Monday, January 6, 2014

Not Getting the Full Experience

This is my 300th post (fact). And since I haven't shared anything about my son in over a year (exaggeration) I thought I'd do that now to start the year off right. Not only is he the smartest kid ever to wear diapers (hyperbole) and a half-decent negotiator, but come February he'll be the youngest U.S. Senator in history (outright lie).

He just turned two-and-a-half, loves animals and books and letters and Muppets and is so well-behaved my cousin remarked that as parents we're "not getting the full experience." No, we're not. And it is awesome. Here are a few snippets from recent months:



Conversation at dinner between 2-year-olds (who had spent all day together):
Him: "Hey, you have a robot on your shirt."
His cousin: "I have pizza." (pause) "I have pizza."
~~~~~
Reading an alphabet book to himself:
"J is for juggling. J-U-G-G-L-I-N-G. Juggling.
K is for kite. K-I-T-E. Kite.
L is for drink. L-E-M-O-N-A-D-E. Drink."

~~~~~
At some point he found a 2-foot piece of string. Every once in a while, he'll pick it up, hold it between his hands, and twirl it while jumping non-stop from room to room. As he says, "I'm jumping rope."
~~~~~
Talking into a toy phone:
"Hi, Grampa. Are you too busy? Okay, bye bye."



Our house contains several burrows' worth of stuffed rabbits. One morning, my son dug through a couple dozen of them and found the only non-bunny in the basket — a small stuffed bison — and immediately claimed it as his own. They were inseparable for a week, including at bedtime, so it became the first thing he slept with. The following week he added a lion cub to the mix. The week after that, a dog. Then Cookie Monster. Now his bed also holds a rubber skeleton, a bookmark with clownfish on it, a long-expired glow stick, an alligator puppet with hard rubber teeth, a seal, a small plastic Oscar the Grouch, and a little striped cat from IKEA. Every night and naptime he confirms each item is still there, gathers them all under the blanket, and hugs them tight.



If you ask him, he'll say he loves our cats Penny and Schrödinger. But not our dog, Sonya. Last time he told us this we asked, "Why not? Sonya loves you." The tears started flowing, and he wailed, "I don't want to love Sonya!!!"
~~~~~
He finally knows to say "I don't know," meaning we've reached the end of his Yeah Phase. What was the Yeah Phase? Let me demonstrate:
"Do you know what this is?"
"Yeah."
"Okay, what is it?"
"Yeah."
"What is it?"
"Yeah."
~~~~~
He wanted a cookie. We'd told him repeatedly he needed to eat his dinner first. He responded with, "No. Cookie first, then dinner." This went on all meal, and he ate one solitary bite of pasta. After Denise had finished and stepped into the kitchen, he handed me his plate and said, "Here. You eat it. I get a cookie." I tell you, the kid is quick. I didn't learn that gambit till I was six.



I often have his stuffed animals and puppets talk to him. Then one night, with a puppet in his hand, he asked me to read him his book. I pulled out the book with his picture on the cover (and photos of our family inside), but he said, "No, my book." He repeated this over and over, getting more and more agitated, until I finally realized he was speaking as the puppet (who has no mouth) and asking for its book. Namely, Where the Wild Things Are.

Now he regularly talks for his animals/puppets and has conversations with them. He even has a designated puppet voice, lower and more gravelly than his own.1 And he uses his mittens as puppets.2 Or, if he has no puppet or mittens, he simply talks with his hands.

1 He's Batman.
2 Lately, his left mitten is a shark, his right one a train. Because of this.


~~~~~

Well, that's my son. Click on any of the above photos to see them larger. Or, if you're inclined, you can view all of his latest photos on Flickr.

18 comments:

  1. He's a cute kid, Nate. A rubber skeleton? Where on earth did you find that?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why, in the rubber graveyard, of course! Inside a rubber coffin, covered in rubber dirt.

      Okay, so it was actually just among our Halloween decorations, but that's not as interesting a story.

      Delete
  2. Oh my goodness! He is so clever (and cute)--a mini-Nate in the making (that would sound better if your first name started with M, or I could say Nini-Nate--does that work?)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A Mini-Mr. Wilson, perhaps? Although, that brings to mind Dennis the Menace... and just wait until he gets his hands on a slingshot.

      Delete
    2. Perfect! Nano-Nate it is.
      Thanks, Deca-Dad.

      Delete
  3. "Here. You eat it. I get a cookie." <---That's so awesome.

    I love the pictures and the stories. Like J.B. said, so clever and cute.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, M.J. And yes, it is awesome. And awesomely scary. If he's already worked out that ploy, there's no telling what he'll master next. Could be cold fusion, and my wife and I certainly aren't ready for that.

      Delete
  4. He's such a cutie! And beware the well-behaved one. Whatever you do, don't think this is a good reason to get him a brother or sister. My daughter was FABULOUS until 3 1/2 when she became a big sister and then proceeded to be hostile toward us for the next 13 years about the whole thing... I'm just sayin...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Just because it happened to you doesn't mean it'll happen to us. After all, I was a well-behaved kid, and stayed that way after my sister was born.

      (Then again, the real evidence against making him a big brother is my younger sister. When she was younger, not only did she throw hate around like it was confetti and sled down the stairs in a laundry basket, but she once hit my brother in the face with a baseball bat. True story. Second children are not to be trusted.)

      Delete
  5. He's stll adorable and now he's hilarious! That kid's going places

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. He sure is going places. Sometimes it's down the sidewalk at a breakneck pace, sometimes it's into my office to pull down one of my board games, and sometimes it's into the giant box of chocolates when we're in the other room. Thanks, Sarah!

      Delete
  6. Hmmm...I have 2 stuffed bunnies. One talks and the other doesn't but started his own blog. (Being a bunny with a short attention span, he quit after 3 or 4 posts. I must check and see if he still has followers.) Perhaps your son's animals and my animals can Skype sometime.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. An excellent idea. Just know it might not be the most stimulating conversation... For instance, with one of his cousin's puppets over Christmas all he said half the time was "I'm a shark."

      Delete
  7. That story about the bison's no bull.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Exactly. He keeps the bull in the barn downstairs.

      Delete
  8. Weren't you a bit sad when his Yeah phase came to an end? I thinks it's pretty cool to say Yeah to everything. It reminds me of a character in a Sam Peckinpah Western.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Actually, I didn't feel sad. 'Twas the opposite: I was happy my advice to say "I don't know" when he didn't know something had finally sunk in. (Perhaps I'm just not a big enough fan of Sam Peckinpah.)

      Delete