Kiss it better!

Ok, it's not on his own initiative, but by diligent teaching from both parents, we've finally got the Monkey to request us to kiss his injuries better.  And frankly, it gives us the opportunity to get a quick cuddle - all it takes is a surreptitious smack to the back of the head, and he comes barreling towards us, demanding "tiss! tiss?!?".

Alright, alright, I was joking about the smacking.  HOWEVER - as I recently found out - he's not averse to a little bit of self 'harm' in order to get the required attention.  The other night he inspected his elbows, and finding them both bruise and graze free, he drummed them on the table-top, then demanded they both be 'tissed'.  This little performance was repeated a few times until we all grew bored of it (yes, sad to say that at the moment, he tires before we do!).

Just as a language aside (ahem), the Monkey is currently substituting alveolar stops for velar stops, so we get "twose" not "close", "tiss" not "kiss", "twime" not "climb", etc etc.  Except for the word "drink" or "drinking", in which case the pattern is reversed: "gwink" or "gwinking".  He's also producing quite a few 3-word utterances, usually cobbled together from something an adult has just said - so I might say "Let's go downstairs to see Daddy!", and I'll hear back "go down-stairs daddy?".  As of about 4 weeks ago, he started with regularisation errors.  These are really cool, as they're what happens when a child actually forms a rule of a language, and then over-applies it (something really easy to do in English!).  So the Monkey has been working on plurals, and we're getting a lot of "sheeps" and "foots" and "feets" at the moment.  He will imitate correctly just after he hears the right form, but I love catching his own rule-set in action.

Thanks - in no small part - to his mother's increasing laziness, he's spent rather more time on the iPad than I'm entirely happy with.  And the only way I can assuage my guilt, is to try to make sure that I have plenty of 'educational' stuff on there for him.  I have to say, I am impressed by the number of baby-centric apps that have been produced!  Many of them are great quality, and at $1.50 a pop, it's not a big spend for a few hours of entertainment.  I attribute his familiarity with alphabet letters and numbers largely to his iPad exposure - I certainly haven't been grilling him with flashcards, and in fact I was a little taken aback when I realised just how many letters/numbers he could name.  

As to number 2 (the poor chap really doesn't get much of a look-in), he's growing, and using my internal organs as a punching bag.  It's a bit of a challenge looking after a toddler and growing a baby at the same time, and I feel like I rather do let down the Monkey on that front.  I take him for the occasional walk, but he really likes being tossed about vigorously, and I'm just not up to it!  Well, only about another 6 weeks of baking, and hopefully the grub will be evicted.  I'm a little nervous as to how the Monkey's going to react.  I have tried to prime him by pointing to my stomach and saying "Here's your baby brother!", but only yesterday he pointed to his own stomach and said "baby brother!", so I don't think he's quite got the gist of it.  Oh well, we'll see.  The midwife has given us a spot of advice - she said that a travel cot was a good way to let the baby sleep in the room where all the action is - it'll prevent the Monkey from (accidentally or otherwise) falling on top of him, and it means that I don't have to corral off an area and keep them totally separate.  It sounds pretty good actually, so I'm going to have to go portacot shopping soon!