We stayed up until 12 with Simon Wednesday night—Sophia was asleep as soon as we put her in her bed, but Simon fussed for quite a while. I couldn’t fall asleep until 1 or so; Darin didn’t come to bed until 3, and I don’t think he was even playing World of Warcraft. You need something done on Safari? Look for Darin ’round 2am; he’s still on the job.

I set the alarm for 5:20am…and managed to wake up before it. I haven’t the slightest idea how, but whomp: there it was. I got up and got Simon, who was definitely surprised and unpleased about being woken up. I took him downstairs. Darin got up shortly thereafter (2 hours sleep) and came down too. After a while, he went back upstairs and got another hour of sleep.

Simon had a great morning: he got to watch as much TV as he wanted. And once the sun came up, his energy level seemed to rise too. And once Sophia joined us, around 8, the two of them played very happily together. Sophia’s the only well-rested one among us.

Darin’s car is still broken. Normally I would drive him to work, but I knew the car would put Simon to sleep within seconds, so Rob very generously came down and gave Darin a ride into work.

Simon started staggering around the house around 9, so I called the hospital and left a message on the EEG department voicemail, asking if we could possibly come in earlier than our 12:30 appointment. I called again around 10:30, got someone on the line, and she told me to come in around noon. I watched Simon, who was alternately crying and running like crazy, and lying on the ground with big, staring eyes, and thought: there is no way I am going to keep this kid awake until noon.

Which I didn’t: at 11am he fell asleep, and no amount of persuasion short of slapping his face (which, I’ll have you know, I did not do) was going to wake him up.

AT 11:10 the phone rings. It’s the EEG technician, who said she’d tried to call me on our other number (Me: “Uh, we only have this number”), because it was okay if we came in at 10:30.

“He’s already fallen asleep.”

“Can you wake him up? Do you have anyone to keep him awake in the car?”

Neat. Uh, that’s a no, good buddy.

So I bundled the kids into the car and dashed to the hospital. Simon was pretty much asleep the whole time. We had to register, and then the nurse showed us to the EEG Department. I laid Simon on the bed and asked the technician what was going to happen.

“Can we go now?” Sophia demanded. We had passed the gift shop on the way in to the hospital, and she had some important toys to check out.

“We’ll be back soon,” I said to the technician.

“But…usually the parents stay,” said the technician, clearly wondering what my problem was. Yes, Mommy stupidly scheduled the EEG on the day when she’d have both kids, so Mommy is going to go check out the gift shop instead of staying with Simon.

We went to the gift shop (I bought Simon a little notebook, since he is notebook obsessed these days—walks around with a notebook and pen, scribbling, constantly—and I bought Sophia a package of M&Ms, which she thought was a good deal) and then we sat on the hallway outside the EEG room, eating M&Ms and reading the Sleeping Beauty story in the book of fairy tales we brought with.

At one point the technician came out and said, “He’s awake.” I stood in the doorway and looked at my boy, who had all of those crazy electrodes stuck to his head, just like you see in the movies. His head was lolled to the side and he was staring his big eyed stare at me. I smiled at him and said to her, “He’ll be asleep again in a minute.” Which he was.

When it was all over, Sophia and I went into the room and I asked what the EEG had seen. “I can’t tell you anything,” said the technician, which made me immediately think she was hiding something (which just goes to show I’m confusing technicians and official spokespersons). The pediatric neurologist has to get the readout and he’ll get back to me about what it actually says.

“Because he woke up, we may need to do this again,” she told me.

Oh, neat.

I started pulling the electrodes off of Simon’s scalp—they’re connected by this really icky goo that evidently hardens when it dries; the technician tried to wipe as much off of it as she could, but Simon had a punk hairdo the rest of the day. The whole time I was doing this he was fast asleep. He didn’t wake up until I picked him up and said, “Simon! Simon!” a few times. Evidently Simon inherited Darin’s sleeping abilities. (Well, except when Darin goes to bed at night he is instantly asleep, whereas Simon is getting into the habit of dragging out the bedtime for 30 minutes or more every single night.)

