Suddenly I'm not that eager for Casey's first word

Kid can't even talk yet, and I'm worried about him watching his language.

He's got this phonetic refrigerator magnet kit -- one magnet for each letter, plus an electronic box, also magnetic, that plays a little song about each letter's sound when you plug the right magnet into it. (Erika's posted before about Casey's favorite letter.)

This weekend he got a little private rhythm game going, holding a letter in each hand, plugging one into the box, then the other, just swapping the letters back and forth. The letters he chose:  F and U.  So thanks to Casey, our refrigerator spent two minutes singing, "F says fuh! ... U says you! ... F says fuh! ... U says you!"  And so forth.  Someday that'll warrant a grounding, but at this age, I'll give him a pass.

Parenting is not a competition, but I'm winning

A short while ago, Erika arranged a night out for herself while I watched Casey at home alone. He had to spend a brief stay with our usual babysitter, because Erika had to leave him with someone before I was able to be home from work. Casey was happy to see me when I arrived, but before I could whisk him away, I had to install his car seat in my car. When I walked back out the door with the car seat but without Casey, he started to cry.

"Wow," the babysitter said. "He's a daddy's boy, isn't he?" She clarified: "He never cries like that when Erika leaves."

It's a girl

Welcome to the family, Taylor Leigh Tellefson. Casey looks forward to meeting his cousin in a few weeks.

My phone's wonky, so my information is a little shaky, but I think my sister Susan sent me this photo:

That's as big as it gets, 'cause it's a photo meant for the screen of a cell phone, but I think it's still clear that's a pretty cute baby right there.

What the HELL?

So I've been trying to come up with something I could give Casey for his first birthday. He doesn't really require gifts at this point, but I know it would bother me if I gave him nothing. But what could I possibly get for this kid that he'd like? When I sit down and really think about what his heart desires most, my only conclusion is that I should let him rifle through the kitchen trash for half an hour.

But that's no good, so I turn, of course, to the internet. And here it is, Baby's First Riot Helmet. Come for the goofy picture of a baby in a riot helmet. Stay for the customer testimonial about a Johan Santana home run that beaned my baby in the noggin.

Skill update

In 10 days, Casey's technically a toddler. His first year has gone VERY quickly. I can barely remember what he was like in his first month, considering how active he is and how much personality he has now. He's come a long way. We have a little photo album for him, with Christmas pictures of his grandparents and his aunts and uncles holding him. I look at those pages now, and I can't believe my eyes. We used to think he had a ton of hair, but he's like a Marine in those photos.

It's fun to watch Casey learning new things. I remember walking into the living room one night after Casey had gone to sleep and finding a shoe on the coffee table. Erika and I aren't in the habit of taking off our shoes and dropping them onto tables, so that left only one explanation. It was the first time Casey had moved something from the floor to the table rather than the other way around. I was pretty happy about it; by doing the reverse of his usual knocking things onto the ground, Casey finally seemed to be distinguishing himself from the cats.

But that was a few weeks ago, and we're well beyond that now. He moves things all over the place, he stacks plastic doughnuts on the spindle (rarely in the correct order, but that's OK), he dumps blocks all over the floor and then puts them back in the bucket.

He likes when you read books to him (it's one of the few things he'll sit still for), and I know this because he scours the living room for books, and when he finds one, he brings it to you. Actually, you have to watch out for that. Twice now I've been watching a Twins game and gotten unexpectedly clobbered in the side of the head with "Moo, Baa, La La La."

Reading and cleaning up his own toys is great, of course, but I'm also encouraging more athletic achievements where I can. A few weeks ago I taught him to dunk a miniature basketball in a laundry basket, for example. I pass him the ball, he slams it home. Adorable.

Then there's walking. I don't know what I expected ... I guess I thought one day he'd just stand up and start walking around like a toddler, but of course it's more gradual than that. He can take three or four stuttering steps at a time. Moving the coffee table further and further from the couch seems to be paying off. He's always bouncing back and forth between them, and now he doesn't bother crawling such a short distance anymore. So is he walking? I'm not really sure. He seems to be very gradually increasing the distance he's willing to walk without dropping to a crawl. And yesterday he toddled over to me, dropped a toy in my lap and stood there, hanging onto nothing. Then he actually turned and walked a whole other direction for two or three steps. That's a big deal, since until now his "walking" has been more like lunging. He picks a direction and leans forward, and his momentum forces him to shuffle his feet. If he doesn't encounter the edge of something to grab hold of, he pitches forward onto the floor. But a slow, deliberate, controlled change of direction, that's an achievement in balance that I hadn't seen before. He's only done it that once that I've seen, but I know he's got it in him.

He can play catch better now, too. As noted in an earlier post, it used to be he'd just throw the ball in a random direction. But at least now he's propelling it more frequently toward my half of the room. And when we lose the ball, he'll chase after it himself, so he's showing a little more focus too, which is nice.

Probably most amusing is that Casey's got a taste for cage-match wrestling. We put him in the playpen with a pair of stuffed animals twice his size, and he'll tackle them and roll around happily for quite a while.

Anyway, all of that's great, but I'm happiest about the milestones that are a little more interactive. And with all these athletic triumphs, I've been looking for ways to provide encouragement and congratulation and reward when he gets something right. So when Erika had a lot of work to do this weekend, I knew I'd have a lot of private Casey time to work with, and I wanted to put it to good use. So now he knows how to high five.

I expect we'll be doing a lot more of that in the coming year.

In the quiet moments before my major award arrives ...

All right, Casey, you ready?

Now, how do the little piggies eat?