Dinosaur Days

Today's post is brought to you by the letter "C" for communication. It seems to have been the theme of my life lately. The first thing I have been observing is that R-rex is getting to the stage where he loves to explore and gets frustrated when he can't play with something like the fan, daddy's earphones, all the fun things we keep him away from. So sometimes he just grunts at us when he is mad. I can understand his feeling though living here in Japan and not speaking a lot of Japanese. Some days I am grumpy and things like having R-rex's stroller bashed by a grocery cart by someone because they can't simply say excuse me (one of the few words I know in Japanese too) or being pushed in front of by some rude person are enough to push me over the edge. Now rude people exist in Canada too but at least there I can express my displeasure with them but here I don't know how. On days where I am in an okay mood I will just muster up a sumimasen (excuse me) in my snottiest tone but other days where I am in a grumpy mood I feel it just doesn't get my point across. On these days I just feel like growling at people. Now I try to refrain from it due to the fact that unlike my son I am not an eight month old but it is tempting. So I sympathize with him on not being able to express his frustrations with words so they are understood.

Which brings me to the next part - we are trying to help R-rex express himself by using baby sign. So far we just do the basic signs like milk, mommy, daddy, etc. I bought this book before he was born and have decided to start using it. Right now he just looks at me and laughs when I do it but hopefully he will catch on and it will make communication easier for him. If not, oh well, I eventually figure out what he wants anyways. It is funny though when I started introducing it S-man kept asking me how to sign some obscure words that R-rex would never need to use. I would tell him I have no idea and then he would pick another strange word. It continued like this for awhile. Then one day I had the book and he said "Oh now I understand". He thought I had been making up my own signs and not actually using baby signs. What a funny guy (although you may not find this funny, it could be one of those you had to be there moments)!

And so to the title of the post which is R-rex's nickname because of the funny dinosaur sounds he makes when he is happy. I think they are cute but apparently scare other children. We were playing in the play area at our local mall and R-rex would pull himself up on the tunnel cubes and make his screeching sounds. All the other babies would look at him and cling to their mothers. My son the dinosaur!


She just had to pet the dinosaur.



Beware of the R-rex!