First Word!

Or at least we think so as his annunciation isn't perfect. He speaks like the Andaluz, he eats his consonants. But we are positive that he knows what this thing is and that there is a unique name for it.

Like his daddy and his nephew before him, his first word is....... ball! Well, technically his first word was "hi" and "hello" when he was a mere 3-months old, and he's been barking orders at Mama and Dada for months.

Sometimes it sounds like he's saying bop, or bah, or bob, but its clear he knows what a ball is and that it has a name. But now he wants to know the name for EVERYTHING. He'll point at something and I'll tell him what it is and then he'll try. "Kian, that's a Wireless Internet Receiver, can you say that?". "Bah" or "dah" would be his reply. Thats a cup, thats a phone, thats a carpet, thats a tree, thats the sky, thats enough already. He's going to kill me when he starts in on the "why" phase.

When we were up in Canada we lucked out by pulling into Revelstoke the first day of a two day airing of the Banff Mountain Film Festival. We hit the first day's showing and had to take Kian for lack of a baby-sitter -- and with permission, of course -- and Kian was a bit of a pain through the first third of the show. One of us had to hangout with him in the walkway to keep him occupied although he loved the loud music and some of the action sequences. Anyway, the guy sitting in front of us good-naturedly turned back and told us that he bet that Kian was going to be a singer and we think its because of his guttural intonations. He is constantly singing in his throat. I guess now would be a good time to introduce him to phonetic languages like Vietnamesse and Mandarin, as well as Tibetan chanting and Mongolian throat singing. We'll get right on that.

Our little throat singer.

What else is new in all things Kian? Well, his Daddy is a little happier though often preoccupied now that his cycling-related ailments, whatever they were (or weren't), are over. I got in a few big rides last week and weekend and I was able to make a few "efforts", and all feels good. Let's hope it keeps up, and all that my body needed was a little downtime from a season of racing. Prior to this summer I calculated having 2-1/2 years of constant competition in one of my sports: cyclocross racing season to nordic ski racing season to road racing season, and repeat. Can't really blame the bod for bailing on me.


Kiki LOVES to brush his teeth/mouth, and we are relieved that he values good oral hygeine. But unfornately I can't get him to floss and its such a shame because it would take like 5-seconds to hit his 6 teeth.

No worries: with the exception of this one
picture, Kian was always strapped in.