At home, Peanut is a genius. He tries to imitate everything we do. He is a problem solver and figures out how to get or do what he wants when he wants. He rarely never gives up.
O.k., it is true that his vocabulary is rather limited. I am “Da” rather than Mama, all animals are “woof-woof’s”, and he still has not cracked the complexities of yes and no. But, we applaud all of his achievements as if he had just won the Noble Prize.
When we were visiting Peanut’s grandparents, he ran around the house chasing the “woof-woof” (cat) for hours chanting, “woof-woof”. One morning, Peanut saw Grandpa play with the cat with a piece of string. Later that day, when Peanut finally caught the “woof-woof”, he knew just what to do. He picked up the string and dangled it in front of the cat to play with him just like Grandpa had done. We could not get over how astute this was for a 16 month old. He saw what Grandpa had done to play with the cat and copied his actions hours later. I would be lying if I did not admit that the word Harvard was thrown around. More than once.
The following week we were at our friend’s house where their 17 month old daughter sounded out most of the letters of the alphabet on command. She could tell me what an A sounds like, what a B sounds like, etc. Suddenly dangling a piece of string in front of a cat while calling him a “woof-woof” didn’t seem all that impressive. The imaginary ivy league applications were put on hold.
All confidence in my son’s intellect was restored later that evening at home when my husband called out that Peanut had managed to put the bedroom television on himself. This is no small feat. The installer did not set up a universal remote for this t.v., and, in order to turn it on it is necessary to push the right buttons in the right order on the right clickers facing the right direction with the stars alligned just so. As I ran in and saw that he had indeed successfully turned on MSNBC, any lingering doubts of Peanut’s intellect were put to rest. My husband and I looked at each other and whispered at the same time, “brilliant.”
