Owen decided to make our breakfast this morning. He opened the cupboard and got out his supplies: a frying pan, a sauce pan and a stock pot. Then, from the other cupboard, his chosen ingredients: Bisquick, maple syrup, vegetable oil, and Golden Dipt Frying Batter (powdered). I guess he wanted deep-fried pancakes to be among my repertoire.

I showed him how to “dump” the oil into the pan, and how to “shake out” the batter mix. (I use quotes here because sweet lord, we do not have maid service, and I was not about to let him uncap anything or actually open packages. I’m cruel like that.)

And he dumps, dumps, dumps and he pours, pours, pours. I handed him a wooden spoon and let him really go to town, mixing and spreading. Then he took the invisible contents of one pot and poured them into the invisible mixture of another pot and picked up that one and brought it to the stove. Three inches taller and he really would have been cooking with gas. “Hot? Hot?” he kept asking — I suppose he wanted me to preheat the oven, or something.

Let me tell you, I learned a few things this morning: Firstly, only store food items with tight lids in the lazy-susan cupboard, because Bisquick, contrary to popular belief, does not clean up well with water. Secondly, maybe I need to get some childproofing jobbies for the oven. Or be a smidgen more instructive in the Things That Are Hot Are Dangerous lesson. Thirdly, kids his age — 16 months — have imaginations already! The hell? I guess I thought they didn’t grow imaginations til they were older, or something. Fourthly, I need to get him a toy kitchen so he can really pretend to cook. Because right now? I’m trying to persuade him that a cardboard box is just as good as the real oven and he is so not buying that.

Hmm. I guess Fifthly would be that my son is a damn sight smarter than I give him credit for sometimes.

There goes our retirement: I finally uploaded video of Owen going wild tearing apart our failed cherry-tree experiment. Picture two hundred tiny biodegradable pots filled with dirt and one toddler on a mission to destroy. Or, why picture it? Go see the video instead.

Damn close to sentences here: Honestly, Owen’s vocabulary is just gigantic. He’s still mostly in monosyllables - muh, buh, bah, dah, et cetera — but he recently started saying “ba-ba” for bottle. That’s a 100% increase in syllables for that word. He’s picking up a few more signs (book, bird) and seems to be realizing that nodding is another effective communication tool.

He’s also started saying “shoozh” and “sheezh”, which, of course, mean “shoes” and “cheese.” He’s differentiating between “buh” for binkie and the shorthand “bah” for bottle. He’ll pronounce it very carefully, searching my eyes for some glimmer of understanding, and when I repeat the correct word back to him it’s like he’s renewed all faith in his moronic student, me. He practically claps in praise.

I see you, baby, shakin’ that ass: He dances now. Today we were watching a Johnny Cash special on PBS, and when “Bird on a Wire” came on, Owen started shaking his tiny behind, with one hand in the air, and intermittently clapping. He’s only got one dance but it’s oh so cute. Sometimes we’ll be dancing to something, maybe The Band or that song by The Association, me carrying him around on my hip in the back room of a morning, and he does the same thing: raising one hand in the air like he just don’t care. It’s hilarious. It’s like the quintessential white-kid dance, and he already knows it.

That’s just gross: OK, I wasn’t there for this one, but apparently Owen got a little too helpful during a diaper change this evening and uh, contaminated the area. And his father’s shirt. And probably a lot of other stuff.

Y’know why people sleep-train? For the results. We’ve had the same bedtime ritual since the little bean was, oh, four months old or so, and a year later bedtime is the smoothest trick going. We wrap it up in fifteen minutes or less and he goes down almost every time without a peep. It’s freaking awesome. Hopefully this will stand us in good stead when we go to that campsite-wedding in July (West Virginia! Bunkhouses! Beer!).

•••

Toddlerhood is by far my favorite stage to date. He’s so smart, and so friendly, and a joy to take places; his personality — contemplative, grumpy, intelligent, cautious, investigative, loving — is really coming out. His nickname at daycare is Little Grandpa, which I think is hilarious and strangely appropriate. He is more and more like his father every day, which I also think is hilarious yet appropriate. I don’t document as much of his day-to-day stories here as I used to, partly because I’m too busy living them, but partly also because as he does develop a personality, writing about him gets increasingly complex. And sometimes I just feel like hogging him to myself, savoring all his quirks and adorabilities, sharing him only with Iain.

And then sometimes I feel like proclaiming his awesomeness from the rooftops, so I do that, too.