At the kids’ house in Anchorage, if you look up at the wall near the ceiling in the living room (where it’s way out of dog or baby reach) you say “Alexa” with a command and music starts playing. The wheels on the bus go round, and round, and round, after round… I had a verse he didn’t know, though: the wipers on the bus go swish swish swish, complete with big arm motions, not little ones. This was totally Mathias’s kind of thing, and when Alexa finished he would look at me expectantly, waiting for it with a big grin.

If only he could command that thing, too. “Lessa? Lessa?” doesn’t quite pull it off.

Turns out that standing in his bedroom looking up at the light switch and commanding “OFF!” loudly does not make the light go on or off, either. Not for lack of trying on his part. Somehow that wall just wasn’t compliant.

“Off” to him meant change which way it is, so I practiced saying and demonstrating “on” and “off” with him. A new word to apply to it! He liked that, but persisted for now with his version. But hey, what baby doesn’t love playing with light switches, and here was Grammy aiding and abetting. Good times.

He’s at the two-syllable-sentence stage that I so love.

Except for in his mommy’s reading of one Sandra Boynton book. I was not expecting “armadillo” out of him. I guess it counted as two two-syllables?

We had such a good time!