The BOY in Buggie

At this point Keith's vocabulary consists of about 6 things. Momma, Da Da, Be, Uh-Oh, Hawww (for 'hot', but very growlly), Moo (which he will say if you ask him what a cow says, but really he uses it as a universal term for all animals), and Bawwl, Bawwl, Bawwl, Bawwl, Da Ba, Bawwl, Bawwl.

Yes, Ball was his first word and is by a long shot his favorite. When he wakes up and I go to get him out of his crib I am always greeted by choruses of "Baawl, Da BaBa, Bawll". There are several pronunciations going on here. This morning he was even reaching through the slats in the crib at a ball that was on the bedroom floor. He has gone to sleep at night several times holding on to a Nerf soccer ball he got for Christmas (much to David's dismay--he would much rather that the football were the favorite). So much for a soft cuddly puppy or tiger. Nope. The kid wants a ball. In short, he LOVES balls--and anything of semi-spherical shape is considered a ball, including Grandma Grover's wooden fruit set that came from Honduras.

This is not the only "boy" trait coming out. He also gets a HUGE kick out of tackling me, and it is not safe to lie or sit on the floor. Inevitably he will grin, grunt, and lunge. Full-body slams are his favorite. Yesterday my brand new (well, about a month old) glasses were a casualty of this. Luckily the eye Dr. is here in town and it was a quick two-minute straighten fix by the receptionist.

This leads us to the next "boy" trait. Belle is always calling him something new, but this week it was my turn to give him a new name. Destructo-Boy. Destroys EVERYTHING he can get his hands on, and loves it.

Maybe it's because Belle never actually crawled, but she wasn't big into climbing on things. Oh, BOY. Keith climbs. and climbs. and climbs. Despite all my insistence that he wasn't going to really crawl and just army crawl everywhere, in December he slowly started hands and knees crawling until he eventually left the army-style behind forever. This has enhanced his climbing abilities. One of his favorite games is to climb up on the little desk that is sitting at the end of the couch, and then slide down the arm of the couch onto the cushions and then climb down to the floor and go for another round. For the record--this activity started one day while I was teaching a piano lesson. I turned around to see what all his giggling was about and he was in the middle of one of these head-first slides. I panicked, but before I could get across the room he was already climbing to the floor to go at it again.

He's turning one in all of 6 days and I can't believe it! We are getting a kick out of all the BOY going on around here.