By the time we got home from the hospital I was a complete zombie (though not in the flesh-eating zombie down-at-the-pub kind of way) and let the kids run riot over me. Sophia (the only rested one) dictated what we did for the rest of the afternoon.

And then I had to drive back to Apple to get Darin. Whom I would have asked to drive, except he was in worse shape than me. We had stopped at Cicero’s Pizza for dinner, which was very tasty, and then we got home and everyone was asleep by 8:15.

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So, the short of it is:

I have no further information about what anomalies, if any, are present in Simon’s brain.

I am assuming I’ll hear next week, either about what the EEG said or whether we need to do it again.

Well, I’ll know for next time: schedule it on a day when Sophia will be in school and schedule it for earlier in the morning.

We’re getting into some extremely unpleasant nighttime rituals around here—screaming, crying, no one going to sleep until at least 10, sleeping all day as a result, lather, rinse, repeat…

But last night, I went to fulfill my part of the ritual with Simon and something possibly amazing happened. Simon, who used to go to sleep fairly easily, has started yelling his little head off. After a while I go in and voila! I need to change his diaper. Then I comfort him a little before putting him back in bed, whereupon he falls asleep quickly.

Last night, after changing his diaper, I sat down with him in the rocking chair. He lay his head on my shoulder and held me around my neck as we rocked silently.

Then I am absolutely sure I heard him say, “Ah love oo.”

My mind started racing a mile a minute. Did my baby just tell me he loves me? Is that possible for a little one to say? Could I have misheard it?

Whereupon he said, “Ah love oo ver muh.”

Darin was, shall we say, somewhat skeptical when I reported this to him. It is a complex thought for a 16-month-old to have, let alone express. He could be parrotting a phrase he hears quite often, but it’s not like he said, “Put that down, Simon.” And he’s not talking all that much, so a complex sentence is somewhat astounding, not to mention a complex sentence in an appropriate situation is doubly so.

Still: Ah love oo ver muh. What a beautiful thing for him to say. I got chills.

Currently Simon’s favorite computer game is Pooh Toddler (I think this is the right one, except Amazon says it’s just for Windows and we’re definitely using it on a Mac). One of the games is “Pop the Balloons,” in which various Pooh characters get lofted on to the screen and the player pops their balloons. The player can type on the keyboard or move the cursor over the balloon and a few seconds later the balloon pops.

Simon has figured out how to use the mouse to move the cursor over the balloon…and then click to pop it.

I guess when you see everyone else in your family doing something every day (a lot), you begin to think it’s perfectly normal. Why shouldn’t a 16-month-old know how to operate a mouse?

Darin and I were pretty impressed, that’s all I’m saying.

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Simon has also decided it’s time for him to sit at the table with the rest of us. He’s not down with the whole high chair thing any longer.

My first clue that Simon was thinking along those lines was when I cut up a peach and put the pieces in a bowl for him, then put the bowl on one of the kitchen chairs so he could snack from it as he raced around the kitchen. I turned to my computer, which (as per usual, because we haven’t cleaned out my %$#(*$@# office yet) was sitting on the kitchen island, then I turned back to the kitchen table. Simon had moved the bowl to the table and was sitting in the chair enjoying the peach.

Now when it’s dinnertime he races to sit in the chair alongside Sophia. If I put him in the high chair (because we don’t have a booster seat for him), he struggles and cries and gets himself out of the chair. Darin reported that he put Simon in the high chair one day for lunch and then wandered off to check something on his computer. A minute or two later, Simon came racing in to join him.

I like to think that we’re self-actualizing the children.

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His vocabulary is also growing by leaps and bounds. I pulled out the jar of Nutella the other morning and Simon ran to the kitchen table yelling, “Chocolate toast!” (Unfortunately, Darin, who was in the other room, didn’t hear him say it, so I can’t be 100% sure that’s what Simon said. But it sure as heck sounded like it.)

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Simon is also ready to start school. Preschool, at any rate. Every day when we drop Sophia off at preschool Simon says hi to the teachers and then busies himself in the play kitchen or plops down on the beanbag in the library area to page through a book. Every day I have to pick him up, screaming and flailing, and leave.

