Long-delayed developmental update: Colin is 21 months.

Here's how you can tell that Colin is not the oldest child in his family: at 21 months, his vocabulary includes the phrases "It's not fair!" and "I win!" And even more so: he instantly responds to someone else's "I win!" with "No, I win!"

That's what having a big sister does for you.

My last developmental update was three months ago, which is about a century ago in toddler-develompent time. One of the things that held me back from posting last month was that I couldn't get Colin to hold still long enough for me to take any pictures. I had about a hundred blurry pictures of toddler-in-motion. He's a busy, active little guy. He likes to trot around after Alex and do what she's doing. He likes to go up and down our many flights of stairs - walking, not crawling anymore. He likes to climb up on the furniture so he can reach high-up things he's not supposed to touch. He carries our little child-sized chairs from the playroom through the living room, hall, dining room, and kitchen so that he can reach treats on the pantry shelves.

Colin has an unnerving ability to figure out how to work electronics. He doesn't just pick up the camera and press buttons at random; he picks it up, turns it on, and takes a picture. He's figured out how to unlock my cell phone. He stands on a chair at Alex's computer, opens up the CD drives, puts in CDs, and closes the drives. He can turn on the CD player in his room and push play. We have to keep the printer unplugged, because otherwise Colin turns it on and wreaks havoc with the touch screen menus.

He loves trains and trucks and airplanes. We found Alex's old train set in the basement recently, and within about five minutes of bringing it upstairs it became Colin's favorite toy. He has an intense relationship with a small stuffed bunny named Bunny. He likes to have grownups build block structures he can play with. He likes Alex's Polly Pockets, which is particularly tedious because all he knows to do with them is bring them to a grownup to be dressed and undressed. Repeatedly. In the same outfit. He likes to watch YouTube videos; when he sees us at our computers he comes running over to ask "Watch boom de yada, watch dancing." He still loves to have us do Google Image searches for airplanes.

He desperately wants to take ballet. Every week when Alex takes her class: "Colin ballet class! Colin ballet class toooo!" Alex's class keeps the door closed, fortunately, so Colin stands in the doorway of the big kids' class next door and stares and stares. Later, he holds onto the furniture and moves his legs in quasi-balletic motion. It is tragic that he has another full year and a half before Colin ballet class too.



He loves books. He loves the same books over and over. The most common sentence that comes out of Colin's mouth is "Read-this me book please!" When we finish a book he likes to hear it again immediately. He's developed a new technique of turning pages backward until we get to the first page, apparently hoping that this way we won't notice that we're read-this book again please. He loves those informational books that have pages crammed full of labeled pictures. Thanks to these books, he has words in his vocabulary like Eurostar and flamingo and giant front-end loader. He also loves Go Dog Go and Knuffle Bunny and books about trucks and trains. He can recite a few favorite books from beginning to end. Sometimes I'll hear him just telling bits of a story to himself: "Now fussy, daddy. A choice. Bawled, waaaa! Boneless."

He likes to sing. Because of what he gets exposed to in our house, he mostly sings show tunes. It's a bit startling to hear a toddler break out at the dinner table with "Congress! Good God!" - until you realize how many times he's listened to the 1776 soundtrack. Now that The Music Man is Alex's new favorite musical, Colin is starting to pick up bits of "Goodnight, My Someone" and "Seventy-Six Trombones." He doesn't say any nursery rhymes or sing baby songs, so perhaps we need to shift our musical focus a bit.

He speaks very well for his age. "Colin go downstairs by self." "Mama carry the boy." "Want that one over there." "Wake up Mama! Mama shower. Daddy make coffee, Colin push button." "Fall down, bonk head." He meets any suggestion of a transition with an emphatic "No! Play more!" But he does have exquisite manners: "Frozen grapes please, Mommy. Thank-you-welcome." Or at dinner: "No thank you green beans, Mommy, don't care for it."

He sort-of sings the ABCs but, as far as I know, doesn't recognize any letters beyond C-for-Colin. He can count, though. He rote-counts up to fourteen or so very well, but I've also seen him count out objects - moving tiles from one pile to another, saying one number per pile, up to eight or nine. He knows his colors (except for some brown-black confusion) and his animals and his animal sounds. When Alex is doing math, Colin likes to stand on a chair next to her with a math book and pencil of his own. While I work with her, he scribbles earnestly on his page and murmurs math words. "What equals? ...plus two... seven, eight, fourteen." God help me if I give him blank paper and crayons instead of a math book, at math time. (Fortunately we use a free-to-print-out curriculum.)

He eats well, but is nevertheless tiny and skinny. He loves meat of any description, and will eat it faster than I can cut bites. And he loves vegetables: broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, peas, bell peppers. I have seen him eat half a cucumber at a time. I've recently cut back on his nursing, so now he's nursing 4-5 times a day instead of 15+ times a day. He still really loves to nurse.

His sleep continues to suck. I don't want to discuss it.

But he does make a mighty fine giraffe.