Blue Moon Mama

Yellow Squeaker

2009-11-13T07:46:00.001-05:00

The squeaker has had TWO “yellows” this week. (Each child in his class has a “stoplight” with red, yellow, and green. Kids are “on green” unless they break a rule, in which case they have to move their name to “yellow.” Breaking another rule moves them to “red.” Each day, he brings home a sheet that indicates what color his name ended up on at the end of the school day.) We are not exactly sure how to handle this.

He is generally a pretty well-behaved kid, but like many five-year old boys, he is very impulsive and sometimes a little wild. When I first saw the list of classroom rules, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. Being quiet and orderly, no running, following directions...of course I knew these things would be expected in the classroom, but I also knew he would struggle at times to follow the rules. I was unsure how much to make of the “yellows” and “reds” at home. I want him to do his best, but I also don’t want to be unrealistic about what he can achieve, or to act like breaking a rule now and then is some huge transgression.

The first time he got a “yellow” he was mortified. He cried at school and looked very small and defeated when he got off the school bus that afternoon. We were stern with him about it because we had some notion about this being an important moment – weren’t we establishing a precedent for long-term respect for school rules? – and he was cowed.

Very cowed, in fact. Each day before school, he was a mess. “What if I get a yellow today?” he fretted anxiously. Some days he would cry while waiting for the school bus, and I wasn’t sure if it was just his general anxiety about school emerging, or if getting a “yellow” really was such an awful experience for him. Once it was clear to me that he was very traumatized by “yellows” and that they were making him worry about school, we backed off about it, first a little and then a lot. I assured him that while we wanted him to do his best, a yellow now and then was not a big deal. When his anxiety persisted, I told him that his favorite characters, from Frodo to Taran to Jared, would probably have gotten a yellow now and then. Eventually, I was almost entirely nonchalant about it. I did not ask about his behavior, though I did quietly check the sheet in his folder. If he was “green,” I might say, “I’m glad to see that you stayed green today” or something like that, but I did not reward greens, and yellows only resulted in a gentle reminder that he needed to do his best to follow the rules, and that while a yellow now and then did not concern me, I didn’t want to see them frequently.

He still cries miserably in the classroom when he gets one (which worries me a little – I’d hate for my kid to be picked on for being a “crier,” and I can still remember which kids tended to cry when I was a very young student). His little shoulders are slumped and his expression very sad on afternoons when he has gotten a yellow. And yet this week, he’s had two – one for talking too loudly and one for not following directions. He also had one last week, also for not following directions (he did not relinquish the water fountain to the next child immediately when told to do so). As I’ve said, I am really not worried about the squeaker breaking the rules now and then. But I also don’t want his teacher to perceive him as a troublemaker – or for him to feel that way about himself. Complicating my response is that he is already not thrilled about school in general. He goes off on the bus without tears most days now, and he seems to really enjoy some aspects of school. But he often says that he does not feel that he belongs there, and that he is lonely and has no friends. (And yet when his dad picks the squeaker up on Fridays, he often sees other kids being friendly to him, and the squeaker responding with his typical oblivion, so we are not sure why he professes to be so lonely.)

So we are struggling with how to treat the “yellows.” Ignoring them seems like a bad idea, because I do want him to know that it’s important to respect the rules at school for lots of reasons. But I also think it is inevitable that he will get yellows now and then, even when he does his best to behave, because he is not capable of checking his impulsiveness entirely, and I don’t want to be so heavy-handed that he becomes very upset when he gets a yellow. I’m thinking that being fairly nonchalant about infrequent yellows is probably best, and that a simple reminder that he needs to respect the rules is adequate. But what about weeks like this one, where he seemed to have a real problem following the rules? Would disciplining him just be piling on more feelings of defeat and misery? Is failing to discipline him encouraging him to treat the rules cavalierly? I just don’t know.

Halloween and More

2009-11-05T06:18:00.013-05:00

These are not their Halloween costumes; the boys just like to dress up ALL THE TIME.

The pipsqueak, upon trying some potatoes for dinner that were baked in butter, milk, salt, and pepper: "Not bad. Not bad, mama. Yummy!" I think he ate about half of the potatoes in the casserole dish!

The pipsqueak has decided that he will no longer be called by his baby nickname. If you call him that, he shakes his head vigorously and says, "I'm not. No." Then he states his own name, using his given name (but never his middle name -- try to add that and you'll get, "No, no. I'm not.") I am surprised he is rejecting his baby nickname. I don't know why it would even occur to him to say that's not his name.

But his doing so is consistent with his sense of independence and individuality. Unlike big brother, little brother is fiercely independent. He will not let you remove his shoes or his coat; he says, "I do it myself." He'll stagger out the front door and down the cement steps on his own, resisting my efforts to hold his hand: "Myself. Myself." It makes me cringe to watch him try to regain his balance on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps. He actually has very good balance, but he insists on handling the steps by alternating feet, rather than climbing down each step completely before tackling the next one. It's terrifying to watch. Of course, only big brother has met disaster on the porch -- he managed to get smacked by the door, which knocked him head first off the porch and into the shrubberies. When we looked for him, we saw only his little kicking feet in the bushes. The poor squeaker. The pipsqueak looks precarious, but he doesn't actually fall very often.

Yesterday, he fussed when his papa left for work: "With you! With you!" When his papa asked in a stern voice, "Are you fussing at me??" the pipsqueak hastily replied, "I'm not angry. I'm irritated. Just irritated!" I am not sure what he thinks the distinction is.

Both boys had an excellent Halloween. The squeaker was a mummy, with an elaborate costume created by his papa.

The pipsqueak was a giraffe, and he seemed pretty pleased about it.

I love the sweet innocence of his face in the one picture, with the skeleton emerging from the grave in the background!

Since our own neighborhood is too rural for trick-or-treating, we went to a party at the house of some long-time friends with a daughter who is the pipsqueak's age. Attendance at the party was pretty light, perhaps because many other invited guests opted instead to trick-or-treat in their own areas. But our party hosts arranged a little hayride -- an ATV with a small cart attached, lined with bales of hay -- that about 10 or 12 people could ride in together. A week before the party, our friends had warned neighbors that they might actually have some trick-or-treaters, so they were mostly prepared when the little cart pulled up.

We were a little late to the party, so we missed the first hayride. But we went on the second, and my boys each collected some candy at the 5 or so houses the group visited. When my sister came to the party with her kids later in the evening, the kids went one more time, this time in the darkness. Riding through the dark, misty fields had my sister pretty anxious, but her kids had a great time. I was amused at my sister's trepidation (the fields didn't scare me, but the rural road we drove on briefly during the second hayride did!), and at the pipsqueak's helpful observations throughout: "There are monsters hiding in the trees, mama" and "Look at the spooky stuff!"

After the fun Halloween events of the weekend, the squeaker is back to school this week. He seems to have a little group of friends on the bus, which is good. But he also has this little girl that he talks about at school.

"Do you play with her?" I asked.

"No, not really. We don't really talk or play. We just love each other."

"You do? What do you mean? How do you love each other if you don't talk or play?"

"Well," he said slowly, "she smiles at me every day when I get to school. It makes me feel welcome. It warms my heart." The squeaker always finds some little girl to warm up to. I like that he feels so much love despite being so little.

Naughty, Naughty Pipsqueak

2009-10-29T14:14:00.002-04:00

The pipsqueak told his grandma that having his diaper changed was "fucking annoying."

I suppose he is right; it probably is.

