Sorry for the six-day postless void, dear readers. I’ll blame report cards.
(Speaking of dear readers… all the cool blogs replace the word “readers” with something funkier. I’m thinking we must also be cool. What should we be?? Send me your suggestions, please!)
E has some new words. One of the special ones he’s learned since Christmas is gyroscope, because my dad gave Sean a set of space-age gyroscopes: they spin in an amazing way and demonstrate the principle of space flight!
Also thanks to Christmas, E has learned what a ukulele is, although at first he was confused because he thought we were saying “yoga lady” (Auntie Em has two statuettes we call “yoga ladies”, rather like these, in her room). Not really very similar to a ukulele.
Other turns of phrase he’s trying out:
Certainly, as in “I certainly do like peanut butter!”
Suppose, as in “I suppose it’s gonna be there all winter.”
Worried, as in “I was so worried of you. I was worried sick!” (Not sure he understood what he was saying, since he didn’t sound worried whatsoever when he said this to Auntie Beth.)
Plenty, as in “So many James McAvoys – we have plenty of James McAvoys.” (Auntie Em had been pointing out our communal boyfriend on the DVD cases that feature him. There are more than a few.)
Beautiful, as in “My truck was falling, and I did a beautiful catch!”
He’s also spelling things. Just in the last couple of days, he’s spelled U-M-A-O-E and T-H-T-M-R.
One of his favourite things right now is the colouring app on Daddy’s iPad (with which he is obsessed – we try not to overdo the screen time, but we have found the iPad magically lets him last through dinner at a restaurant, so that’s a bonus). He matches letters and numbers to colour in pictures, and when he’s all done, music comes on and animated music notes “float across it”. The other day when the music came on, he looked over and said, “Daddy, how are you not dancing?”
Of course, not everything makes us laugh. He woke up crying in the night recently and told us about the bad dream that really shook him up: “I’m scared of the curly thing… that’s bleeding!” That did sound scary. We wanted to cry too, but eventually convinced him the curly thing was gone.
Then there are the moments that make us just want to hug him forever. When he’s settling down to sleep, he has stuffed animals and his crocheted baby (his “friends”) that he likes to have with him – but his favourite comfort object is Mommy’s or Daddy’s arm. His hand crawls up our sleeve and he’s happy. At naptime recently, Daddy watched him take his baby’s arm and feed it up his own sleeve, so baby could be happy too. Sigh.
On Saturday, we finally got E a haircut that went well. He’s always refused to let us trim his hair when he gets shaggy, so we finally tried First Choice. The first time, there was some fussing, but he did surprisingly okay. The second time, Mommy wasn’t there, and he apparently sobbed tragically and had to be held immobile by Daddy. This time – he was fine. Amazing.
The next day, in time for Auntie Em’s birthday party with the family, he looked so spiffy with his new coif that I had to put him in some chic duds too. He was in a good mood for a party, saying, “I just wanna have some birthday-party-going.”. Here’s the resulting video:
More weird quotables:
Turning a plastic cup upside down and placing a pacifier on top: “How’s that for a water tower?” (Wha??)
In front of the mirror, doing a weird angular dance with mostly elbows: “Hi, I’m a lego guy!”
Waking up talking first thing in the morning, as he often does: “I’m happy to see Daddy. Hi, Daddy! I’m happy to see you. I’m not going anywhere.”
Asked if he wants to play with something new for a while: “No, I just wanna be normal.”
Commenting on someone’s hat: “Tomorrow, when you get older, it’ll be blue.”
Fiddling with his pacifier, which he found in his bed (he only uses it for sleeping, I swear! … and occasionally when he finds one unattended). “I have a dry one. This is a dry one, but I ate the fur off.” (Guess we haven’t covered the word lint yet.) “Yeah, I ate the fur off, so it could go in my real mouth.” Pointing to his mouth, in case I was uncertain. “In this mouth.”
He likes to tell stories, such as the following (we assume they’re imaginary):
As we turned onto College Avenue in the car (we often talk about what street we’re on): “When I was four, I had a College Avenue car. It had College Avenue on it. And it was sticky.”
Putting his stuffed animals under his blue blanket: “I have to put all my friends under the sea. They’re way under the water, because a crazy caterpillar is coming.”
Playing with the green coupon card I’d given him so he would forget about playing with my Visa: “When I was in Hamerica, there was a sandwich. There was a yucky one, too. And it went ‘{clicking sound}’. It clicked. And I had a Green Card.”
Referring to Duncan, one of the characters from Thomas the Tank Engine: “When I was Dumpkin, I used to say ‘Hello, Thomas!’ and I was a train.” (‘Hello, Thomas!’ in an appropriately jovial voice.)
Finally, there’s this jewel from a few weeks ago, transcribed at the moment of creation by Auntie Beth:
“I was talking about Dylan in the country.” (“What country?”) “A different country. The animal country. I went there, too. Uhhh… you went there, too.” (“What animals are in that country?”) Mouth full of peas: “Deers! Mmm! Mmm! And there’s horses, and there’s cows, schhhewp, and then, lemme think about it, there’s some a little bit tiny animals, at the Fair! There was cheep cheep cheep birds at the Fair! That Dylan lived in it! And lil horses, in Dylan’s story!, in Dylan’s movie! Hmmm! Hmm! Mmm! And apricots! It was a fat-day! Fata bau-dati! [sp] On Vixen! And GramPapa lived there! Mm mm! Baa, baa, the way a sheep does it! A lamb! Do you want some yogurt?”
– Fin –
***
Ooh! Those top two yoga ladies are exactly like mine! (My REAL yogaladies. These ones.) Except no broken hand on these. Ev was talking about those ladies once and told me what they looked like – distinguishing them by hairstyle. I thought he was making it up but when I checked later, sure enough, he had paid better attention to their hairstyles than I had.
I LOVE the Real Mouth and Fur story. aahhahahahahah!
He told me a story the other day (it MIGHT even be on video) about going to a place that, when I asked where it was, he said was “south and west of here.”
My suggestions for what you could say instead instead of readers:
“My children” (stolen from WKRP)
“my little blogites”
“my followers”
“subjects of my DI-ctatorship”
“my DI-ddlysquaters”
“my DI-hard fans”
“my DI-ff-suers”
“my DI-ngbats”
Cheers, Grin,
Mr. A.
…kibbles and bits?
…bananas?
…tree frogs?
actually lots of things sound good with “my little” in front of them.
diatoms
diatribe
diegeses
dielectrics
differentiators
digesters
digressions
dilatories
dillies
dilutions
dimensions
dimmers
dimples
diners
dinettes
diodes
Dionysians
diopters
dioramas
diplomats
dipoles
dipterons
directed students
disciples
discoverers
discriminators
discursives
discussants
disembodied spirits
disenchantments
dismembers
dissectors
dissolvers
divergent thinkers
divine messengers
diviners
divisors
DINETTES!!!
My real mouth is grinning!