Snapshots of John

A post for those of you who are all about John's latest tricks:

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The munchkin's latest obsession is turning lights on and off. Over the last three weeks we've spent hours holding John up to light switches or sitting next to him on our bed while he turns our hot pink flower Ikea wall sconces on and off, all the while repeating the words "on" and "off." A couple of days ago, he turned a light on and suddenly bursts forth with the word "ON." He only speaks a handful of words that are crystal clear (as in other people besides his parents can understand what he's saying) so it was a pretty cool thing. YouTube worthy in fact.

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"On" joins other words in John's crystal clear vocabulary including "Mama," "night-night," "down" (as in down-set-hut) "ball," and "duck." There are a score of other words that are a little more tricky for the untrained ear such as the word "teeth" - referring to a tooth brush - which can sounds very much like "this" or "piss."

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John isn't exactly thrilled about getting his diaper changed these days. He'll generally run the other way as soon as I say the word "diaper." We've taken to distracting him with songs and conversation. For a while I would ask him where various parts of his anatomy were located - always sticking with the three parts I knew he could identify - head, ear and belly. A few days ago I was stalling for time and started asking him to point to other parts we hadn't spent any time trying to learn. Hair, nose, tongue, fingers, toes, feet, hands - all waved in front of my surprised face.

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I pulled out the Holy Family portion of our nativity set this afternoon for John to play with and quickly contemplated how to explain the Christmas story to a 16-month old. It went something like this:

Me: "This is Mary - she's the Mama.
John: "Mama"
Me: "This is Joseph - he's the Daddy.
John: "Da."
Me: "This is baby Jesus and this is his bed where he goes night-night."
John: "Nigh-night"
Me: "Baby Jesus was born on Christmas Day."
John: [Picks up Mary and Joseph a few times saying "Mama" and "Da" before putting Jesus in the manager and driving him around the table saying "vroooommmmm."]