Acts of sweetness from a baby is only made sweeter when words are attached.

Let’s get right to it: he knows the word “snuggle.”

This means I can ask for a snuggle and Baby gives me a hug (success rate with Baby roughly 15%, he doesn’t give it up loosely). This means he can ask for a snuggle from the parents (success rate with parents roughly 100%, we are a bowl full of mush). He’s also even more articulate about demands and putting together two words when needed. His go-to is “hold it” and he points to everything in the grocery store that will certainly break once he throws it (he shouts “nageru!” when throwing things, it means to throw in Japanese). To his disadvantage, he’s still compulsive with words and gives away his master plan right before executing. When he’s ready to flip his plate/bowl/cup over, he’ll first say “dumping” which gives us just enough time to squash his efforts. No dumping!

His teething has settled down for a bit. Not sure exactly what his next milestone is supposed to be. Maybe it’s to sit still and hang out for a while as Papa unwinds from a hard days’ work? Or it’s to pick out the longest story we have (Hop on Pop) and ask me to read it three times in a row. If it’s the latter, milestone reached. What is interesting is there isn’t the same need for constant supervision. As long as access to stairs and toilets are limited, he can kind of disappear somewhere in the house for a little bit and it’s not an emergency. I still don’t like leaving too much time in between checkups. However long it would take to push two chairs together and climb up on the stove and mess with the knobs is about all I can handle.

A fun little activity of ours is I put away laundry while he plays in my closet. And by play, I mean pull down my folded clothes at a much faster rate than I can fold newly washed clothes. He also likes stepping into the parents’ shoes while declaring them “Mama’s” or “Papa’s.” His favorite activity at the moment is being picked up in the kitchen and dancing to “Uptown Funk.” The first three times I danced to this song I was holding him and having a great time. Now he thinks this particular song can only be enjoyed while being held, even though he’s generally pretty happy dancing on the floor to other songs.

Some other things:

• Baby will walk up to the piano and bang around on the keys, dance to the music he’s making and upon completion yell “yayyyy!” while clapping
• Baby will pick out a book he wants read, hands it over, turns around, and carefully backs up to sit on your lap to prepare for storytime
• If feeling needy, Baby will chase you around into other rooms as you try to get stuff done

Emergency! This post ends in suspense! Our nanny quit and we have up to 30 days to find a replacement. We want a Japanese speaking nanny again. We’re in a bind because the most common profile of a nanny we’d like may tend to want to move on past nannying as soon as possible. Can we just find a perfect fit who wants to stay with us for years? We’ve put out ads in multiple places and we’re hoping for the best. Mama is also spending some time looking into daycare spots but a nanny still seems to be the best choice for us.