On the plus side, I hope this means that it will be easy to transition him to using the toilet. Sigh.

Shark!!

2009-10-26T09:46:00.002-04:00

I had already told the squeaker to settle down three times this morning when he screamed "Shark!!" in his bedroom.

"Didn't I ask you to settle down??" I shouted, very irritated.

"Yes, mama," he replied. "But I had to say it like that! I was reading the title of this shark book, and it has an examation point. See? I had to say it in an excited way." He was very earnest. And he was right, too.

Don't Let the Bugs Bite!

2009-10-23T06:17:00.002-04:00

Most nights, I say to the pipsqueak, "Good night," to which he replies, "Sleep tight."

Then I say, "Don't let the bugs bite!"

But this causes him to squirm around in the bed looking for the bugs: "Where?? Where is 'em?" I can't tell if his reaction is excitement or concern about the possibility of bugs in the bed, but I thought it might be best to drop the last bit just in case.

So for the last two nights, when he says "sleep tight," I have not said anything at all. However, after he's waited a minute for me to say my line, he's filled in for me: "Don't let the bugs eat me!"

I think perhaps he was concerned after all!

Boys in October

2009-10-21T08:55:00.001-04:00

The weather has been so cold and rainy. I know it is fall, but I like October for its golden afternoons of sunshine and its cool edge, not its temperatures of 40 degrees and endless rain. We even had some SNOW on the ground last week, though it must have melted before we got up in the morning. Still, I HEARD about it, and that’s bad enough!

Today it will be warmer – low 70s. We have a Halloween party to attend on the 31st, so I am hoping that the cool weather will stay away. I am sure it will be an outdoor party. I was a little hesitant to give up trick-or-treating for a party, but trick-or-treating isn’t easy for us anyway since we do not live in a neighborhood. Last year, the squeaker and the pipsqueak trick-or-treated in my sister’s neighborhood with their cousins, and a lovely time was had by all. I hate to give that up this year, but I think I’d feel more attached to the tradition if it was our own neighborhood. Plus, our friends seemed very eager for us to come to their party, and they have been guests at several at our recent parties. So we shall see how it works out.

The squeaker’s papa has made him a very elaborate mummy costume, complete with an Egyptian headdress. The squeaker had said he wanted to be a mummy, and his papa thought it was a great idea. With lots of glue and gemstones (on the headdress), I’m thinking that weight of the costume might mean that the squeaker won’t be able to move as speedily as usual, which would be nice for a change. We have not done much for the pipsqueak because he doesn’t get the whole Halloween thing yet. We have plenty of ready-made costumes – giraffe, pirate, frog. However, when I asked if he’d rather be a giraffe or a pirate, he said, “Hippo.” We will see about that. He does like hippos quite a lot.

The squeaker has been going off to school each day without a problem, though sometimes he still gets anxious at the last minute. He’s bringing home a lot of little projects, and I am a little concerned that he isn’t taking them very seriously. His drawing skills are definitely not his strong point, and that’s OK with me, but he seems to be doing a lot of scribbling, and that seems a bit worrisome. I’m not actually worried about him, but rather about how he might be perceived at school. The truth is that he’s much more verbal than visual, and he doesn’t really care about this little drawing projects (drawing his family, for example – I think he drew one big orange circle with two orange circles inside it). I don’t think this matters a whit with regard to his long-term success, or anything else that really matters. However, I think it does make him look as though he might have cognitive developmental delays (which he doesn’t -- he can draw reasonably well at home), and I don’t want this to affect his relationships and success in school. My instinct is to encourage him to do better but not to take it very seriously at this point, but I am a little concerned about how disengaged he is from these assignments.

I think that there is a type of student – earnest, engaged, eager -- who does well in school because teachers respond well to that personality type. But the squeaker is none of these things. He is usually caught up in his own world, and he is not very eager to do work that doesn’t particularly appeal to him. Any earnest effort is disrupted by a lack of focus. To me, this all seems very normal in a kid his age, but the demands of kindergarten are more intense than that.

The pipsqueak has been saying many hilarious things. Though he has near-perfect grammar, his cutest sentences are the ones he doesn’t get quite right. He’ll run around the house looking for someone and saying, “Where is ‘em?” Cracks me up every time. There really isn’t anything he can’t say now; he’s become very conversational. The other day he paused in his nursing to say to me, “My baby. Pat.” It took me a minute to realize that I was being instructed to pat him and say “my baby” in a loving tone. He definitely knows what he wants in life, that kiddo.

Second Birthday

2009-10-08T07:28:00.001-04:00

Today the pipsqueak is two years old. What a funny little thing he is. Last night, while I got him ready for his bath, he was singing, “Coke, Coke, Coke.” Skeptical that he really knew what he was saying, I asked him, “What is Coke, you silly?”

He just grinned back at me. “Coke is...?” I prompted, thinking that he might say, “Soda.”

“Tasty!” he finished instead. I guess he did know what he was talking about.

Oh, pipsqueak, my pipsqueak. How you wear your emotions on your sleeve. When everyone sang happy birthday to you over the weekend, I thought your smile couldn’t get any bigger. “I’m happy,” you say. Or sad, or mad, or scared, or funny. You are a little bundle of visible, raw emotion. And just in case I can’t tell what you are feeling, you tell me, your blue, blue eyes wide with joy or your lower lip emerging in a little baby-pout.

While big brother relishes the lyrics of a song, you cannot help but move to its beat. To you, music means dancing – vigorous, whole-body dancing. The kind of dancing that works up an appetite, and luckily you enjoy food as much as music. I think the vast majority of your first words were food-related – pizza, chocolate, cookies, cake, tea. You remind me of the joys of decadent eating, beaming in your high chair. You are even enthusiastic for broccoli and tomatoes. I think you just celebrate the pleasure of eating, the sensual experience of taste and texture. Plus, you like to rub food in your hair. Oh my.

To big brother’s sense of order, you impishly introduce chaos, knocking over his carefully built block tower or sneaking over and snatching his favorite toy from the elaborate game he has set up. And then you run, shrieking with the thrill of the chase. How is it that little siblings know how to drive the older ones nuts from the very start? But even when you are naughty, you are full of empathy. “Sorry, sorry, T,” you tell the squeaker, your big blue eyes wide and sincere. But then you do it again...and again.

It seems that I was just toting you around in that infant car seat. How can it be that you are a walking, talking little person already? How is it that you are already zooming around the house in your toy car, narrowly missing walls and furniture with a last-minute spin of the steering wheel? I cannot slip downstairs to do laundry without you running behind me, your arms out: “With you! With you!” you say.

Pipsqueak, my pipsqueak, I’ve tried to hold you close at night to breathe you in, to feel your baby warmth, to get as many “mooches” as you will give me. (“Kiss you. Kiss you. Mooch?”) You are so little – only two! – and yet I cannot believe how fast you have become the little you that is so very busy, so funny, so naughty. Love you, pipsqueak. Happy, happy birthday.

Being Gretchen

2009-10-01T08:01:00.002-04:00

Last night, I dreamed that I was being pursued by five lionesses. I was walking through some kind of animal exhibit, with door after door, and they shadowed me from the first moment that I stepped inside. I walked faster, and they stayed behind me as I slipped through one door after another. Each time I made it through a door with their hot breath on my heels, I shivered and wondered how I made it. When I woke up, I didn’t exactly feel the terror of having had a nightmare, but I did feel anxious and curiously hurried. It took a few minutes of quiet for my mind to settle down again. It was 4:50 a.m., and since I get up at 5 a.m., I did not go back to sleep.

