he must be feeling better

We got a normal, full night of sleep last night, and today, except for a particularly knock-down-drag-out battle of wills at nap time (I won, he slept for 2.5 hours — hooray!) he was positively delightful.

The morning, we played the Stations of the House — in which we visited each room and enjoyed the toys or furniture items there. Thus, in the nursery we played with alphabet blocks, we read books, and he clamored all over the glider chair, standing up and either trust-falling backwards on to me, or leaping forwards, off the chair, on to me. In my office he enjoyed spinning in my office chair and handling and threatening to throw the big ball from my track ball mouse. In the bedroom he read the “hat book,” (I translate the French — the main characters are little balls of fluff, with the hero of sorts being differentiated by the presence of his chapeau) played with a flower covered box full of different colored cards — a wedding gift of well-wishes, he sorts the cards into piles by color; and then he jumped and flopped all over the bed (“Pillows!” “On YOU!”); and when he wanted to be tickled and kissed, he said “Amazing,” with a grin, bracing himself for the attack (why this is my cue, I don’t know). In the dining room, we put three of his favorite CDs in the player tray (two from our Music Together, plus a Dean Martin’s greatest hits collection) and he played along on drums and maracas. In the living room, we threw throw-able balls around and rolled trains and trucks across the floor, and checked out daddy’s magnet collection which includes Big Bird and Liberace.

And in the kitchen. Oh, in the kitchen. We had a strawberry popsicle picnic again. He’s not such a fan of being strapped into the high chair these days. He refuses to wear bibs, also. But in any case, we mop our floors often enough. If he is in a chair, food still ends up on the floor. So I cut out the middle man. More play, less worry.

Ever since the “Pokiboh” t-shirt arrived from temporary language the other day, I’d been imagining that I would photograph him in it, eating a…

of course!

The thing is, he totally gets that he’s got a pokiboh in his hand AND on his shirt.

And, he knows the drill. When I suggested I get one out of the freezer for him, he sat down on the kitchen floor and announced, “Picnic! All right!” — which he says like he’s on Good Times, “Awlraiiiight.”

Narrowing down to just these nine pics was totally rough. You can imagine. Also hoped to showcase the awesome shirt, and possibly launch Jonah’s career as a spokesmodel.

A big shout-out to Bill Shore, president of temporary language, who made this popsicle design on our request and to our exact specifications.

Since I knew these photos would make you want to buy one yourself (of course, you can pick the thing YOUR kid says best) — I’m posting the coupon code here for you to get 15% off, too, good through May 1, 2009: enter TEE15 at checkout.

And please tell him I said, Hello!

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The afternoon was equally lovely, with trips to Trader Joe’s and the library and park.

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An up to the minute on the walking: still mainly while he’s holding my hands. I think I saw him take one step this morning during our popsicle episode, and two steps when he was leaping off the glider chair to me.

Still taking his time on that one.

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His new thing is making various dolls and stuffies kiss. Particularly his Spiderman doll and his Spiderman finger puppet. But Spiderman and Superman also kiss.

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Whereas they used to all be “Man-uh,” he can now differentiate “Bi-durr-may-unn” and “BaT!mayun” and “Soo-purr mayunn.”

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In his ongoing efforts to shock and amaze, he’s been making pretty good attempts to spell, and count. The two words he’s spelling are his name, and STOP — it’s on a sticker on the back of one of his walker/truck thingies. In both efforts, he’ll shout out the various numbers or letters, just not exactly in the right order, or necessarily all of them. But you can totally see where he’s going with it.

It’s awesome.