Vocabulary grows

My current favorite Barakisms: "ting," "nanuck," and "guck!"

"Ting" means "sing." Up until this week, since early last summer, Barak's usual bedtime routine consisted of dinner, bathtime with Abba, and then snuggle time in the rocking chair with Imma--standard list of songs, followed by Barak requesting an encore performance ("Ting! Ting! More more?")

Alas, Barak is now a big boy. This week, he decided that he didn't need any more tinging, thanks. I sat down in the rocker with his blanket and invited him up to my lap. "No. No ting."

How's that again?

"No ting."

Well, do you want to go in your crib?

"Yeah! Crib!"

Excuse me???

That was indeed what he wanted. He now goes to bed by going into his crib with a couple of books, while Imma sits in the rocker with her own book or some knitting. After fifteen minutes of this or so, Imma turns out the light and sits a little longer; then leaves, at which point he cries for about ten minutes while plaintively howling "chair! chair!" ("Get back in that chair and keep me company!") Then he goes to sleep. And, so far, has been staying asleep until morning.

Ahhh. It only took, what, two months? And even though I'm sort of sad about losing out on the bedtime snuggles, I'm getting lots more snuggles during the day now that he wants me to read to him more. And I suspect that the fact that I have almost no lap left is a contributing factor to all of this. And let's be honest, this is a really good development with a baby IY"H on the way. If it lasts, it means I can put him to bed without having to put the baby down much. We'll see.

As for "guck" and "nanuck," "guck" means "stuck" and "nanuck" means "not stuck." If he can't get a toy out of the milk crate where we keep his toys, or if he can't get his coat off, he's guck. If he's climbing under his stroller in the kitchen (we bring it inside at night now, for reasons that longtime readers will know all too well) and I don't think he's going to be able to get out, he reassures me that he is "nanuck."

He used to call a cup a bup--I loved that, but now it's a cup. I suppose it had to happen eventually--being a big boy and all. And speaking of being a big boy, he wore shabbos shoes for the first time today--shiny black ones with laces. After I put them on him he had to run up and down the hall for a while to hear them clomp. And I cut his hair properly last week, suddenly turning him from a baby to a kid. The transformation is unbelievable.

Oh, and one more thing before I finish for the night and get back to the speech I'm supposed to be writing. Barak seems to be getting his two-year molars. On Thursday, he didn't eat anything all day. All he wanted was very cold things to drink--some milk, but mostly ice water or juice with lots of ice. He went around all day with his finger in his mouth, not very happy. At dinnertime, he didn't want anything I offered him, but was obviously hungry. We had some leftover ice cream from the previous Shabbos, and I thought it was okay, under the circumstances, to let him have some--I didn't want him to go to bed hungry, and the cold would probably make his gums feel better. Barak, as you may know, loves ice cream. It is probably his favorite food ever. But I did try to get him to eat other things first. The entire dinnertime conversation went more or less like this:

Imma: Barak, do you want some cheese?
Barak (cranky and howling): Noooo!
Imma: Do you want a bagel?
Barak (howling): Noooo!
Imma: Do you want some eggs?
Barak (howling): Noooo!
Imma: Do you want some ice cream?
Barak (howling): Noooo!

[Pause.]

Barak: (brightly) Ikeem?