WARNING

Amado has been really into warnings, or cautionary advice, lately.

He will tell you "Cuidado!" when you are getting to close to stepping on something. The other day, Rory was leaving after a visit, and he yelled after them, "Cuidate, Baby Nuala!".

Today, we were playing outside, and we were up on the front porch. This guy rode by on his bike, with his arms hanging by his side.

Amado, giving it all he had, yelled "Dos manos, Senor!" The guy, who didnt speak Spanish, smiled and waved at him, which only made the warning more urgent. "Dos manos, Senor!" he yelled, until the Senor had, dangerously, biked out of sight.

este baby no sirve

For a reason we can't quite figure out, Amado does not like to look at baby pictures of himself. Its kind of strange because as those of you who have been over you know that in the living room, we have monthly pictures of his first year.

But, the other day we were looking at some pictures I had recently put into an album from his baptism (January) and the May 1st march and he LOVED looking at them. We spent like a half hour looking - he wanted to talk about each one, wanted to point out who was in each, etc. He was liking it so much I figured that he might want to see some more pictures. The only other pictures I have in an album are from his first few months of life (back when I was a new mama and developed pictures right away.)

So I pulled it out and he was like, um this is not so cool - thats what the look on his face was saying. There were pictures of him brand new in the hospital, when he was in the NICU. He turned the page. I asked if he knew who the baby is. He didn't answer. I told him it was him and he looked at me skeptically. There were pictures of him home, all teeny tiny. He said, "no" and turned the page. We got to a picture of him nursing, about a week old, and he shook his head. A few more pages and he started complaining, saying, "este, este no. este mejor" pointing to the other album. We went back to the other album, with the recent pictures, and he was happy again.

I dont know if he was disturbed to see this intruder baby in all these pictures with people he loves or what. But he was not having it.

Yesterday, he pulled my mom over to the computer to look at some videos of them they have uploaded - playing in the pool, that kind of thing. He loves to do this. My mom clicked on the wrong icon and a picture of Amado at about 6 months popped up. "Este baby no sirve" he told my mom, shaking his head.

What?! Este baby no sirve! Wow. Basically, he does not have the capacity to say anything more extreme. Este baby no sirve. Wow.

a new game

So, Amado has a new game. It fits in with a new theme of his life, "Si se puede".

I think he is re-playing out the May 1st protest. He runs around the house with a Palestinian flag and this little horn that he got for Christmas from my cousin that is supposed to go on a bike that is like 14 times louder than it really needs to be. But, he turns it around like its a bullhorn and speaks into the part where the sound comes out and yells, "Si se puede!" while waving the flag.

Man, I could watch him do this all day.

make believe

This morning, I was trying to get Amado dressed and I was kind of in a hurry. Sensing this, he decided to make it harder for me and go limp. I was trying to get him to stand up, and he was letting his body go all limp.

I said, "Tu eres un fideo?".

And he said, "Poopoo-sano". (Which, you might remember from earlier, means "gusano". "Gusano" has now become synonomous with "PooPoo" because of the composting adventures with his Nina and Tia Mariana).

He was pretending to be a worm, and he was able to communicate it! Later on, we were telling Mariana about it, while he was eating dinner, and he decided to be a poopoo-sano right there at his table, giggling the whole time, melting into his seat all noodle-like. Or poopoo-sano like, I guess.