Eko has been a part of our family for 21 months now and it's been far
too long since we've posted a written update. So much has changed and so
many things have happened. Get comfy—it's time for a story!Eko entered winter still a baby; he had just begun to walk around Halloween and was up to 12 teeth. His vocabulary, both verbal and baby sign,
was just beginning to grow when the last leaves of autumn were falling. Every day Eko
wakes up a changed boy from the one we put to bed
the night before, but the difference from December to
June is mind blowing. Just as millions of leaves grow again at the same time in spring, it seems that everything he learns multiplies simultaneously. He's insatiably
curious, adventurous, and nerve-rackingly fearless. 
Since January, Eko's vocabulary has grown from a dozen words to a few hundred, though we may be the only ones who can tell the difference between many of them. The new words began to appear so fast that we tried to keep a list, but soon lost track: camera,
clock, spoon, water, kiwi. Animal sounds were the first frontier. The barnyard creatures were fascinating to him. He mewed for cats, panted like a dog, and especially enjoyed sounding like an owl, elephant, and even chickadee. He still refers to many animals by sound alone. Then he learned all the major
body parts (his personal favorites being "penis," pronounced
"peelo" and belly button "baba") and joyfully began identifying the colors of everything around him. 
From
there he began pointing out foods: "ado" (avocado), "da da" (strawberry), "mama" (sandwich), "otto" (water). A few months ago he began to notice letters, calling out "H" anytime he
saw a word in a book, on a t-shirt or sign, then surprised us with his
quickly growing recognition of individual letters: B, O, S, W, T, E, M
and many others. He's less interested in shapes, but loves the word
"oval." Lately his attention has been on the mechanical: "hamé" (hammer), "nay" (rake), and "doodle-oo" (screwdriver). Incidentally, "doodle-oo" also means "I want something over there." His love of holding a spoon has shifted to almost always holding a toy
screwdriver or hammer, or when outside, finding a piece of pointy bark
that he adamantly calls his 
"kni" (knife) and uses to chainsaw trees or cut countless clumps of dirt. Our future sound-effect man can mimic a fire truck siren or a chainsaw buzz with uncanny accuracy. He's even picking up baby sign faster, which helps us navigate those sometimes confusing baby pronunciations. He's made up a few of his own, like 'bicycle' with his hands pumping up and down like pedals. He melts our hearts when he uses the butterfly-like sign for "book." He loved learning 'poop', which is funny since he can say it perfectly. Even toddlers need more than one way to say poop. 
The budding beginnings of songs and stories fill his days. He has begun telling repetitive little narratives that we can understand if we know the context. For instance, the other day Jay went to the chiropractor and Jade and Eko watched while he had his adjustment. For days after, Eko would say "doktah, dada, tool" and mime very specific gestures. This meant, "Dada went to the doctor and she used an activator to adjust his neck." He likes when we repeat the stories back to him so he knows we understand. Eko is also clearly inspired by his musical dad and sings little songs like, "Hey Let's Go" from My Neighbor Totoro and the "Wind the Rope" rhyme that Oma taught him. He'll request
songs too; "Oh oh oh" indicates he wants to hear Jamaican Dance by Konshens, "Bow a ba ba" refers to La Bamba, 
and "G G" is a request for
Roy G. Biv by They Might be Giants. We're sure children his age are
displaying similar skills, but we never realized how early
this all began until we had our own. His comprehension has blossomed. If Eko wants to go into the woods and Dada says, "We can't, I'm not wearing shoes," Eko will run all the way into the house and bring him back his shoes. A hundred little times a day he surprises us by answering questions, calling up his own anecdotes, and performing complex requests (can you walk backwards to Mama again?). Of course, he still says 'no' more than anything else.
Certainly a big part of his evolving communication relies on memory and retention, which he exhibits in
other ways. At around 15 months, he began to recognize the area around mama's office, looking for her even before daddy had parked. After one visit to the Cheshire Children's Museum to see
an animal brought in by the Humane Society, he began saying "anah" and making the animal sign whenever we visited. 
He has to tell us
when things are out of place in the house, like when we leave the baby
monitor accessible or a stairway gate open. Just the other day (while helping Jay unload the
dishwasher) he separated the utensils between metal and plastic - metal in the drawer and the plastic divided between the drying rack and
recycling. He's not even two and he can already sort the recycling. 
