one is that it is usually accompanied by jazz hands.  No joke.

James is always asking me, “Where did this kid come from?”

I now have an answer.  And that answer, surprisingly, is Boston.

Boston?

Yes.

We’ve just made the connection.   Every day, we now get in the “Cah… cah!”

Pretty soon we’ll be pahking in Havahd Yahd.

At 18 months, I’m kind of surprised about what Jake knows.  For example, he knows that you lick the lid of the foil after you peel it off the top of yogurt… and then to wash the container when you’re done, before you put it in the recycling bin.

He knows that keys open doors… and has been trying to find the right key to break out of here since he could walk at 13 months.  Problem now?  He can really reach the doorknob and test each key without even standing on his tip-toes.

He knows that my retainer goes on my bottom teeth– and tried to get it into his little mouth.

When he got his hands on my razor in the shower for a split second, he immediately tried to shave his leg.  He also likes to use the squeegee to “shave” my legs for me.

He can load the washing machine.

He can open the microwave.  Repeatedly.

He puts diapers in the diaper bin.

He knows that cords go into little holes in the wall, as illustrated when he stuck my iPhone cord into an unused phone jack.

He knows that his daddy puts the towel up over the top of the glass shower door… and tries to do the same, even though it’s at least 5 feet taller than he is.

He gets mail out of the mailbox.

He takes the nail clippers and holds them up to his toes– even though I’ve been giving him his man manis and pedis in his sleep.

He knows that hair rubber bands go on your wrist, like Mama wears them.  And then he puts them in his “hair” by balancing the hair band on top of his head.

He knows how to flush the toilet, turn off light switches and hit enough buttons that the TV will turn on.

But most importantly, he knows that whatever his dad is drinking is going to be significantly better than the”agua” he has.