The Parrot

It's official - EH is in the "parroting" phase of his toddlerhood.  He is acutely aware of things that we are doing or saying, and he tries to mimic nearly everything he can.

This morning when I was carrying him down the stairs in his car seat (yes, we're still using his infant carrier in my car - I like that I can strap him into it five minutes before we leave so that I can go up and down the stairs without worrying about him following me or getting into trouble) and the seat pushed down on my kneecap in such a way that excruciating pain radiated throughout my leg and I had to set EH down in the garage.  As I huffed and puffed and said things like "oh oh oh... " he said, empathetically, "Uh oh!"  I couldn't put any weight on my left leg at all, my vision was spinning and I started sweated and having trouble taking a deep breath.  In an effort to calm myself down, I leaned again my car and started taking deep breaths.

Breath in.
Breath out.
In. Out.

A moment later I heard a puff of air come from EH's mouth and he was smiling at me.  I realized that he was mimicking my deep breathing.  So I did it again.  And so did he.  He was so proud of himself, he was grinning from ear to ear.

He's so impressionable right now, and we're trying really hard to take full advantage of that.  That post a while back that I wrote about needing to be more present? We've totally done that and it's been amazing.  Our time together feels so much more quality and even DH is trying to get better at putting down his phone or magazine during EH time so that they can play and learn together.

The other day we worked on colors and he said "blue."  He says "row row" for Row Row Row Your Boat. He's said "I love you" when prompted although it sounds more like "Uh oh oooh."  His new day care worker (who I need to tell you about sometime soon!) also claims that he's said things like "circle," which I find hard to believe, but who knows! He says "Hi" non-stop and the other day he even picked up his monitor base, put it to his ear, and excitedly said "HI!" like he was talking on the phone. 

 Seriously - melt my heart.

(By the way, my knee feels better although my entire leg still aches a bit.  But I'm fairly confident there was no permanent damage done.)