Noodle's current quirks

Chase is continuing to grow at an unauthorized rate, as evidenced by his 15 month appointment. He was in the 25th percentile for weight at 22 lbs 4 oz and was 32 inches long moving him into the 75th percentile for height. Given this new space, his personality has decided to show off some of its eccentricities that had been previously contained in the smaller body. Being the loving mother that I am, I will now share with the world wide web a few of the monkey's new mannerisms.

Let's start with food. In the past, I have spoken of Noodle's fondness for meat and hatred of fruit. Well, we've now moved from hating fruit to enjoying the occasional strawberry or raisin. Meat is still eaten well, but carbohydrates have moved into the number one spot. Chase's new trick is to walk into the pantry and grab his cookies, crackers, or puffs. Then he attempts to open the container, or he toddles over to mama and hands her the package. Either way, the end result is the same: a handful of carby goodness ends up in his mouth. He's also started to desire whatever I am eating which he makes known by pointing and saying "that, that" until you give him some. Last week, I made the mistake of going to get him from his nap while I was still chewing the Baby Ruth I'd just eaten. Little noodle was very disappointed that I hadn't thought to save him a bite, so he proceeded to use his stubby little fingers to try to pull himself a nibble straight from my mouth before I could swallow it. He didn't succeed though as I have jaws of steel baby, jaws of steel.

Here's the little thief in the pantry.

Now, let's move on to his reading preferences. As mentioned before, Chase loves books. And he shares this love with mommy by shoving a wide variety of the tomes in her face several times a day. Mommy loves books too, but even she needs a break once in a while, so she tries to get Chase to take the books to his daddy. Little bugger wants nothing to do with that. If Daddy holds out his hand for the book, Chase says, "Nah" and pushes his hand away while giving the book to Mama. If Mama thinks she can circumvent this by passing Dad the book, she is just fooling herself as Chase will just scream "Nah" and pull the book away from Dad and cram it back into Mom's clenched fists. This refusal to let Daddy read a story is giving Drew a complex as he believes Noodle questions his ability to read. For the record, Drew can read, but not with the same enthusiasm as yours truly. I personally think that the gremlin just likes torturing me while at the same time being able to use his new favorite word as much as possible.

Speaking of words, the rugrat's vocabulary is also increasing commensurate with his height. In addition to the aforementioned "nah", he now says car and truck. Well, he says "cah" and "uck" but he's very serious about it all when he says them. He works really hard to get that hard c sound out of his mouth as we read That's Not My Car together. He'll point at the picture, screw his face up into one of deep concentration and then force out the "cah". Then he smiles and turns the page to repeat the process. Outside, he'll watch cars and trucks go by saying "uck", "uck", "uck". We obviously still need to work on the fine points of vehicular identification.


Lastly, we come to his bird watching hobby. I decorated for Halloween by putting some lovely crows on hay bales on the front porch. You can see one bird perfectly from the window by the door, and Chase loves to talk to the bird. If you say, "Where's the birdie Chase?", he'll drop whatever he's doing, run to the window, point and say "there". Really cute. Of course he also still enjoys watching other birds--as in the girl variety. In fact, he's developed a little crush on an older lady. I've tried telling him that an 8 year difference is a bit much at his age, but he won't hear any of it. I think his cuteness has gone to his head. That and the fact that the object of his affection adores him, too.

Chase with his lady friends--guess which one is his current crush.