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Kai on his third birthday
Jun. 24th, 2010 11:18 am[backdated to Monday]
- We speak Welsh to each other a great deal, since Lorne and I are thinking of sending him to my old school. Kai refers to it as "our special language" and he finds it incredibly funny that Daddy doesn't understand as much as he does. (Daddy does understand a bit more, but they tend to be terms we don't use in front of the child.)
- I see more and more of Lorne in him every day, now that he's shedding the baby fat. It's always been in the shape of his eyes and his mouth, but I'm noticing things now like how they have the same hands and toes, and they have the same mischievous look when they think they're getting away with something. They have the same laugh, too, when they're truly happy.
- He and Jack have a really sweet friendship. I'd never seen Jack with children much before this, but he's natural with Kai and Kai is perfectly comfortable with him. Kai has no qualms about crawling into his lap and demanding a story or a game, and Jack indulges him every time, for hours sometimes. Kai calls him "Jack-Jack." (I suspect we've let him watch The Incredibles too many times.)
- At the birthday party Kai and Rhodri both decided they were superheroes and held tea towels at their shoulders, and ran around the garden going "Zoom! Zoom!" until we brought the cake out. They also insist on sitting next to each other when we eat together.
- He likes napping on Matilda's side. Matilda usually lets him. When he can't find Matilda he'll wander the house going, "Matty, Matty..." and he'll squeal when she comes running.
- I'd be hard pressed to say what his favorite movies and stories are. He likes everything by Pixar that we have, and he gets a bit impatient with the fairy tale Disney movies. He likes things he can dance to but we've yet to try an actual musical. (Most of them are much too long for his attention span still.) He likes the music Daddy and Tada listen to more than the children's tapes we've bought, so we try to keep to the cleaner songs when he's awake.
- At bedtime he likes to pat my cheeks and say, "Scratchy Tada."
- He likes to eat hot dogs and mac and cheese, and apples without the peels, and Flake though I largely suspect it's because Tada likes it. Grandma Maureen made chocolate chip cookies, American style, and Kai's eyes got Very Very Big at the decadence of it. He can feed himself 90% of the time, though he can't handle a (very blunt, toddler-sized) knife and fork at the same time yet.
- He's never been a very talkative child, but if he's comfortable with you he'll chatter away. He'll drift between English and Welsh quite a bit, too, but mostly with me and my family. He tried it with Grandma Maureen and she said, "I don't know those words, Kai." So he set about teaching her Welsh like I've taught him, picking things up and saying their names in English and Welsh, or telling him what I'm doing as I do it. (I melted. You never realize how much children are paying attention until you see them imitating you.)
- When people asked him how old he is, he said "This many!" and held up three fingers.
- When we go for family walks I like to hang back a little with the dog and let Lorne and Kai walk ahead. Kai holds Lorne's finger and tries very hard to keep up with Daddy's strides (of course Lorne slows down for him), and they hold their heads and place their feet the same way. Kai has his shoulders, too.
- He likes coloring with crayons though he doesn't color in the lines of coloring books yet (Milena gives him reams of blank paper instead), singing, dancing, playing football, "helping" with laundry (he gets to push the wet clothes into the dryer, and when clothes are staticky when they come out it makes him laugh to pull them apart--he also has looked in the dryer for the land of lost socks [bad Tada, telling him about that]) and dishes (we let him put away his dishes, which are plastic, or carry one plate at a time), story time, nursery rhymes, and let's pretend. Sometimes he's a puppy and crawls on the floor, barking. He likes going to the beach though he doesn't like getting in the water, and he likes the park a lot: he likes to run ahead of us and run back, and say, "You're pokey!"
- He knows that I am Ianto and Daddy is Evan, and he likes to say "Kai Dylan!" like we do. (I confess, I like saying his name, too. It's a good Welsh name.)
- I don't think he's figured out how all these people fit together, what the difference is between family and friends, and who belongs to whom. He knows I call my mother Mam and call Grandma Maureen Mom, and Lorne calls them both Mom, but I don't think he knows what that means. He also knows Auntie Ellie is Rhodri's Mam but I don't think he knows what that means, either. I expect when he grasps it better he'll ask where his mummy is. We'll see.
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