The pipsqueak was snoozing happily near me, his body at an angle on top of the blankets. He was a reluctant sleeper last night. First, he patted me (“I’m patting you, mama”). Then he scratched my back, just like I sometimes scratch his. When he said, “I’m scratching you, mama,” I didn’t quite catch what he said. “Patting?” I asked. “Nooooo,” he said.

“Rubbing?”

“Nooo....”

I thought for a long time before it dawned on me. “Scratching. You said scratching.”

“Yes, mama,” he said softly, as if he thought perhaps I was a little slow. “I’m scratching you.”

I also dreamed that when I looked out the window of the nursery into the darkness, I saw a little blond head. The squeaker was crouched there, just outside the window on the roof of the sunroom. He was watching some motorcycles through the darkness as they zipped around our driveway. I tried to pull him through the window and into the house, but he shrugged me off and jumped noiselessly from the roof into the yard below. I could see him, so very small and shining white in the darkness as he ran around the yard.

I’ve related my dreams in reverse order here; the lionesses were the last. In the first, I got lost inside a building – a school? – with the lawyer-priest with whom I job share, and we wandered around empty cinderblock stairwells looking for unlocked doors. I have dreamed this before (though my colleague has never been there), and I knew while I was dreaming that it would pass.

I don’t know that I think dreams really tell us anything about ourselves. In recent days I’ve been wrestling with a decision that seemed to have at its core the mantra “Know thyself”; I have been trying to decide if I should try to make a change that appeals to the secret seed of ambition and adventure in me but that may require tasks that are so at odds with my fundamental, unchangeable nature that the change might fill each day with hurdles that unrelentingly feed my sense of anxiety. I am far more Piglet than Pooh, and while I might prefer to be Pooh-like, I know I am not.

In thinking about my dilemma, I stumbled across Gretchen Rubin’s excellent “Being Gretchen” post on The Happiness Project about accepting herself, including her limitations, but knowing that there is some loss in such acceptance. I agree very much about the importance of self-acceptance, and I appreciate the sense of loss. But how do you know when to challenge the part of you that has perhaps become too comfortable, the habituated self who sidesteps change just because it is different from the familiar self you have become accustomed to? Certainly being true to oneself does not require rejecting new experiences, but does it create the risk of steering clear of experiences that challenge our habits and our engrained perspectives? Does growth sometimes require consciously stepping beyond the comfortable and familiar – or is such action irreconcilable with the philosophy of “know thyself”? Surely scale matters: changing how you spend the afternoon will have lesser consequences that making a major life change that involves shedding some of what is familiar and comfortable.

Even in framing the issue that way, though, I am not sure if that’s what is at stake. It is hard to tell if I might be overdramatizing. In any case, I made a decision yesterday to pursue this change, though I do not know the likelihood that it will come to pass. We shall see.

In the meantime, the weather has turned cool and windy, and, to the pipsqueak’s delight, the cornfields around us have been full of large and noisy farm machines. The squeaker has doggedly been going off to school each day on the school bus, though he has a litany of concerns about school: he does not have friends. He is lonely. Other kids can read better than he can. He does not like waiting for the bus that brings him home because he waits all alone; it is the last bus. I’ve shrugged off all these worries (“You’ll make friends. I’m sorry you are lonely. You will learn to read just as well as anyone else, it just takes time. I’m sorry you have to wait for the bus, but that’s the way it is.”) But the complaint that gives me pause is his feeling that he is left out of things. He says he does not feel part of the group.

I feel that I know very much what he means, as I have always stayed on the margins, too. I like to think that I stay on the edges because I prefer it there. I am an observer, not a joiner. When everyone wants to do a particular thing, that alone makes me want to do something different. Something in me makes me resist being part of the group, even if a part of me feels vaguely sad about being on the edge. I feel like I belong on the edge, though sometimes I wish I wanted to be in the middle of things.

My husband questions the genuineness of what the squeaker is expressing; he thinks perhaps he is just echoing things he has heard in movies and in books to justify his general trepidation about school. But something about the simple words he chose to describe the feeling – and the way the feeling resonated with me – makes me think that he does feel that he is not exactly part of the group in the classroom. And that leaves me wondering: do I try to teach him how to join them, how to participate? Or do I try to help him see the beauty of being an observer? Is it his essential nature as an observer that he is discovering? Or is it just that he doesn’t know how to be engaged with the other kids, a skill he will learn with some practical experience? Is it again a question about “Being Gretchen”?

Rub

2009-09-24T12:00:00.000-04:00

Last night I could not get the pipsqueak to go to sleep. He nursed for a while, and then wanted to nurse some more (“Other side, please”). Then I told him that it was time to sleep. He was still and quiet for a long time, and I thought he must have drifted off to sleep. I curled up, and then I heard this little voice in the darkness: “Rub. Rub feet.”

So I took his little feet and rubbed them and rubbed them. I could see his long lashes resting against his cheek in the darkened room, so I figured he’d closed his eyes and fallen asleep at last. But no....”Rub. Rub.” I rubbed his smooth little back, his round little stomach, his pudgy little knees, his sweet little feet.

The squeaker used to curl up right next to me, nose to nose, with his little hand woven into my hair and his tiny toes against my leg. Cute, but it drove me nuts sometimes. I could hardly move. And if I did manage to move, he scooted after me – even in his sleep! It used to amaze us that he could do this. I think he was drawn to the warmth of another body. Now, he goes to sleep in his own bed in his own room (by himself even!), though he doesn’t usually stay in his own bed all night.

The pipsqueak seems less dependent than the squeaker was at this age. The pipsqueak usually nurses until I make him stop, and then he rolls away from me, his little round arms clutching his stuffed dog. Sometimes he sits up and looks for me in the night, but he does not seem to have the same need that the squeaker did for constant physical contact. We used to kid that the squeaker would “track” us at night so that he could stay close, but the pipsqueak does not do that. He seems to like his own space.

Part of me is very excited about the night that we will move the pipsqueak to his own bed in the room that he will share with big brother. It will be cool to tuck them in at bedtime and then have time to ourselves without kids around. I like the thought of the two of them snuggled into their beds, each boy confident of his brotherly ally if a monster slithers from the closet. I like to think of them having quiet time together, and waking up ready to play...while mama and papa get a little extra sleep.

But I do not regret the co-sleeping. It is so cozy to hear that tiny little voice in the dark: “Rub. Rub feet.” Someday there will be no more baby feet to rub in my household, so I’ll take all that I can get.

Excited!

2009-09-23T06:44:00.001-04:00

The pipsqueak is ready to burst with excitement about his upcoming birthday party. You would think we talk about it all the time, but we’ve actually said very little. He does catch on to the key phrases quickly though. Last night at dinner, he says, “Party. My party. Couple of weeks.”

“Yes, and that’s a good while,” we told him.

“A good while,” he repeated. Then: “One minute, one minute!” (Complete with little urgently pointing finger.)

“No, no. Not one minute. A couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks,” he repeated again, very solemnly. Then, “Excited! Excited! Birthday cake. Where is it?” And he squirms around in his high chair, looking around for the birthday cake. I wish I had had a video camera.

