I’ve always been led to think that babies start saying their first word out of the blue, and start walking unaided all of a sudden.
Kai can walk now, albeit with his arms in the air holding on to invisible parachute straps. But that has taken about a fortnight of taking one, then two unaided steps, and there hasn’t really been a defining moment announcing his bipedness.
The other amazing thing is how quickly he’s taken to using the other things always attached to us besides him – my Blackberry and Naomi’s iPhone.
Naomi and I started out thinking: “We’re not going to let our son be distracted by flashy light thingies, PSPs and other such like”, but it was always going to be a lost cause when you have to feed, change and generally have to attend to a squirmy one year old toddler.
Other parents who don’t already know this – these are the two life-saving apps for your Blackberry and iPhone: Baby GO! for the ‘Berry, and Talking Carl for the iPhone.
Then Sunday night, we went out to Ion Orchard, and as expected, Kai got antsy after half an hour in the restaurant, so I took him out to toddle around the 4th floor. Near the concierge’s counter was a pillar with two touch-screen directories. One of them was just right for his height (presumably for the wheelchair bound), so he went at it, pressing and pushing until he accidentally pressed the search button at the bottom right, activating an onscreen keyboard.
Our 14 month-old knows his keyboard and starts pressing the letters anyhowly. But here’s the clincher: He’s been mimicking how Naomi, her mum and myself make and take calls with our phones over the past three months or so, and it still make us chuckle when he puts his hand to his ear every time he hears someone’s phone ringing. So this time, after pressing a series of letters on the touch-screen keyboard, he puts his hand to his ear and says his version of “hello?”
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