Whenever Dominic is at point A and wants to get to point B, you can now see him going through a deliberate thought process: high road or low road? If there’s an object at point B that is relatively high up, and if there’s some sort of adult figure who seems like they’ll reliably catch him if he falls, he opts for the high road, taking those halting baby steps that gradually accelerate until he topples onto the ground or into someone’s arms or stops himself on a wall. In most circumstances he still chooses the low road, deliberately lowering himself to the ground and crawling with a speed that makes it seems as if the rest of his life until now has been conducted in slow motion. Interestingly, while Ella is still the superstar of his life, she does not count as an “adult figure” for purposes of choosing the high road. He seems to understand that while she is the source of all things wonderful and entertaining in this world, she is not necessarily safe.
He has two teeth on the bottom, and that’s it. He’ll feel them with his fingers and rub his tongue against them. Actually he’s a bigger fan of his tongue these days; his favorite game with me is to have us touch each other’s tongues and recoil at how slimy they are. He hasn’t yet met a food he won’t eat, or indeed an object that he won’t try to eat, given a chance. I swear he stashes woodchips in his pocket from the playground at Ella’s preschool so that he can retrieve them to stick in his mouth hours later. And yet, for all that, he is beginning to comprehend boundaries. When he finds a particularly tasty-looking dust-encased Cheerio from under the refrigerator, he’ll now present it to me triumphantly instead of just putting it in his mouth, knowing full well that I’m going to take it away from him and put it in the trash. The adhesive latch we put on the cupboard below the sink has come off, but while it was working it got a message across, and now if Dominic makes his way to that cupboard he’ll look up at me with eyes that say “I Am About To Transgress!”
His words are still limited to “Ella,” “Mama,” and the occasional “Dada.” My advantage is that whenever he says “Dada” he is, without a doubt, referring to the person of his father. “Ella” can mean Ella herself but can also be a generalized expression of curiosity about the world or anxiety about something that is not present but should be. “Mama” refers to Suanna, but also works as a existential plea for solace of any kind. When he does speak in sentences, they take the form of “AAAAAAaaaaaaaaa.” He interjects them whenever people around him have been talking a lot and there’s suddenly a lull in the conversation.
With his big, round head and light, still-wispy hair, he looks more than a little like Charlie Brown. He still strongly reminds Papa of his brother Bill when he was a baby. And strangers always usually comment on how alike he and Ella appear.
He sleeps from about 8 through to 6 or so, with occasional (and unwelcome) forays into the preceding hour. His morning nap is fairly predictable, right around 9, but his afternoon nap is highly variable, depending on whether and when he falls asleep in his car seat on the way to or from Ella’s preschool in the afternoon. In either case, anything over an hour is unusual. He is a light sleeper; I find myself hissing, sotto voce, “Ellaquietdownyourbrotherissleeping!” more often than I’d like.
Hard to believe that at one point Suanna and I were worried that kid #2 would be a hellion. Dominic remains as mild and good-natured as can be. He’ll go through a dark period most afternoons when the teething gets to him … he’ll get sweat and pull at his ear and be generally out of sorts. But all he wants even then is just to sit on your lap, facing out, and just relax quietly, maybe look at a book. Then, when the moment has passed, he’ll find something to point out so that you have to carry him to it for further investigation. Sometimes he’s genuinely curious about whatever he’s pointing at, but other times you can tell he’s just picking random objects in the distance in order to prolong the experience.
It’s a hard life, that of a second child. Ella’s the one with a schedule, and with desires as to how she spends her time that she is able to articulate. Dominic is just along for the ride. Heck, when this blog was just Ella’s blog, she got posts like this about her every month or even more. Maybe he’ll give me some trouble about that down the road, but for now, at least, he’s having a blast.
