Golden Pig Tales

His preschool friend C for some reason thinks it’s funny to throw playground bark-chips at me and thinks it’s okay to throw bark-chips at me as long as Ezra throws bark-chips at me. Then they both throw bark-chips at me and I step away saying, ,,Please stop,” ”Your being rude,” and, ”It’s not nice to throw things at people when not play catch.” After it happened the second time, I had talk with Ezra on the way home and told him Ezra that it was rude to throw things at me or anyone without them wanting to have some thing thrown at them.

Today when I got Ezra from preschool his friend C tried to get Ezra to throw a rag at me, but Ezra looked at his friends said, ,,No.” His friend tried to get Ezra to throw bark-chips at me. Ezra said, ”No.” And on the way home I told him how proud I was of him not doing what his friend asked him to do because he knew that I didn’t like him doing it.

We smiled.

As he was walking down the stairs after waking from sleep, Ezra paused to meet me and see me face to face as I stood on the floor. We stood there in the morning sunshine and stared at each other with smiles. Then ezra said. ,,I love your nose.” And it has been a great morning since.

After waking, eating, talking, reading, car riding, playing, fort building with Ezra all day long. After having built one chair fort for most his toys and many couch forts for Ezra, and after reading books, and after eating. After ABCs and counting. After watching Caillou as we sat on the couch and ate a heated frozen pizza, Ezra smiled and said, ,,I like you, dad.”

Ezra can entertain himself with objects while creating a world from the furniture and the different rooms. He can play with toys, and Ezra playing with toys is something I can’t watch enough of because it still fascinates him that he can create a world where Matchbox cars, Tonka toys and LEGO fire-people can exists as one. It goes beyond Círculos. It is amazing to see, and I can’t help but watch.

…At least that’s what -v- said Ezra said while I played Futsal, and Ezra watched.

Ezra calls Futsal Daddy Soccer when ever I go play or we stroll by the Futsal building. And tonight he got to watch. And after playing Futsal, Ezra gave a team mate a high-five. He said, ,,Daddy Soccer.” And it made it feel like we won though we lost.

Ezra may have become a Stair Master more than a year ago, and now he is a Stair Mater 2.

Yesterday, he earned his second Stair Master title after climbing and descending stairs without supervision from -v- and me. We were eating dinner, and he was roaming around. We heard him from afar asking something. I walked up the stairs to find him wanting into his room for he is still unable to open the high, old and stiff door knob. He entered his room, but refused me entry. He wanted -v- in his room, but not me. We wanted to eat, so we went back downstairs. Soon Ezra followed thus completing his solo ascent and descent of the steep wooden stairs without knowledge or supervision.

We still don’t have gates installed before the up and down entrances of the steep wooden stairs.

Ezra’s counting aloud in Spanish and only Spanish, but never in the right order. He counts while tossing rocks or looking at object and just starts saying some Spanish numbers he knows. He always seems to begin with Ocho. It could be his favorite number.

He is able to equate sums of specific object in English, but not Spanish and then apply the English sums to description like he did today when driving past two backhoes as he pointed out the car window and said, ,,Two backhoes, two backhoes, two backhoes…”

I am proud to write that Ezra now knows how to give a high-five AND a fist-bump. The fist-bump Ezra calls a knuckle, which is a better name than fist-bump because it’s cute when Ezra says, ,,Knuckle,” then raises his hand in the form of a fist and waits to receive the touch of another’s knuckes.

Ezra’s new favorite word other than binky is awesome, and it is a word he said more than once today.

Ezra woke to begin the awesome day cleaning with me until -v- awoke. He even gave me his binky after he woke when I asked him to give me his binky, which made me say, ,,Awesome.”

,,Awesome,” was said when Ezra seen many motorcycles at the sporting good store as we looked for bicycle helmets.

Awesome was when -v-, Ezra and I touring the neighborhood on bikes. Ezra wasn’t peddling his own, but rather sittig in a pull along cart with his new TONKA helmet watching the neighborhood roll past. ”Awsome,” was said again when he slid down slides at a park.

Ezra said, ”Awesome,” again after we seen a steam train choo-choo past that was part of a National Train Day exhibit.

It was awesome to follow Ezra around the yard as the day began to wane. It was an awesome day for me.

Ezra, at times, appeared to be near exploding with joy seeing the tens of buses and many trains and taxis that he shouted bye and hi loud enough to be louder than honking horns, corner musicians, echoing bus motors, chatting people all enjoying the bright day downtown.

