Rejection and Redemption

Yesterday, I had two firsts with Izzy. I picked up my niece, Maddie, from the bus stop, and Izzy was, as always, terribly excited to see her. We've been working on turning the sun room into a play room, and it's about half done, so they went straight down there to play, much to Izzy's delight - he hadn't had much time in there yet, seeing as how we just cleaned it out Sunday.

They had been playing a while and I went to check on them. Izzy was standing in the middle of the room, and when he saw me, he blew me a few kisses and said, "Bye bye!" That's right. My first born son, the light of my life, gave me the kiss-off. I smiled through my heartbreak, tucked my tail and ran away. That was the first big rejection.

They shortly tired of playing only downstairs, so they both started running upstairs to the kitchen, to the dining room, to the living room, and back. I went to the landing to check on them, and Izzy was standing there also. He looked at me and said, "Mam! Down!" and he gestured down the steps. Ahh, redemption! I said, "You want Mommy to come play with you?" He nodded his little imperative head yes and I followed him down the steps, with him continuing to look back and me and saying, "Down!" We walked across the room, where he climbed into his tent and leaned out, pointing for me and Maddie to join him.

It's astonishing to me to see how fast his language development is coming along. He's been telling the girls to get down off the couch for a while now, but yesterday was the first time he'd used it in the context of going lower.

Today, he used another new word to get me to come downstairs with him. He stood at the top step and yelled at me, "Come!" I am raising such a little dictator.