The squeaker spent yesterday assembling a book. Over the last week or so, he drew the pictures. Then yesterday, we stapled the pages together, and he narrated the story while I wrote it down as fast as I could (though it was nearly impossible to keep up with him. It did help that he kept getting stuck on particular phrases.). Perhaps I will share a few of the best drawings here later this week. But the book is definitely classic squeaker: it is all about various monsters, and how they are destroyed (and sometimes dismembered) by the book’s heroine.

The squeaker is still very meek when it’s time to get on the bus. Yesterday was a rough day for him. The little girl who usually sits next to him on the bus sat with someone else, and then he got in trouble at school for talking when he shouldn’t have. Both mama and papa were short and impatient with him, probably because we are stressed about other things going on in our lives. Yesterday at bedtime, when I hugged and kissed him good night I told him I knew he’d had a rough day. He seemed so very small and sad. I hope today is better.

Yellow Light Yesterday...But No Tears Today

2009-09-17T14:11:00.001-04:00

So the squeaker had a pretty bad day yesterday. By noon, his grandma had called me three times. One of those times, I talked with him, but he was crying so hard that I couldn’t understand him. But it was clear that he did not want to go to school, and he was sad and upset about it. I told his grandma that she had to put him on the bus no matter how much he was crying. I could tell she hated doing it, but she did it.

When he got off the bus later that afternoon, he seemed pretty cheerful. We went inside and I checked his folder, where there is a little “traffic light” that tells me if he was good (“green light”), a little naughty (“yellow light”), or VERY naughty (“red light”). Every day so far, green has been marked.

But not yesterday. This time, yellow was marked, and the teacher had checked “called out.” When I asked him about it, he got kind of upset. He told me he cried about it at school (which made me sad). When I asked him what happened, he said that he had seen a beaver or a hedgehog from the bus, and he was very excited about it. He said that he got in trouble for talking about it in class. That made me even sadder. I hated to think of him being all excited and then getting reprimanded for it, even though I figured the teacher probably did what she had to do to quiet him (he does sometimes talk over people, and trying to stop him just makes him talk louder). My husband asked him if the teacher had warned him multiple times, and the squeaker said that she had. He seemed very sad about it, so my husband reminded him that he needs to remember not to call out and we let it go at that. Later in the evening, he told me he hated school. But I think he was still smarting about the yellow light. I do wish it hadn’t happened since he is already struggling with school, but I suppose it’s also valuable to learn that even when he makes a mistake, it isn’t the end of the world. It won’t just be shrugged off, but it’s also not a great big deal.

He also said that lots of kids got in trouble yesterday. Some kids were apparently reprimanded for playing rock, paper, scissors (which the squeaker described as some strange game that you do with your hands that he didn’t really understand, LOL. He was very baffled by it.).

Today went better, apparently. No tears, though I did get an anxious phone call from him just before he got on the bus. But no tears is an accomplishment.

The pipsqueak, on the other hand, had a GREAT day yesterday, even though he is still jealous when big brother gets on the school bus. Apparently, he told his grandma all about his PARTY. He told her it was “in a few days,” and he named a bunch of the people we invited. I have no idea how he knows this stuff. He must absorb a lot more than I realize.

Get Your Goat

2009-09-16T07:15:00.001-04:00

So let’s see, what are the latest exciting things going on?

First, we have a goat on the lam (ha ha). One of the goats (Tom) simply will not stay in the goat pen. I’ll look out the window and see him wandering around the pen, happily munching on poison ivy and other delicious treats that are unavailable to a penned goat. You can almost see him making little sidelong glances at the other three goats who are stuck in the pen, and they oblige him by being practically beside themselves with indignation. But here’s the kicker – when I hurry outside to put Tom back in the pen, by the time I get out there, he’s already back inside, blinking innocently at me like he has no idea why I’m huffing and puffing through the yard in such a rush. So not only does he slip out – he slips back in when he decides that it’s a good idea (i.e., lunch may be on the way because that human is coming out of the house now!).

BUT, yesterday I caught him red-hoofed as he tried to escape, so now I know how he’s doing it. Our goat pen is cattle mesh nailed to a three-tiered split rail fence. Below the bottom rail is a fairly large expanse of untethered mesh, and in some places, there is more slack than there probably should be. By working it with his head (and horns, I suspect), Tom can get the mesh to curl inward a bit. Then he drops to his boney little goat knees, slips his nose under the curling mesh fence, and shimmies out. I guess he probably gets back in the same way. I have no idea why the other goats don’t follow him to freedom. He’s definitely not any smaller than they are – in fact, he’s a bit bigger, probably because he spends so much of his time snacking outside the goat pen. But I have noticed that when I try to slip in the pen to give the goats food and water, they are much more anxious to push their way out than they used to be. Clearly, Tom’s advantage is driving them nuts and they want some outside snacks, too. I wish we could let them because it would be great to clear our land of poison ivy, but I have serious doubts about them coming back into the goat pen once they are all out. On his own, Tom is unlikely to travel far because he likes to stick close to the (penned in) herd. But if they all got out, I think we’d be in trouble. So my husband bought some stakes (not “steaks,” as we explained to the hopeful squeaker) to secure the loose mesh. We shall see if it works. Now that Tom has tasted freedom, he may be a very determined escapee.

Second, the squeaker’s quiet passivity about school seems to have evaporated. Now, school days consist of much crying and complaining of a stomach ache. Yesterday when I put him on the bus, he was sobbing. The bus driver looked skeptically at me, and when I started back up the driveway, she called out the window, “He’s still crying. Is that OK?” And I said yes, because what else is there? I can’t keep him home just because he doesn’t like change. I’ve talked with him to be sure there isn’t some good reason for his resistance to school, like a mean teacher or a bully. And when he comes home, it seems that he didn’t really mind the reality of the school day. But in the morning, when the prospect of school looms, it seems to take on larger proportions than it ought, and he is left feeling very sad but unable to explain why.

It doesn’t help that he does seem to struggle a bit with making friends. I assured him that many, many people find it difficult to make friends, including me. And I told him that it can take a while to get to know people well enough to feel that you are friends with them. He does talk about a little girl who sits with him on the bus, and he also talks about a classmate named Jade. (In preschool, his first little friend was Skye, so I am wondering if he is drawn to little girls with exotic names. Oh my.) Interestingly enough, Jade is the only child in school who the squeaker has told me had to move her name from “green” to “yellow,” meaning that she must have gotten in trouble for breaking some rule. He has also said that she is kind of mean, or at least he said that at first. But yesterday he said he thinks they might be becoming friends. It’s all very curious.

But as for the crying, I do recall a week or so of tears after it sunk in that school was the new reality, so maybe we are in for the same thing with kindergarten. He does talk positively (when he talks at all) about the activities he does there, so I am not too worried yet.

We are preparing for the pipsqueak’s second birthday party. The pipsqueak LOVES birthdays. Not his own so much; since he’s only had one, and as it was half a lifetime ago, I am sure he doesn’t remember it. But he loves other people’s parties, especially the cake and the singing. His interest in books continues to grow. He utters these funny little sentences, like “I like cars” and “I want a brownie.” It just amuses me to hear this little bitty person talk so perfectly. It’s funny that some people, including strangers, understand his speech perfectly, while other people may not even recognize it as speech. Usually the latter are impatient types who aren’t all that keen on toddlers. The best thing is to ask him to tell a story. Then he runs around, hopping or spinning a bit here or there, and babbling a constant stream of words periodically punctuated by “Like that!! And like that!” I’m afraid he also has a very full arsenal of naughty words, and he uses them freely. (“Oh, fuck. Car broken.”) I need to do something about that. When it comes to words, I’m kind of fuzzy on that good/bad stuff, I suppose.

