Wednesday, January 9, 2008

I am Raising a Cave Man

Let me start by saying that I ADORE my Big Man. Really I do. But man, he is such a boy. My first two are girls. And while I will laugh at this 10 years from now, they are pretty easy going. Even as toddlers, they both listened, they could follow simple directions, they could talk. Big Man is completely different.

I knew it from about 3 months. He would happily sit in his car seat cooing and smiling - but at all times his toes and fingers were wiggling and jiggling. Like he had so much energy in there. Well, its out. At 17 months he is a maniac. No really, I mean its not like I expect him to be a gentleman, but it would be nice if he would be a member of the human species instead of some kind of rabid bear.

He climbs, he throws, he grunts, he whines, he hits, he eats. He is, basically, a cave man. He has words, but the only ones he chooses to use regularly are mama and dada. Other than that, you can hear a word one time and not again for 3 weeks. He said MILK on Saturday - a word I have been trying to get him to use for MONTHS. He said it because I apparently gave him a malfunctioning sippy cup. I handed it to him, he tried to drink, then banged on his tray, said Mama - MILK and thrust the cup at me. I was so excited! I was like, yes, Big Man, that is MILK! But he kept banging his tray and I finally figured it out. Its like he will only talk when he wants to. He said Bye Bye clear as a bell to his caregivers at school about 4 weeks ago - one time and never again. He said Blueberries on Saturday night - when he was demanding more. Mostly he grunts and points.

Except when he has a speech to give. Every once in a while he will stop what he is doing and with a lot of gestures and pointing will give a 2 minute oratory. Of course it is in Big Man-ese and completely unintelligible to the rest of us, but I am sure it is the next Gettysburg Address. I particularly enjoy it at 3am.

He climbs on everything. If he can't reach what he wants, he will pull and push furniture around til he can get enough stuff together to climb onto to get to what he wants. He got to a big carving knife around Christmas. And when we saw him with it he thought it was a game to see how far away he could run with it without us catching him.

He likes lifting heavy things and throwing - such a great combination! He lifts chairs, stools, big boxes, etc. Then he usually hurls them to the ground. The other day he kept throwing a stool into the bathtub, while the girls were in it. He throws smaller things too. Its like he thinks if he smashes it on the ground perhaps it will open to reveal the secrets of the universe.

He LOVES the toilet. Seriously. His favorite thing is to grab the extra roll of toilet paper, dunk it in the toilet (which may or may not have been flushed by my 3 year old) and then drag pieces of it around the house. We had to get toilet locks which have resulted in several accidents by my 3 year old, cuz she can't get it off. He also dunks stuff in the toilet and drinks the water. So lovely.

Its a good thing he is such an adorable cave man. How could you not love this face??!!!

8 comments:

dml91hokie said...

Welcome to the MOB - Mother of Boys. It is an exclusive club and you can't explain it to those who only have girls. You can try but no one gets it until they have a boy to chase around. But there is nothing sweeter than a boy who loves his mom.

Unknown said...

Somehow I dont think you are shocked to know that I know all to well what you mean.... as much as I love him, my Boy-O brings a whole different game than his sister did.

Misty said...

and here I always thought the natural amount of drama in little girls was far worse than little boys... I never considered this.

Mrs. Booms said...

OH this is hysterical. We call Crazyman the caveman all the time. Granted he's only 7 months old, but it's all grunting and banging things around. He's like Bambam. Looks like that won't change in the next year if Big Man is any example of the norm!!!

And boys are soooo different than girls.

Courtney said...

Oh...are these things not normal? lol Having 2 boys and no girls, I've never known any different. heehee. It's good I didn't have girls though, as I would have a very hard time doing all the girly things, I'm just not into all that, but I must admit...having a child that listens and such does sound nice. I was just hoping the boys would outgrow that.

Laura said...

Very cute!

Thanks for sharing!

Edie said...

He is so precious!

When your kids are teenagers? Your son will be a breeze... your girls? a different story! :)

Anonymous said...

I have a 21-month-old boy, and I always wonder if boys really are more work than toddler girls!!! I guess maybe it's good I had a boy first, maybe if my next is a girl I will get off easy???