SEPTEMBER 20TH

This afternoon I realized it was the last day of summer when I looked at the date on the computer...

...and just now--weird!--I realized it's Malko's 18-month birthday.

He spent the entire day in his dark blue pyjamas with turquoise socks pulled up to his knees. It was grey and drizzly out, and he looked so cute and silly running around like that I didn't want to change him. In retrospect, it makes sense--everyone should get to spend their "birthday" in pyjamas (yes, even army pyjamas) and knee socks!

Besides lolling around in his nighttime attire like a spoiled prince, it was a pretty normal day for Malko: he discovered a new toy (a tampon) and a new activity (shooting the tampon out of his mouth), and he caused me great stress and anxiety (when I discovered his new activity and imagined him swallowing the tampon, which was wrapped in plastic, but still....AAAAAA!).

As usual, Malko climbed up on the kitchen table at one point and just stood there, waiting for someone to notice him and scream; as usual, he screamed whenever someone dared eat something without offering the entire something to him, even if he just consumed half a quart of yogurt, forty grapes, three eggs, fifteen mozarrella balls, a piece of bread, and a cup of mango-nectarine juice. In the afternoon he helped me put the laundry away, dragging carefully folded t-shirts from one room to the other and dropping socks, appropriately, in the trash can; when Joedy went to the post office and Lula came home from school he waved and said his new words--Hi! Bye!--in his funny little voice.

In the bath tonight, he poured a bottle of water on Lula's head and laughed like a madman, then Lula sprayed water at his stomach, over and over, and he laughed so hard he slipped, went under, and came up dazed and spluttering. After I washed and rinsed him he put his hands in the soap and "washed" his stomach and then his hair, which was hysterically funny to Lula, maybe because he did it so automatically--like, oh yeah, I need to wash my hair now...with this soap...but just the sides of my hair--and because the result was so...ridiculous. "You look like a weird clown," she told him, and she was right.

After the bath we lay down on Joedy's and my bed so Lula could practice reading. She read us Find The Kitten, and when she finished she asked Malko, "Where's the kitten?" "Da," he said, pointing at the kitten hiding under a plant. "Good," she said, "now where's the caterpillar?" He pointed at the kitten again. "No, silly, that's the kitten. Where's the caterpillar?" He pointed at the kitten. "No, no, you've got it wrong--not where's the kitten, where's the caterpillar?"

"Da," he said sleepily, starting to point, but I scooped him up and said it was time for bed. Hugging his warm chubby body, I carried him to the kids' room and put him in the crib. Excited kisses from his stuffed monkey cut his protestations short, and by the time I closed the door he was well on his way towards the end of the first day of the second half of the second year of his life.