And that is all for today. There is more on my mind, but not yet, not yet.

Talk Talk

2009-09-09T12:01:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, when we took the squeaker to see Ponyo (a great film!) at the movie theatre, I overheard the father of a very young child talking to the girl in baby talk. I think she was probably two or three years old (a surprising number of very young children filled the theatre, and though I was admittedly skeptical of their ability to sit still, most did amazingly well and were quieter than the squeaker). “Come to da da,” said the girl’s dad, trying to get her to move through the row of seats. His tone, his inflection, his vocabulary were entirely different from his normal speech when he talked to his little girl.

Anyway, it struck me because we have never done “baby talk” in our house. It’s not that I find it objectionable or anything like that; in fact, I’ve read some theories about a positive role it might play in both language development and baby-mom bonding. But for whatever reason, we just don’t do it. We use regular words to refer to things, not baby-ized versions. We eschew “potty,” for example, in favor of “toilet” or “bathroom.” We use the actual words for body parts. We try to avoid referring to ourselves in the third person, Elmo-style.

Both of my boys have been pretty early talkers, for which I am very grateful. I don’t know that anything I did encouraged early talking, but we do talk a lot in our household. Sometimes I realize that I’m narrating pretty much everything I’m doing when the kids are around (and even when they’re not). In the grocery store, I talked to the boys even when they were tiny newborns (“So what do you think, should we have tacos or spaghetti? I’d rather have tacos, but your papa would probably prefer spaghetti....”) So maybe this encouraged early speech, or maybe my boys are just wired that way. Rarely do they make grammatical mistakes like “Me do it,” which I hear from many other little kids.

The pipsqueak’s speech has been very amusing lately. He’s got this new thing about “helping” all the time. If he sees something that needs done (groceries to be put away, toys to be cleaned up), he’ll exclaim “I’ll do it!” or “I’ll help!” (an attitude I hope is a very long term one). He will not be dissuaded no matter how much you try to intervene. So we get treated to the sight of this very small person huffing and puffing while he tries to do some impossible task, such as lifting a overloaded laundry basket or moving a piece of furniture. It’s obvious that it has not occurred to him that he might be hindered by his small size. Eventually, he’ll gasp, “I can’t! I can’t!” He’s become so very talkative!

And he loves talking. When I'm on the phone, he follows me around begging: "Talk! Talk!" Of course, if I put him on the phone, he beams but won't say a word!

Scary Songs and the Ju Ju Monster

2009-09-03T11:26:00.002-04:00

The squeaker told me the other day that things had gone "awry" for the pirates sailing across the sea in his game. Where does he get these words??

Recently he's been excited about the Mariner's Revenge song by the Decemberists. He loves when the whale eats up the ships, and he's intrigued by the whole story of betrayal and revenge. Earlier this week, I found a Lego movie version of the song on You Tube, and he thought that was great. The song is definitely not tulips-and-butterflies ("tie him to a pole and break his fingers..."), but maybe the squeaker just has sophisticated (pathological??) taste. He loves songs that tell a story; otherwise, I don't think he has all that much interest in music.

The pipsqueak loves the song, too, though I doubt it makes a bit of sense to him. He made me laugh so hard yesterday that I had to wipe tears away. Unfortunately, it was a moment better suited to video than prose, but I'll record it here because I want to remember. :-)

We often call the pipsqueak "Ju Ju" -- a nickname he also uses when he refers to himself. So his papa was saying, "Ju Ju" in this deep, scary voice, just to be silly. The pipsqueak shook his head vigorously, saying 'Like it! Like it!", which (due to the head shake) means he doesn't like something.

"What don't you like?" asked his papa.

And the pipsqueak intoned in a similarly deep scary voice: "Ju Ju!!"

Now, of course, we want to tease him by doing it because it is so funny to hear him adopt the scary voice.

Big Yellow School Bus

2009-08-28T07:15:00.004-04:00

I was more worried about the squeaker's first day on the bus than about the first day of school. I knew that on the first day of school, the squeaker was aware that I was in the building, nearby, and that I'd take him home since we had come to school together. There was a sense of togetherness about the day that was cozy and comfortable. But I thought he might find the moment of separation at the end of our driveway more unsettling -- getting on that big yellow bus all by himself to head off into the great unknown.

It didn't help that I scared him with some warnings about staying away from the bus when it was moving and never, ever fooling around near the bus wheels. I've been haunted by some bad accidents that I've read about in the past involving school busses. So I've told him to be very careful, and I made him anxious about it without meaning to.

Still, yesterday afternoon, we stood at the end of the driveway and waited, and he was very calm and happy. When the bus finally arrived (quite late, though the driver assured me she'd be on time on future school days), I barely got to say goodbye to the squeaker in the bustle of getting him across the street and on the bus. But he never hesitated or looked back. He climbed the steps and chatted with the driver a minute, and then he sat down. He looked very small to me.

I thought maybe I would feel very emotional about it, but I didn't. He seemed ready for an adventure on his own. And I have only good memories of climbing on the school bus to head off to kindergarten, so I don't see it as something traumatic. I don't even really feel a sense of loss. He's only gone for a short time each day, and I work on some of those days anyway. And when I don't work, that's the pipsqueak's naptime, and since I curl up with the co-sleeping pipsqueak, the squeaker is usually left to his own devices anway.

I guess I am actually pretty excited for him. New friends, a nice teacher, a great school, developing as a reader, field trips. When he was in preschool, he was teary a few times during the first week, but then he was fine -- for me. It was harder for his grandma. He has more fun with her than he does with me (which is kind of painful to admit), so sometimes he resisted school on the days when she had to take him.

Today is the first day she will have to help him onto the school bus. I hope it goes as smoothly as the past two days of "firsts" have. She is feeling much more emotional about him starting school, which makes me wonder what is wrong with me. Should I be feeling all upset about it? Why don't I? I know he is "growing up," but that doesn't really make me sad. He is an awesome kid, and I love the little person he is growing into. I do feel a little wistful when I recall the best moments of his babyhood and toddlerhood, but I suppose I don't feel all that sentimental about it. I am too excited about the future. His future.

Earlier in the day yesterday, before I went home to help him onto the bus, I stopped by the school to drop off some paperwork for the epi-pen to the school nurse. When I stepped into the nurses's office, I could hear a child sobbing. It was a little girl, maybe a first or second grader, and she was trying hard not to cry. But every few seconds, her shoulders jumped with a suppressed sob, and a sad little sound escaped her lips. She was sniffling miserably. The nurse was on the phone with her mom, explaining that the girl was having a bit of a meltdown, and that the guidance counselor was on the way but the girl wanted to speak to her mother first. The girl did apparently have a slight fever, but it was hard to tell if she was really sick or just upset about school.

Listening to her sadness, I thought I was going to cry. She sounded so lost and forlorn, and she was trying hard to be brave. I so hoped that I would not get such a call about the squeaker. I hated to think of him feeling lost and afraid or getting so upset without the reassuring hand of a familiar family member.

If he had trembled or shed a tear as he got on the bus, maybe I would have felt more emotional. But his little brave determined face, his quiet excitement, made saying goodbye easier. It didn't feel like we were saying goodbye as he reached some huge milestone, with childhood behind and a whole new life ahead, or anything so melodramatic. It felt like saying goodbye so that he could go off for a little while and have an adventure -- and then come home, still my same little squeaker. And so he did.