We won't list the
food he eats, since he'll basically try
anything that doesn't come in leaf form, but a few particulars are worth
noting. Eko completely weened off the bottle over the winter, so
Jade weened herself off pumping. He still nurses at night, and during
the day if Jade is around, but otherwise he just grazes throughout the day. He enjoys eating the avocado out
of maki rolls, 
forages for wild strawberries on our
property, and now prefers uncooked tofu cubes to his original favorite, fried tempeh. He also likes having a dipping sauce, be it ranch, ketchup or tamari. But
the dish he probably eats the most of is what he calls "muh muh" and what we call
"yogamolie," a mixture of yogurt and either avocado or guacamole. If permitted, he would eat guacamole all day long.
His sleep routine has been his most eventful transformation this year. When we last posted, his canines were beginning to
appear, contributing to several months of disrupted sleep, runny noses, and
many experiments to cope with his discomfort. We
resorted to using the Boba carrier to get Eko to sleep and (if transfers
failed or he awoke after 30min, needing physical comfort) would rock him in the carrier for two hours to keep him asleep (thank you audiobooks). It was tiring, but it's what he needed.
He was around 18 months old when Jade noticed that the boy who would RUN up until the last second of bedtime began to practice relaxing. Previously, he would only relax in his carrier, like a light switch being turned off. Suddenly he began to lay down on pillows and soft blankets for a few moments, than a few minutes. Jade pulled our wool mattresses into his room and gradually Eko began to enjoy having some control over his relaxation, choosing to lie down and snuggle to sleep. It was a major breakthrough that has saved our backs!
It also helped to finally shift him to a single nap (lasting 90 minutes no matter how we try—longer naps actually seem to make him cranky), completely replaced the crib with the wool mattress on the floor, and turned his car seat to the
forward-facing position (he can sleep in the car after all!). Did one or all of these steps make a difference? Did we need to wait for a phase of development to occur? Or did we just
need to get through the last of the canines? We'll never know, but since early May he has 
begun falling asleep much more easily (on our chests in his bed), transfers well, and will sleep through naps without interruption.
He even wakes up from naps happier—without the slightest whimper, he'll run out of his room and call down to us through the gate at the top of stairs, smiling with sleepy eyes when he first sees us. It's been a
long and difficult process, but we're basking in the ease
of it now. We've truly earned this respite.
is determined to walk through streams every day, and can be helpful in the garden watering the "babies." Bringing Eko out has also become easier since we transitioned to one nap. Earlier this year, we'd have to squeeze in visits between those naps to
KidsPlayce in Brattleboro, Stonewall Farm, and the Cheshire Children's Museum in Keene. After the one nap-transition gave us much of our day back, we were able to take longer trips. We spent a delightful afternoon at the Magic Wings Butterfly Conservatory in MA and another at a Mutton & Mead Renaissance Fair. Eko loves to be home running around outside, 
but it's good to be around other kids and try new things. This summer we'll have him on a healthy rotation between playgrounds, Spofford Lake, Rhyme Time at the library, and a playgroup
at Equilibrium in Brattleboro.A lot will change as he reaches his second birthday, but two developments are already in the works. First, he appears to be teething on his two-year molars, but so far nothing has broken through. He'll gnaw on his fingers or grind his teeth disturbingly, and his nose once again has a constant drip. But none of this seems to disrupt his sleep so we'll just let it run its course.
But more exciting than another round of teeth is that Eko has begun to use the potty. He's excited to pee in the potty cup and empty its contents into the toilet over and over and over again. He enjoys reading books about the potty, now tells us when he's pooped, and has even pooped outside at least twice (once we blamed it on a bear!). We'll be happy when he's done with diapers, but we're in no rush for him to potty train and we're content to let him figure it out at his own pace.
Lastly, it's really delightful to watch Eko 's first interactions with art. He's played with watercolors, plant-based Glob paints, home-made playdough, and made a rich, drippy painting exploding with color. He loves to scribble with crayons and has a strong preference for yellow, or "ayeknow," which can also mean orange, just as red and white are both "mah!"Thank you (or as Eko would say, "tay-toh") for keeping up with Eko as he continually changes ~ It's so much fun to share these updates with our loved ones.
