My wife and I really like cats. It’s to the point that she has several nicknames for me that riff on that. So, almost since he was born, my silly nickname for the baby (now toddler) has been <firstname>-kitten. He recently learned how to actually say his nickname, which is kinda adorable. I thought I’d change things up a bit and offer some more silliness from the land of Toddler-kitten. I’m choosing to conceal his actual first name and will use “Toddler” as a placeholder.

Anyways, Toddler-kitten is very silly. He learned a while back to say “light on!” and “light off!” when wanting me to turn the lights on and off. Recently, he’s started saying “piano is on”, when someone is playing the piano, and when he wants me to play the piano, he will go up to the piano and say “piano on!”

He used to also go “yay!” and clap when someone finished a song, but nowadays he just matter-of-factly states “piano off”.

Aside from that, he’s still quite obsessed with turning the lights and fans everywhere in the house on and off over and over again while I hold him up to the switches. It’s quite a workout for me.

Toddler-kitten is very picky about food. Although the daycare somehow feeds him other things, at home we can literally only get him to eat cheese bread, apple slices, and avocado. Oh also, pizza crust. For some reason, he only likes the crust.

I have a very hard time saying no to Toddler-kitten. Luckily, for the most part his personality is relatively happy and friendly and once at daycare when there was a little girl crying nearby, Toddler-kitten went up to her and and went “happy!” to try to cheer her up. He learned the word “happy” pretty early, possibly in part because we have a board book, Happiness With Aristotle.

Toddler-kitten can fuss though. He used to be worse, where if he didn’t get exactly what he wanted he’d cry for like half an hour. These days it seems easier to reason with him, though he still gets upset at times, and says “mad!” I’ll usually then ask, “Is Toddler-kitten mad?” and he’ll go “no!”, but it’s pretty obvious he’s mad.

Before I became a dad, I worried about whether I’d be able to handle changing diapers. Turns out you get used to it quickly and it becomes quite routine. I think I’ve probably changed thousands at this point…

Toddler-kitten grew out of using a pacifier very early. He learned to suck his thumb, but because back then he always wore a cloth bib, he learned to only suck his thumb when there was a loose cloth-like thing nearby he could also hold at the same time, so when we stopped having him wear the bib, he stopped sucking his thumb except for when we put him in the sleepsack, which he used like his bib as a thing he just kinda holds next to his thumb as he sucks it. It’s how he soothes himself to sleep every nap and night.

Speaking of it, Toddler-kitten has, since as early as four months, slept like an angel reliably through the night, or at least, when he wakes up, he quietly soothes himself back to sleep. It’s a blessing.

He also learned to meow. I and my wife have developed a way to convey a surprising amount of information through the intonation of a meow. Naturally, he figured it out too, sorta. One day, out of the blue, he went “mi mi meow!” and I was like… “mi mi meow?” and he was like “yes!” This exact exchange has happened a few times now. He also will say “meow meow meow”, which is something I occasionally say, except unlike me, he sometimes shouts it at the top of his lungs “meow Meow MEOW!!!” I do not know how he learned to be so loud. He can be absurdly loud sometimes. “Toddler-kitten! You are very loud!”

Another random story, we used to soothe him by telling him stories. I generally would start the story with “Once upon a time there was a cat, and this cat was named Toddler-kitten, and Toddler-kitten was wondering the universe in search of friends.” Then I would have the cat go on an adventure, usually meeting Mr. Owl on a planet full of trees and learning the secrets of the universe from him. Occasionally, they would go into space on a rocket ship and enter a black hole or meet The Cosmic Orange Cat, who was very big and bright. Sometimes, to keep the story going, they would get stuck in a time loop, or a situation where within the story, a character was telling another story that also happened to start with “Once upon a time there was a cat…”

Anyways, I just thought I’d share for some reason.