Thankfully, thankfully, Andrew's eating habits have returned to normal. He still loves tomatoes, peas, oranges, grapes, blueberries and puffed corn, but at least he's back to eating almost everything. And we've discovered three new things that he loves: raspberries, mangoes, and mushrooms (all kinds). Even better, we've discovered that he's amenable to barter. One spoonful of oatmeal equals three blueberries. The exchange rate for mushroom to just about anything else is 1:1. We now have leverage to get him to eat a more balanced diet. Yay!
The other nice change is that we finally thought him that he could just set whatever he didn't want aside and daddy would eat it for him. Before this, he'd just throw whatever he didn't want on to the floor. Today, whenever he starts throwing food around, it's because he's done eating. We haven't quite figured out how to teach him that any food throwing is just unacceptable. He just thinks it's a fun game. It doesn't help that I don't seem to be able to keep a straight face when I'm scolding him because he's invariable doing something cute.
The biggest and most dramatic change though is his language skills. The fabled language explosion seems to be underway. He still prefers whining and pointing to communicate, but he can certainly talk when he wants to. The challenge is usually on our end in trying to figure out exactly what he's talking about since he doesn't exactly enunciate. In fact, many multisyllabic word gets shorted to its first syllable. So socks (襪子, pronounced wàzi) and water are both "wa wa"; Mama and mushroom are both "mama". You can imagine how it might take a while for us to figure out what he's saying sometimes.
Oh, and when I say "speak", I don't mean sentences. Usually it's just a word or two with gestures thrown in.
It's a little funny when he decides to use English vs. Chinese. He understands socks, but he always uses the Chinese word (wàzi) for it. He understands 水 (shuǐ), but he always say water. And even when he's using Chinese, he sometimes uses Mandarin, and sometimes uses Taiwanese, depending on the word. For example, he uses the Taiwanese "khùn" for "sleep" (愛睏) instead of the Mandarin "shuìjiào". The thing that really gets us is when he translates -- when we say something in English and he corrects us with the Chinese word or vice versa.
On the physical side, biggest change during this time has to be his haircut. He never sits still long enough for us to do much with a pair of scissors, so one day Charity suggested we try using the clipper. Long story short, before:
And after:
He was not a happy camper after the ordeal. And honestly, neither were we. He looked completely different, no longer quite our little angel. But it's grown out a bit now, and we've gotten used to it in the mean time. And I guess it has grown on us. We'll just have to experiment with some combination of clippers on the sides and the scissors on top...
On a completely unrelated note, Andrew's new favorite toy is the salad spinner. Whenever he sees the salad mix coming out of the fridge now he makes a beeline for where it's kept. Not that he really needs a reason -- he'll go for it any chance he gets.
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