Until he was five months old, Leon was the happy brother. Michael may have cooed first, but Leon cooed more and louder. Leon was the one who woke us all up with his babble during the night. But then it suddenly stopped. He had a major setback. Instead of trying to communicate with us, he would just lay around and cry. Later, when he could sit, he would sit and flap his arms and cry. We could not distract him by calling his name or by making eye contact. He was just miserable a lot of the time and was basically only non-miserable ("happy" was a stretch) when attached to me. We were worried. I feared he was autistic. We took him to the doctor. There was nothing wrong with him.
His behavior would've been challenging with any child, even an only child, but for a twin with an older sibling, it was nearly impossible. He spent a lot of months crying. All the time. It was frustrating and horrible. And it was our way of life.
Thankfully, over the past couple of months, Leon has started to snap out of it. (Of course, since the boys are yin and yang, this means Michael has been miserable. One of these days they will both be happy at once. Really!) Learning to walk and talk has helped Leon. A few weeks ago, Leon realize that he could communicate what he wants. It was like a light bulb went off in his head. I'm not sure if it started when he realized that bursting out a fake smile and begging, "Pleeeeease?" could get him a whole lot of things in life, if it was when he discovered that hitting the refrigerator and pantry often resulted in food, or if it was some other crazy combination of events, but it was clear he realized he could get what he wants.
And that has motivated him to talk. Leon's vocabulary is expanding like crazy.
He's so different from his siblings. Ree waited to speak until she could basically bust out entire sentences, and even Michael won't say anything out loud until he is sure he can fully enunciate the words. Leon just throws jibberish together any chance he gets. Sometimes, I think he gets it right. We are pretty sure we've caught him singing actual words/syllables to "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and the ABC song.
Half the time he startles me when he speaks. I think he is all zoned out in his own little Leon world, and he will jump into a conversation with his own little comment. It's like the toddler equivalent of Silent Bob moments.
The other night I was reading Michael a book on animal sounds, and the last page asks, "What does Clifford say?" Without missing a beat, from across the room where he was throwing toys or causing some other kind of mayhem, Leon said, "Bow wow." A couple of nights ago, I was attempting to dress Leon on his changing table after his bath, and I'm pretty sure he was trying to jump off the changing table to see if he could fly. In an attempt to distract him long enough to wrangle on a diaper and pajamas, I started counting the dogs on a poster over the changing table. He continued squirming, focusing on the goal of crashing into the floor. In my counting, I stopped at eleven, but Leon then chimed in with what sounded eerily like "twelve."
Sometimes he does say words clearly though. Last week we were having fried fish for dinner. This was the good stuff, and Leon wanted to load up on it, so he blurted out, "More fish, please." Granted, it sounded like "Muh fiSH peeeez," but we knew what he meant. (And, yes, we gave him more fish since he had asked so nicely.) On Saturday, he pointed to our brown dog and said, "Max!" Both Max and Leon then grinned. So Leon said it again. At bedtime, I usually tuck the boys in one at a time, and they wave goodnight to everyone else in our family. Michael was first to catch on to waving, and is still the only one to have moved on to grown up waving. Michael was also the first to say, "Night night" instead of "Bye bye." But Leon was the first to use names. Out of nowhere, last night when telling his sis goodnight he said, "Bye, Ree." And it was obvious what he was saying, even if the words were slurred together.
It's so nice to have Leon communicating and happy (except for when he doesn't get his way and stages a raging protest). Now if we could just get Leon to use his words for good and not evil...
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