Tuco at 17 Months

 

It appears Adventures With Tuco has become an abandon blog, but I still want to document a few things about little Tuco for posterity. Better late than never, right?

Tuco is now 17 months old. He’s a wild man, spinning in circles until he gets dizzy. Then he walks around like a drunken sailor. He loves wearing his hat whether he’s indoors or out. He can run, climb, and he’s starting to communicate. I thought this would be a good place to document some of the words he says as he’s learning how to talk, so here it goes:

Yes
No
Shoe
Pee Pee
Ball
Beans
Block (though he pronounces it more like Bock)
Bees
Park (though he pronounces it like Bark)
Choo-choo (for train of course)
Knee
Jeans
Nut
Daddy
Mama (though he’s usually talking about his book Moon Man and not his mother when he says this word)
Gogo (his word for car)
Baby

Not a swear word in the bunch! I’ll attribute that to his conscientious parents.

What’s Tuco looking like these days? Take a look:

Tuco See, Tuco Do

Tuco is at the age when he imitates  a lot of what he sees and hears, which is mostly great. There is a new imitation performed every day, but my current favorite imitations are as follows:

1. Tuco and I were playing in the yard, and I picked up some maple tree seeds (we sometimes call them helicopters) and threw them up into the air, so Tuco could watch them fall. He didn’t seem to get it, but he started picking up grass and trying his best to throw it into the sky. That little arm trying to propel that little hand up high is mighty cute. He worked so hard at it too.

2. I had an empty paper towel tube, and I talked into it for Tuco. He smiled and so I said “ah. ah. ah. ah.” into it. Ah. ah. ah. ah. is a sound Tuco likes to make and imitate. He will almost always say it if someone says it to him. Anyway, I said it and handed the tube to Tuco. He looked it over, put it up to his mouth, and ah. ah. ah. ah.-ed into it. We had a good long giggle fest over that. I hope he’ll still be into it tomorrow.

You want to know my least favorite imitation? You got it.

As I buckled Tuco into his car seat in the grocery store parking lot, a gust of wind blew my door open into the car that was parked next to us. Without thinking I said, “Sh*t. Sh*t. Sh*t,” softly, but out loud. (I checked the other car, and there was no damage, for the record.) I turned back to Tuco, who looked like he was simultaneously staring off into space and concentrating really hard, and he said, “Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.”

Son of a b!

Now let’s all forget about my poor choice of words in front of Tuco by looking at a couple pics.

Tuco’s First Birthday Party

Little Tuco had a cowboy theme for his first ever birthday party, and boy was he cute in his little cowboy hat and bandana. A proper blog entry is long overdue, but I’m hoping the pictures below buy me some time before having to write a post. We were very lucky to have Rebecca of Francis Marie Photography document the occasion, and her photographs turned out beautiful.  But you don’t need me to tell you that–the photographs speak for themselves.

Happy Birthday, Tuco!

This Month Goes to 11 or Tuco at 11 Months

So Tuco is now over eleven months old. I did the math, and it turns out that that means Tuco is going to be one year old very soon. This little guy who could do nothing but sleep, cry, eat, and lay around is now acting more like a little boy than a baby.

You want to know the notable developments he’s recently had? Sure, I’ll tell you. My favorite one is that he now places his head on my shoulder before taking his nap or going to sleep for the night. He’s realized that it’s way more comfortable to do this than anything else, and I love it. It’s almost like a little regression back to baby time–nowadays it’s so rare for him to just let me hold him while he sits still, so I like that he’s not too big to put his head on my shoulder and let me soothe him a little before going to sleep.  It’s pure sweetness.

My next favorite development is that he dances. When he hears music, he starts bopping around from side to side with a big ol’ grin on his face. I don’t know how he learned to dance to music….oh, that’s right, Tuco’s dad and I are constantly dancing while we sing to him when we need to distract him.  He must be trying to imitate mom and dad’s bad dance moves.

It’s also becoming clear that he understands us, at least some of the time. He knows what “no” means, and if you ask him what the brown cow says, he’ll say, “bfffboooo,” which is his version of “moo.” Because this is one question he answers well, I am constantly asking him what the brown cow says because I love communicating with him. I can’t wait for more Q&A with him and eventually having conversations.

Tuco has also become very social, and he loves interacting with other kids.  The smile on his face when another kid looks at him is like no other, and then he’ll shyly turn the other way with his smile still intact. A second glance at the other kid usually involves Tuco reaching out his arm towards him. What else, what else? School buses are the coolest and when he sees a flag waving in the breeze, he will point it out to you and kick his legs around in excitement. He’s also a big fan of swinging at the park, and he’s just starting to explore the fun that is sliding down a slide.

It’s hard to believe that I’m almost through my first year as a mom.  A year ago, before Tuco arrived, the unknown of motherhood was equal parts scary and exciting. It’s still a bit scary now, as I don’t want anything to ever hurt my little Tuco (I’ll still be saying that even when he’s 40 years old), but I am much more excited about each day with him than I am scared.

A few recent Tuco pictures are below.

Tuco’s First Word and Other Things

Tuco has been uttering consonant sounds for a few months. He’s made all kinds of sweet sounds like babababa and der der der der der. We knew all this must be leading up to Tuco gaining the verbal skills to say actual words. He has said things like dadadada and mamamama, but those haven’t counted as words before because it was clear he was just jabbering and not really referring to either of his parents. But on February 15, 2012 he meant what he said. That’s right, Tuco said his first word and it was–

Dada.

Tuco’s dad came into the room, Tuco stopped what he was doing, and looked at his dad straight in the eyes.  Then in a tone that had a “Oh hi, old chum!” ring to it, Tuco said it. It was clear that he knew what he was saying. He did it again the next day too.

Hopefully the next official word will be “Mama.”

In other Tuco news, he is pulling himself up all over the place. If there is something near him that is a foot or more off the ground, he will try to use it to pull himself up. When Tuco wakes up from a nap, I no longer find a little tiny helpless baby laying there crying. I now find a little boy having a great time standing up and talking nonsense. When he was born, it seemed like this scenario was so far away.  I think I will always be nostalgic for his baby phase, but I am truly enjoying these new phases.

If you want to know a secret, my days are spent trying to entertain Tuco enough so that he will be ready for a nap when the time comes. As soon as I put him in his crib and close the door, I feel a sense of relief. Time to relax a little. But then, about 20 minutes later, I miss the little guy.  He’s just so much dang fun right now that it’s easy for me to forget how much hard work it is wrangling him from getting into trouble.  I’m not saying every day is a super happy fun day–I have my days of feeling stressed out and over tired. There are times when I am sick and tired of him crawling over to the heat vent to stick his fingers in it. And sometimes I wish he could just chill out a little and sit quietly while I send an email or write a blog post.  But mostly, I am happy to enjoy this time with him because I know he’ll be graduating high school before I know it.