First Day of Kindergarten

2009-08-27T06:27:00.002-04:00

Well, I survived. So did the squeaker.

He was his usual understated little self. I left work early to get home to take him to the 1 PM session. He is an afternoon kindergartner, and usually he'll take the bus. But yesterday, they had a shortened session for the kids while the parents met the reading specialists in the cafeteria. The kids learned about bus safety and took a short ride, and then that was it for the day.

We got there a little early and waited in the health unit to hand over our epi-pen and benadryl, along with all the other allergic and asthmatic kids. And there were a lot of them! It made me feel less self-conscious about the squeaker's peanut allergy. More importantly, it reminded me that the school nurse deals with these issues all the time. She didn't seem at all unsure of herself, and that was good.

Then we went to the lobby to wait until the squeaker's class was called to line up. His teacher had said that the kids could bring a favorite stuffed toy or doll, so the squeaker took baby dragon. (I told him that baby dragon MUST be a vegetarian for the day -- no eating the other kids' stuffed dogs and bears and dolls. The squeaker replied that baby dragon is ALWAYS a vegetarian, which was news to me.) We had previously been told that parents had to stay in the lobby while the kids went to their classrooms. But now the assistant principal said it would be OK for parents to walk to the classroom, too.

It was interesting to observe the different demeanors of the kids around us. Some were in their mothers' laps, looking sad and forlorn. Some were a little clingy. Some were excited to be wearing new clothes and shoes, and they didn't seem fazed at all. The squeaker just stood quietly, holding baby dragon and looking around. He was neither clingy nor excited. He was OK holding my hand, but he also didn't mind standing by himself. When his class was called, he went right up and stood in line. I did not go with him, but then other parents did, so I trailed along behind. He didn't look back, though, and he didn't seem anxious at all. When he got to the classroom, I could hear him explaining to his teacher that baby dragon was his special thing, and that baby dragon was ready for school. And that was it.

I went to the cafeteria and talked with some other parents. And an hour and a half later, the squeaker's class showed up in the cafeteria, and we headed home. He told me that he'd had a good day. I asked how the bus ride was, and he said that baby dragon had told him to stand up. "Uh oh," I said. "Does that mean you got in trouble for standing on the bus?"

"Oh, no," the squeaker replied. "I didn't listen to him. Baby dragon just wanted me to do that because he doesn't know any better, but I knew not to do it." Whew.

Today is the first REAL day -- picked up by the bus, arriving at school alone, staying for the full amount of time, and then coming home on the bus. We'll see how it goes!

Smooth Operator

2009-08-21T13:01:00.001-04:00

The pipsqueak has provided a lot of entertainment lately. This morning, I think I got a little peek into his dreams. He has this little glass heron that he really loves for some reason. He calls it his “ducky,” and he carries it around. I am sure that I shouldn’t let him do so because it could break quite easily, but he adores it, and it’s hard to come between a toddler and a beloved toy. Lately, he’s wanted to sleep with it, but I tell him it must sleep on the nightstand. I’ve explained that it is breakable and that he must be gentle.

My warnings must have stuck with him because he was still dreaming this morning when I changed him, and he talked in his sleep. “Ducky. Throw it. Broken. Sad. Ducky. Broken.” I kept patting him and telling him that Ducky was OK, but this was mostly because it made ME feel better to comfort him. He really was too asleep to hear me. He didn’t actually seem all that upset, although he did keep saying “Sad.”

Last night, before bed, he told me he loved me. This is a trick that he’s picked up from his brother: when mama seems mad, disarm her with a little love. Since we co-sleep, it’s important to me that the pipsqueak has a perfectly dry diaper at bedtime. I thought it was wet after we’d read the loader book three consecutive times (!!), so I got up to change him (“Like it, like it,” he complained – he means “Don’t like it.”) But when I took off his diaper, I discovered it was still dry.

At least until that moment it was dry, anyway. Then he peed. While I frantically tried to contain the damage (remember, the diaper was off!), shouting “No, stop, no no, wait!!” he looked a little anxious (“Peeing. Peeing.”). I suppose he was afraid I was mad, because he pulled out the big guns, just like the squeaker does when he knows I’m about to begin shouting: “I love you.”

Except that this was the first time he’d ever said that. I was so startled that I stopped and stared at him (while he continued peeing). And then he put his arms out and said, “Kiss?”

What was I getting mad about again? A little pee?? It was all good. These little boys are very smooth.

Germs Everywhere

2009-08-20T13:05:00.000-04:00

The pipsqueak has an ear infection, and he’s taking an antibiotic. I think this is the first ear infection for either boy, and I confess to a vague sense of failure about it. His right eye was looking kind of red and swollen, and goop was accumulating in the corner of his eye. I thought maybe he had pink eye. We waited to see if it would go away, but instead it seemed to get worse, and he became increasingly cranky.

So Friday afternoon, we took him to see the doctor. He must have very bad memories of vaccinations, because he is wary the moment we set foot in the doctor’s office. Then he falls apart completely when he has to get on the scale; maybe that confirms to him that we are at That Evil Place. The assistant tried to do a few things, but he was shrieking, “All done!! All done!!” the whole time, so I’m not sure what she was able to ascertain. But then the nurse came in, listened to our explanation, and looked in his ears (while he sobbed “No! No!”), and she said he did not have pink eye, and that the problems in his eye were due to an ear infection on that side. She said he needed antibiotics, and when I asked if it might be better to wait and see, she said the eye symptoms meant we were already past that point.

Still, he seemed so much better in the hours afterwards that we did wait a little. When it became clear that it was not going away easily, we started the antibiotic. It smells awful – kind of a sickly sweet cherry smell – and he absolutely hates it. It’s a 10-day course, and every dose is painful. It seems to bother his stomach because afterwards, he puts his hand on his fat little stomach and says sadly, “Belly hurts.” But the stomachache seems to go away quickly. His eyes are looking much better, but he still seems a little cranky to me. Maybe that is to be expected, as it seems likely that the antibiotic itself could be making him feel a little off.

I don’t know. I’m feeling a little anxious about the swine flu. It’s not so much that I think it’s particularly dangerous. But it does sound like it will be everywhere this fall, and with the squeaker starting school, he seems bound to get it. And every illness like that means complications for his fluid-filled ears and his apparently vulnerable lungs. Ugh. He always seems like such a healthy kid...and then some relatively minor bug leaves him coughing for weeks.

I have been sick this week, though so far the boys don’t seem to have gotten the virus (unless the pipsqueak already had a subtle version of it, leading to the ear infection). When I told the pipsqueak I was sick, he said, “Band aid?” At first I just laughed because I thought it was cute, but when I thought about it later, I wondered how he made the connection between sickness and an injury meriting a band-aid. Certainly we’ve never offered a band-aid to him for sickness.

Anyway, we saw Ponyo over the weekend, and even though I felt so chilled that I had to wrap myself in a sweatshirt on a 90-degree day, I enjoyed the movie. There were lots of very young children there, but they were all very good. The loudest kid was probably my own – “Is that the bad guy???” “What is she doing?” “Will he be able to find the fish again?” “Where is his mama???” We kept shushing him, but he is so used to watching movies at home that it doesn’t seem to occur to him to whisper. We’ll have to work on that.

A Giant Problem

2009-08-14T07:47:00.002-04:00

That's the title of the new "Beyond Spiderwick" book that the squeaker's papa is reading to him.

