cat named pig

We started Elliot’s page when he was one and could barely string two words together. Now he chatters all day long and sings himself to sleep at night, but one thing remains constant: we’ve always been able to count on him for up-to-the-minute status reports on the cat, which used to be pronounced DAH. As in “Hi, DAH!” Is she leaving the room? “DAAH! Bye-ee! BYE! DAH!” Is she sleeping? Poke her with a toy until she wakes up, snarls, and makes you cry: “DA-AH! NO, Dah! DAAAAH!” Now that he’s all grown up and good at talking he just says “cat,” or “Piggy,” like the rest of us, but The DAH Report has a nice ring to it. Or maybe I just can’t handle how fast my baby is growing up.

8.26.09

Elliot and Siena are obsessed with knock-knock jokes lately. (Elliot pronounces it “goke,” as in “I just goking,” which is what he says when he tells me he doesn’t need a diaper change and I sniff to find that yes, in fact, he does.) Most of the time Elliot retells whatever joke Siena just finished telling, making it his own by goofing up the timing or saying “who” too many times. But he has one joke he invented all on his own, and it comes up in any joke-telling session.

“Knock-knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Dime.”

“Dime who?”

“I’m dime-ing!”

I don’t get it either.

8.1.09

Oops. Guess it’s been awhile since I’ve updated Elliot’s page. This is a shame, since he never stops talking lately and much of what he says makes me laugh. This morning, for example, while eating his second full breakfast of the day at 7:30 a.m., he detailed for me the beverage preferences of everyone in our family.

“Me like milk. Me have cereal [pronounced CEE-AY-YUL] with milk in it. Me like milk, me like water, me like juice. [Pauses, smiles impishly.] Me like wine too.”

Mama: “No, you don’t drink wine, Silly.”

Elliot [cracking up at himself]: “No, me no like wine. Mama like wine. And coffee. And Daddy a big boy, and Daddy like wine and coffee. And me a big boy, and me drink water, and juice, and milky. No wine.”

Matt comes in and offers to let Elliot smell the ground espresso in the coffee grinder. Elliot pushes it away saying, “DAT GROSS!” Guess he’ll stick to the water, juice, and milky for now.

3.30.09 Elliot calls me “Mama Kitty.”[Side note -- he no longer pronounces "cat" as "dah," now favoring the more traditional "kitty" (sometimes pronounced "deedee"). Perhaps we should rename his page, but I still like The Dah Report, for now.]Whenever I ask him to do something, he replies “O-tay, Mama Kitty.” Whenever I speak sternly to him or tell him not to do something (like eat his dinner standing up turned around in his booster seat, while dancing, which happens maybe every third minute during meal times) he responds in an equally stern voice: “O. TAY. MAMA. KIT-EEE!” And whenever I am just doing something on my own, like loading the dishwasher or checking my e-mail, and he happens to wander into the room, he cheerfully greets me: “Hi, Mama! Hi, Mama Kitty!” It cracks me up every time.

2.22.09 When Elliot asks you for something (usually some milk, which he drinks like it’s beer and he’s pledging a fraternity) you should always ask him to say “please” before giving it to him. This is not just to teach him good manners, although those are always good to learn. It’s mostly to hear how he says “please” these days. He inevitably pauses whatever he’s doing, grins at you, and yells “BEAN!”

1.31.09 Elliot is absolutely obsessed with the movie Wall-e. Obsessed. I cannot exaggerate the extent to which this obsession has infiltrated daily conversation around here. We can’t go five minutes without a BEE WAWA reference from Elliot. (“BEE” being the cockroach in the movie, to whom Elliot enthusiastically points yelling “BEE!” every time he sees it. And “WAWA,” obviously, being the robot Wall-e.)

Just to give you an example of how obsessed he is, this morning I was trimming Elliot’s fingernails.  (Not an easy task, since he hates holding still for that long.) To keep him from squirming I tried to sing Old MacDonald. He chimed in for the “yee-yi yee-yi-YO” at the beginning and then when it came time to say which animal Old MacDonald had on his farm, I started to say duck (normally a favorite). Elliot held up his hand: “No, no, NO. WAWA.”

So I sang “and on his farm he had a Wall-e. Ee-i-ee-i-OHH.” And you’ll never guess who the next verse had to be about. The bee. Obsessed, I tell you.

12.2.08 Elliot says “bah-bah” for almost every word he can’t pronounce, which means we will be reading a book and he will point to every picture, saying “bah-bah” and waiting for you to say the actual word. Then he nods approvingly, glad that you got it right, and eagerly moves on to the next page to do the same thing.

His animal sounds, however, are getting more and more interesting. Instead of “moo,” a cow says “booooo” or sometimes just “oooh.” A duck says “gah” and ducks themselves have been renamed “guggahs.” A horse says “nah-hah-hah” or sometimes “booo,” if it looks like a cow. And lions and dinosaurs make a great scary roar sound.

10.21.08 Today’s word? NO. Also no, no, no-no, NO, and NAAAOOOOHHHH. All of which were uttered at the doctor’s office this morning during his eighteen-month physical. Mostly in response to the nurse’s cheerful explanations of what she was going to do next (”Now I’m going to take your temperature — see, here, this just goes under your arm–” “NO!”) or the doctor’s attempts to look in his ears (NAAOOOHHH!”).

On the plus side, for the first time ever in his eighteen months, Elliot did not have a huge, gross, diaper-exploding poop the moment we arrived for the appointment. In fact, he did not even have one the whole time we were there, which is amazing if you know his track record. A track record that would indicate the presence of airborne laxatives in the examining rooms there, or something. So, either the pediatrician’s office got a new ventilation system, or maybe he’s growing out of that unfortunate habit. And maybe, hopefully, pleasepleaseplease, we’re growing out of the stage where every time we visit that place I leave dragging screaming children and cringing with embarrassment over the many things that went wrong during our short visit.

10.18.08 DAAAHHHH. Also? Eyelashes. Long enough to braid.

10.16.08

Hmm. Perhaps I should’ve thought this through a little better. Elliot has not said anything of substance yet today. Although he did shove a wooden caterpillar into Pig’s face when she was napping on the chair, much to the dismay of everyone in the room (including Elliot himself, who apparently expected her to enjoy that fun game).Also, Matt will have to do some behind-the-scenes tinkering with code to get this page header at the top of the screen next to the other pages. And Matt loves nothing more than a surprise addition to the miles-long “Honey-Do List (vomit) that I have already compiled for him this fall. Still, I believe Elliot’s little voice deserves to be heard, and I remain hopeful that this page will eventually contain stories and witticisms to rival Siena’s, as well as proper coding to make it visible.