While we ate on a park bench, Ezra almost got whiplash trying to say hi and bye to every buss and taxi driving past. ,,Bye, bye. Hi. Bye, bye. Hi…”

Then there was the park. He acted like he was on skateboard when two skateboard kids rolled past. He ran through the park and slid on slides. He tried to play baseball. He smiled and laughed. Then we were home. He said, ”Outside, outside…” only a few times before he was realizing he was inside and Night Night was soon.

Ezra has learned how to react to a camera being pulled out. He knows the sound of the click and the sight of the flash and the understanding of the command, ,,Over here Ezra.” He knows to turn to face the camera after he hears the sound or after the second flash or react to the command. He turns and smiles and poses. If he has his binky in mouth he will take the binky out of mouth to smile and wait for the camera to turn away before he reinserts the binky into mouth and resume what he was doing.

Ezra is talking when that binky is not sucked to his face. His talk is single words and gesticulation but it is talking, and the talking is making being a parent so much easier for he can tell us he wants applesauce and that there is a choo-choo passing past if we couldn’t hear the horn in the distance.

He is able to understand more than he can speak which makes parenting a whole lot easier because he can at least say yes or no if he wants a type of food or if he wants to perform some task like go outside or read a book or not eat something he doesn’t want. Of course, he is still trying to understand some words we speak as we are still trying to understand some of the words he speaks.

One of the words he continues to say is mow-tow-tow which is Ezra for Motorcycle, which is a new favorite motorized vehicle. And no matter how many times I say motorcycle after he says mow-tow-tow he still says mow-tow-tow, but that is okay because he is still young and learning and still at times has a binky sucked to his face making words difficult to practice.

If there is a fruit in the house, Ezra will eat it. It can be fresh, previously frozen, canned, dried, freeze dried, dehydrated, or just dropped behind the couch and discovered 2 weeks later (well, maybe I made that last one up, because I’ve never seen him eat anything but cheerios he’s found behind the couch). Ezra likes bananas, oranges, kiwi, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, grapefruit, lemons, limes, raspberries, blackberries, mulberries, peaches, nectarines, pears, cherries, plums, pomegranate, jackfruit, rambutan, papaya, mango, mangosteen, pineapple, and he will eat an apple, but usually only if it’s been sauced. He also really likes tomoatoes, peas, beans, and olives, which are also technically fruits. I bet Ezra would even eat durian, which is known for being the stinkiest fruit on earth.  I will let you know when I discover a fruit that Ezra does not like.

Ezra is getting bigger! It seems like he is bigger today than yesterday. Kalab and I both seemed to think so, so it must be true. Pretty soon, Ezra will be 6 feet tall.

We had so much fun hanging out with Ezra this weekend! It makes me sad that it’s Sunday and we will be spending the day at work, rather than going to the park, reading books, playing with toys and walking along the streets to look for taxis, busses, u-hauls and motorcycles. That sounds like way more fun than work : (

Ezra also proved his spanish vocabulary is growing! He wants mas mango, mas sesame street, and mas play time. He’s so cute when he says it : )

I can’t believe one little kid could be this much fun!

Ezra is 19 months old as of today. And as of today we are beginning the process of weening him from the pacifier. -v- and I have both made the commitment of beginning to let it be known to Ezra that the pacifier is not something that 20 month old kids use, which Ezra will be in one month. AND in one month we will take the pacifier away.

We are also very excited with the fact EZRA IS 1.583333333 YEARS OLD! Yay! Ezra is speaking more words like today when he was babbling words that we knew and didn’t know. He is beginning to name types of cars. He is wanting to have daddy included in more things like his chase-around game and taking him to bed and going for walks with him. The walks have been good to great because he likes to grab my finger when we walk and holds on until he needs to point at a car, a plane or a train.

This is not the picture from today, but I think this is generally a pretty accurate image of what Ezra’s hair looks like when he goes down any of those plastic slides that are ubiquitous on today’s playgrounds. Anyway, today we went over to the park with little J and her mom, and Ezra wanted to do nothing but go down the slide. Usually this means that I climb up to the top with him and either go down after him or go back down the stairs. There were several other kids about Ezra’s age, maybe a little older, at the park today who also wanted to go down the slide,  and they were climbing up all on their own. So of course, Ezra had to climb up the slide stairs all by himself. I was a little nervous and tried to hang on to him from beside the slide stairs…but it wasn’t really necessary because he climbed all the way up, all by himself! I think he had way more fun than usual coming down the slide. So much that he started getting all crazy and inventive about how he was going to go down the slide…head first, backwards, on his stomach, etc.  Hopefully Ezra will be content with this slide for a while, because the other slides at the park are I think just still too big, plus they have no real “stairs” so he’s always trying to walk up the slide itself…