Says the squeaker to his papa: "What does that mean? Does it mean that there is a problem with giants, or that there is a really big problem?"

Papa, realizing for the first time that the title is a play on words: "Um...both."

That kid surprises me every day.

Dutch Wonderland

2009-08-13T07:57:00.001-04:00

Our Pennsylvania home is near Amish country; in the next county (Lancaster), across the Susquehanna River, it is common to see the horse-drawn buggies and the traditional Amish dress. There are some Amish people in the eastern part of our county, but there are much larger Amish communities across the river.

One of the peculiarities of Lancaster is Dutch Wonderland, a theme park for young children with lots of rides and a small water park. Despite its name, not much about it is Dutch. There are, however, a few odd displays of “traditional” Amish scenes, with creepy robotic figures behind glass moving around while a recording provides voices and sound. I never visited it as a child; my very left-of-center parents recoiled at the idea of a theme park. But Dutch Wonderland is often recommended to parents of young children in this area, and my in-laws think theme parks are a delight. So last year we visited with the grandparents, and the squeaker had a great time. So we went again this year, this time accompanied by both the grandparents and the cousins.

I tried to take pictures, but most of them were blurry shots of the squeaker flying by on various rides. Because the squeaker is very small, he could not go on all the rides. There were some rides that his cousin could go on but the squeaker could not, even though his cousin is only three months older. This grated on the squeaker’s dad. He wanted to take him on some rides even though the squeaker was really a tad too small (maybe an inch), but I insisted that I thought it was a bad idea. I assume that the seat belts and safety latches are meant for people of a certain size, and I was afraid the squeaker would slip out and fall if he was too small for the ride. Probably not a real concern, but I just didn’t see the value of taking such a risk just for a few minutes of being spun around on a ride.

Plus, the squeaker didn’t really care. If there had been a lot of rides that his cousin could do but he couldn’t, it might have been an issue. But there were only a few. Generally, the squeaker was pretty fearless (though I did see some intense negotiating going on at the top of the slide, which probably looked pretty innocuous until the squeaker found himself standing on the platform). I think he had a great time.

The pipsqueak, on the other hand, found the experience to be something of an emotional roller coaster. The first ride he went on consisted of these little round cars, which go around in an oval; at the small ends of the oval, they whip around in a way that throws the rider around a little. The pipsqueak was not impressed. He started crying even before the ride started because I don’t think he liked being belted in. Then they had to stop the ride to get him and another sobbing toddler off. I was disinclined to put him on any more rides after that. But while we waited for the other kids to ride the log flume, the pipsqueak saw this airplane ride that went around in a relatively slow moving circle. It went fairly high up and then moved around, but it wasn’t very fast, and it wasn’t terribly high. He enjoyed watching it, and then he started waving to the people riding it. Finally, he said, “Ride it.” So we did. He looked pretty horrified when they lowered the safety bar onto his lap, and he clung to me. And as the ride circled around, he looked slightly alarmed. But when it stopped, all he could say was, “Again! Again!” Interestingly enough, repeated rides prompted the same sequence of emotions: excitement, trepidation, alarm, and then enthusiasm for another go-round.

However, his enthusiasm for the airplane ride was nothing compared to his love of the Turnpike ride. On the Turnpike ride, he got to drive – not ride in – his very own car, and he will never be the same. His papa accompanied him as a passenger, but the pipsqueak did all the steering. When I asked his papa if he enjoyed it, his papa replied that the pipsqueak was a study in concentration. He gripped the wheel and stared ahead. The cars were quite large and they had noisy engines (which I’m sure the pipsqueak liked). A single rubber rail in the center of the “roadway” kept them from being steered too far to the left or the right, so as long as they continued to be propelled (via a pedal, which the pipsqueak’s papa pressed throughout the ride), they would advance in the right direction regardless of the skill of the driver. I rode with the squeaker, who also concentrated fiercely. He enjoyed it, but not like the pipsqueak. When the pipsqueak’s turn ended, I could hear him shrieking “More! More!” even though our car was a distance behind his.

He sobbed as his papa carried him back to our wagon, and when his papa set him down, the pipsqueak collapsed in misery, crying “More car...mine...more car. Drive! Drive!” Eventually he sat up and looked around, big fat tears still streaming down his face.

And then Lo!, a car pulled up right next to his wagon. It was a park employee, riding around to keep an eye on things. His car was not quite like the car that the pipsqueak had driven, but he didn’t care. His face lit up; they had listened and brought him a car after all. “Mine. Car. Now,” he said firmly. And then the employee drove away.

The pipsqueak was inconsolable.

Into August

2009-08-05T07:15:00.001-04:00

I can’t believe that it’s already August. How does summer fly by so fast? Spring creeps along so slowly, and winter is endless. But June and July always feel like the blink of an eye.

The squeaker has yet another kindergarten assessment next week, this time to provide the teachers with information about where the students are in their learning. In April, the kids were evaluated for kindergarten readiness, but this evaluation focuses on the skills of those kids who were deemed ready. Two weeks after the assessment, the squeaker will start school. I’m supposed to go with him on the first day. Then, I’m to put him on the bus to attend his second day alone. That’s going to be a very odd moment. It’s hard for me to imagine him functioning without the guiding hand of a parent. Will he stay in his seat on the bus? What will he do when the bus gets to school and it’s time to get off? Will he know what to do? How much help will he need to get to his classroom? He does still seem so immature to me in some ways. He wanders in an unfocused way, often more engaged in his imaginary world than in the reality around him. I keep wondering: what if this school thing doesn’t really work? What if it’s a disaster?

But I guess it won’t be. It’s funny that I used to think boarding school sounded almost cruel – why would a mother send her kids away? While I still think it would be too much separation for me, parenthood has given me a new perspective on it. It can be so hard to step back and let your kids find their own way. There is this very hard-to-shake tendency to take their hands, to point them the right direction, to guide them with a very firm hand. I can see how it would be extremely beneficial for a child to have a chance to develop into his or her own person without mom or dad hovering nearby, always controlling. There seems to me to be great value in the chance for failure, and sometimes that chance only comes if mom and dad are unable to intervene.

As for the pipsqueak, he is talking like crazy. In the last few days, he’s started saying, “Mama, where are you??” when he wanders around looking for me. It’s really the only sentence he says, but he is also pairing words together. Last night, I gave him steak and pasta for dinner, but he was having none of it. “Bread. Please,” he insisted throughout dinner. So I made him eat a few little bit of steak for each small piece of a buttermilk biscuit. The kid really loves bread, from pita bread to tortillas to rolls. Even with the bread to bribe him, I couldn’t get him to eat much. So when I was ready to carry him upstairs for bath time at 7:30, I was amused but not really surprised when he gave me this very earnest look and said, “Goldfish. Please.” I told him no, he couldn’t have goldfish crackers, and I explained that it was because he hadn’t eaten his dinner. He thought about this for a moment and then tried again: “Cookies?” No, I said. He looked crestfallen. I didn’t even know he knew what Goldfish were!

The pipsqueak loves food, but he is not as good an eater as the squeaker. The squeaker loves salmon, shrimp, broccoli, steak, tomatoes, most soups, and cherries. He’ll eat most things that are put in front of him, though he does have preferences. He’s not a big fan of pizza, and he doesn’t like spicy things like chili or tacos. He also doesn’t like foods that involve too many different things mixed together, which is his other objection to chili and tacos, and also lasagna. He’s happy to eat the components separately, though, and I think he’ll grow into eating “mixed” food.