I wonder how interested he’ll be when he has his own class and Sophia isn’t there. Probably pretty interested.

• Mama (usually pronounced “Mamamama”)
• Dada
• Uh-oh (usually accompanied by a mischievous grin)
• Ba’pa’ (what Dora the Explorer carries around)
• A-boom! (his current favorite)
• Book (sounds like “buk”)

And then there are the non-repeaters, the phrases that make me wonder. He wanted me to hand him a book to look at, and when I did he said something that sounded a great deal like “Tenk oo.” I can’t imagine he really did, but…wouldn’t that be amazing?

And he understands everything. We were playing in the living room one day and I said, “Oh, you must be hungry.” Damned if he didn’t take off for the kitchen like a shot. And tonight I told him to go over to Daddy to get dressed for bed…and Simon immediately went to report for pajama duty.

The most amazing incident was when we were at the Barnes and Noble that has a train table, and Simon started running around with a train in each hand. Then he dropped one on the floor and left it there. Without looking at the train and without pointing to it, I said, “Simon, pick up the train and put it back on the table where it belongs.”

Which he proceeded to do immediately.

Wow.

Must. Watch. What. I. Say.

Of course, I already know I have to watch what I say (and I know I’m not watching half as hard as I need to be). One day in the backyard Sophia said, “I have to go to work!” So she narrated what she was doing as she did it: “I put on my badge…and I get into my car…and I say, ‘Dommit.’”

Uh, oops.

I would think that imitating me would cause the first thing out of her mouth to be “Mor-on”…but I may simply not be aware of how often I say other things.

You’d buy a used car from this baby.

(Shirt by Dookiewear.)

This is Simon. He is cuter than anyone you have ever known or ever will know. He is possibly the cutest member of the human race ever.

Yes, those eyelashes are for real.

Simon is just about this smiley all the time. I have it from other parents that not all babies are this smiley. Somehow my kids just know from early on they’re going to have a good time.

Simon, like Sophia, was born two weeks earlier than my due date. Clearly it only takes me 38 weeks to make a baby. Which is great, but I was also much sicker throughout this second pregnancy than I was with Sophia, which is not a big inducement to have many more.

The smile, though: that could con a woman into doing stupid things. “Wait…the first two were so unbelievably cute…”

Simon started smiling before he was two months old, and it wasn’t any of that “gas” crap, it was smiling. He started laughing around the same time. He has a deep belly laugh that makes anyone who hears it start to laugh too.

At a few days old his first nickname was “Mr. Snooty,” because whenever he slept he always had his head back and his nose thrust upwards. After a little while he became “Lord Grunty,” because his main form of communication was (and is) grunting. Fernando shortened that to “L.G.” Simon’s babysitter called him “Señor Guapo” (Mr. Handsome), which I then made “Lord Guapo.” He’s also “El Coqueto,” because he’s the biggest flirt in the known universe. He still grunts, but it’s cute grunting.

At 7.5 months, Simon can sit up and I think he’s started to crawl. There’s certainly enough stuff he wants to get to.

He completely adores his older sister, even though she’s got a nasty habit of taking whatever toy he’s playing with from him. (This behavior does make him cry often enough, though.) He loves other babies. Hearing Daddy’s voice coming up the stairs makes Simon turn and give Daddy the most gigantic grin in the universe. Sometimes this makes Mommy jealous. But it’s too cute to be angry about.

I still wonder sometimes how raising a boy will be different from raising a girl. There were two girls in my family, so I know about girls. There were three boys in Darin’s family, so he knows about boys. Maybe there’s nothing to know, maybe I just have to treat him like a little person and let him figure out what kind of man he wants to be. But there are warning signs, for me, about how I have to act, what I have to say — and guard against saying. At gym class a few weeks ago a little boy — all the kids in the class were under 3 — started crying and his father kept saying things that I can basically sum up as: “Boys don’t cry.” I felt so sorry for that little boy, because it seemed like all he wanted was a hug.

I like hugging my little boy. I’m not looking forward to the day when that’s not okay any more.