Leon’s amazing social skills
Leon is turning out to be quite a child. For an infant who is barely three months old, he is now able to communicate — and I mean communicate, not just the usual infantile gibberish. He loves to hear people talk, and he responds with shrieks, laughter and body language. When you talk to him, he seems to actually listen.
He knows how to wake us up, which he usually does at 2 a.m. and 5 a.m. He would make small sounds at first, then starts thrashing about (hitting me in the face with his strong left arm a lot of times; often, he would arc his back, raise his feet up then slams them on the bed, creating a thud that, to a person deep in slumber, can be quite startling). And if we don’t still react after all this, he would let out an ear-piercing cry, short and strong, that I can only describe as an indignant scream.
I thought for a while that he was just a very active infant. Perhaps it had something to do with the S-26 that he’s been having. Or the fact that, for the past two months, we’ve been treating the acne-like blisters on his face with a steroid-based ointment — I’m not sure what steroid does to an infant but given that the drug is used often by athletes to enhance their performance, that might be a factor. Silly, I know.
Practically all those who have seen Leon do this swear that he is, indeed, unusual. Ayi insists that her niece Aina and nephew Adi were never like that when they were two or three months. My sister Gingging, who has six children, told me none of her child was ever like Leon in terms of his cognitive ability and his way of socializing with people.
But the one thing that dispels my worries about Leon’s hyperactivity and amazing social skills (once, Leon couldn’t take her eyes off her Tita Ninya; he giggled and laughed while looking at her; Ayi told Ninya to talk to him — not baby talk but really talk, because he seems to enjoy it — and a perplexed Ninya exclaimed: “Ano sasabihin ko?”) — the one thing that dispels my worries is the fact that, since he was two months old, he’s been, uh, friends with the paintings on our walls. He would turn to look at the paintings and smile and laugh and giggle, as if something in those frames was talking to him. He loves looking at those paintings!
Leon is our first child, so what do I know, right? But I think only a talented and gifted two-month-old can do the sort of things Leon does. Mana sa ina! 
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