The pipsqueak has great enthusiasm for food, but he has an amazing sweet tooth. The squeaker likes candy and cookies and cake; the pipsqueak adores those things and wants little else. He does like bread and cheese, and he will eat broccoli and carrots. Sometimes, he’ll eat fruits like grapes or cherries. He’ll eat chicken only in breaded nugget form. And he loves bread very, very much. Most of the words he learned early on were food words. I think he is going to be a hedonist. Give the pipsqueak some music, dancing, and food, and he is happy. Add a motorcycle, and he is super happy. (Every car trip involves him peering hopefully out the window, looking for motorcycles which he points out with glee.) I have a feeling that he is going to cause his parents a lot of stress. Back to that boarding school idea...

Back From the Beach

2009-07-28T08:48:00.008-04:00

We've been on vacation with my family. The squeaker and the pipsqueak had a blast with their three cousins, two of whom are close in age, and one of whom is older (which inspires much awe in the little ones).

I wondered what my boys would think of the ocean. After the car wash incident, I thought the pipsqueak might be fearful. But no, no, no -- the pipsqueak was as fearless as the squeaker. Maybe more so. While their little cousins stayed far, far away from that noisy, crashing ocean (which meant my sister was able to relax in a beach chair!) my boys made a beeline for it. The squeaker ran in the surf, throwing handfuls of sand in the water and shouting, "Good one, Poseidon!" when a wave knocked him down. The pipsqueak simply ran full tilt at the ocean, and when we held his arms in the water and let the waves wash over him, he shrieked, "Again! Again!" while giggling like mad. Every morning he woke up saying "Ocean. Fun."

We tried to show them how to build sand castles and other cool things, but the squeaker was far more interested in destruction than construction. He'd rather be the dragon, swooping in to level a village and its castle than a king constructing a castle. This caused some consternation (the girl cousins were determined builders with a dark view of wild dragons), but it all seemed to work out OK.

The beach house was crowded and full of ants, but it was a short walk from the beach. At the end of the week I was pretty worn out and ready to go home, but when I woke in my own bed the next morning, I felt so sad that we have to wait another whole year. The pipsqueak seemed to feel the same way; when he awoke saying "Ocean. Fun." and I told him it was all over, his little face fell. "Sad," he said. Sad indeed.

Reading!

2009-07-17T07:19:00.001-04:00

The newest, most exciting news is that the squeaker can READ. He is not very proficient yet, and it is still more burdensome than fun for him. It may take a good, long while before reading feels like leisure to him. But in the last week or so, I’ve noticed that he GETS it. He understands the concept of sounding out words, and when he tries, it’s clear that the words are no longer just a jumble of letters to him. He knows, theoretically, how to make sense of them, though his efforts are still very nascent, and thus quite clumsy. But I am excited for him. I really got chills down my spine when I realized something had clicked for him!

Books have always been such an important part of my life. I can remember so many long summer nights when I would read in bed all night long, or winter days of snuggling in a chair with a book, or long rides in the car while reading (I was always lucky to be able to read in the car!). I was an early reader; my mom says I started reading with proficiency at age 3. She remembers the first book I read. My husband and I spent many, many hours when we were dating driving around and talking about our favorite books. I majored in English, and the main appeal of law school for me was that modern law is all about the written word. I hope that he will love reading. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a child as enthusiastic about books as he is, but it is being read to that he loves. He has long resisted our gentle efforts to encourage him to read. In fact, he has told us flat out that he doesn’t want to read. I’ve been able to appreciate that, to some extent – it is lovely to relax while someone reads to you, and I know he has worried that if he can read himself, we will no longer read to him. Plus, he perceives being read to as pleasure and reading to himself as work, and that certainly seems true of reading in early stages.

But he just loves books. His father orders him many books from Amazon, and he checks the porch nearly every day to see if there is a package. When there is, he opens it with enthusiasm. Yesterday, two new Spiderwick books arrived – “Beyond Spiderwick” books, actually – and he was beside himself about them. He paged through them carefully from beginning to end, even though most of the pages have no pictures. It’s as if he just loves the way the words on the pages look, and loves knowing there is a new, untold story embedded there. I cannot wait to share all my books with him. I am going to try to be patient so that he develops reading skills at his own pace -- he is still reluctant. But I am delighted to know that when he looks at a written word, it no longer is a meaningless jumble to him. He knows how to decode it, and that seems like an enormous step to me.

Time Marches On

2009-07-15T13:15:00.003-04:00

Lately, the pipsqueak has seemed so very big. He and the squeaker played in the playroom yesterday while I made dinner, and when I checked on him, he was sitting on the floor with this puzzle we have where the wooden pieces have a metal button on them, and you use a fishing pole with a magnet to lift the pieces. He was ever so carefully using the pole to lift the pieces, and he just looked like such a little kid, and not a baby anymore.

Yesterday, he also said "chocolate milk" very clearly, and then he looked extremely pleased with himself.

He is 21 months old now, and his second birthday is on the horizon. Last year when we went to the beach, he crawled around a bit but was mostly happy to sit on my lap. This year, he'll be running after the seagulls with big brother. Just one year. It's amazing what a difference that year makes in babyhood.

We've been getting rid of baby things that we have recently realized have not been used in months. Time to get rid of the crib, the glider, the playpen, the breastpump, the bjorn...I guess we'll be hanging onto the stroller, but that's about it. We use the wagon more often than the stroller, but it seems premature to get rid of the latter.

It is definitely bittersweet.

All the World's A Stage

2009-07-09T07:18:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, the squeaker caught a frog. It was a teeny, tiny brown frog, and he was holding it when I got home from work. The pipsqueak did not like it one bit (“Scared!”), but the squeaker was ecstatic. I told him to release it into the woods, and I hoped it wasn’t too squashed. It’s important to me that my boys both love and respect the natural world and the living things in it, but I also don’t want to be draconian about that when good intentions are present.

The squeaker spent the rest of the afternoon as a frog, leaping around and looking for bugs to eat. The pipsqueak enjoyed telling the tale of the frog (“Froggie. Awww!”) but he left out the part about being scared.

We’ve been thinking a lot about things the squeaker can do – music lessons, foreign language classes, art classes, martial arts classes, and so on. He takes swim lessons and enjoys them, and swimming seems like a good activity for a child as uncoordinated as he is. His papa also got him a bike recently and we’ve been pleased to see that he can actually pedal it. Steering while pedaling still seems to be a challenge (we spend a lot of time watching him and yelling “Turn! Turn!”, and he did run over the pipsqueak once), but he is working on it.

I don’t really want to enroll my kids in a gazillion activities, but as long as whatever he does is meant to be fun and not too serious, I think some activities would be a good idea. However, he has absolutely no interest in music lessons (and virtually no interest in music, despite a family pedigree that would suggest otherwise). He is mildly interested in painting or drawing monsters, but art holds little appeal outside of that. I don’t think he’s quite ready for martial arts, though we will probably eventually do that because he is so very tiny (only 30 pounds) and some physical confidence would be a very good thing.

So lately we’ve been musing about enrolling him in some kind of drama program. It would seem to be a good fit for a child who is always pretending to be something or somebody else. I just don’t want to spoil his games of the imagination with too much structure...or self-consciousness. But I think he might like acting, and it would be nice for him to meet some other kids whose imaginations are such a prominent part of their lives. There is a little theatre program in the city near us, so I’m thinking that I might look into it.