Forward motion

I am happy to update that Connor has indeed crawled: we witnessed the event Sunday morning. There have been a couple of times over the past few days where he seemed to have moved further than usual while we were distracted watching Jamie ping-pong around the room. But then we actually saw him crawl forward a couple of feet. I think here, as in so many cases, motivation was key.

Connor has a fuzzy blanket with which he likes to sleep. It is a small, square, giraffe-print plush blanket with a giraffe head and it can be rubbed vigourously along Connor's cheek to encourage him to sleep. We call this his "woobie," a reference to the movie Mr. Mom. Jamie, of course, has his beloved "orange woobie," a random orange T-shirt, which is very, very, very dear to him and Connor now has his giraffe woobie and he is very attached to it indeed. So anyway, it was in a quest for giraffe woobie that Connor finally worked out the mechanics of crawling. Actually, though, what he does now is move forward to a point where he thinks he is in range and then flops on his belly and reaches for the desired object. In this first case, however, he miscalculated slightly and when he flopped, the woobie remained about an 1/8th of an inch away from his little fingers. Good to be able to crawl, but good also to have people to help you out sometimes.

At a crawl

Connor's fascination with, and desire for, Jamie's toys, especially the cars, grows every day. This has led him to make real strides, as it were, with his mobility. He tends to sort of lunge forward and then somehow locomote himself on the floor towards things. He also seems to have developed those baby extend-o arms that reach things you think they never could. It's actually quite funny to see him placed in front of a basket of Jamie's cars because he looks so thoughtful and mature as he picks through them looking for just the one he wants. Then he sticks it in his mouth, of course.

What he has not learned to do, however, is crawl. About this we are conflicted. On the one hand, of course, we look forward to this important milestone. On the other hand we are aware things are a lot easier now that he can only move within a relatively small radius, and he shows every sign of being very nosy and inclined to get into everything he can once he can get further afield. As of now his attempts at crawling have produced only frustration and despair. He gets himself on hands and knees, with his arms locked, but then his hands start moving backward instead of forward and there doesn't seem to much he can do to stop them. Poor little guy just looks at his hands as if they were totally independent beings who refused to obey his will (pretty close to the truth) and then starts crying. I have to confess that this can be rather a funny sight, as much as we feel for him and rush to his aid. We comfort him, and ourselves, by telling him, borrowing a phrase from Sarah's younger sister, that we're not laughing at him, we're laughing near him.

Don't get too mushy

We had put Jamie to bed tonight and a few minutes passed before he emerged, as inevitably he does, with a request (a demand, really). Having met his needs, which in this case were too mundane to even relate, I gave him a kiss and told him I loved him. He said he loved me too, and then began a game we play where he says "you're not going to give me lots of kisses," prompting me, of course, to do exactly that. He said he liked getting lots of kisses from me so I gave him more. Then he said, "Okay, Dad, now let me sleep."

Future plans

There is a supermarket to which we often take the boys that has special carts with side-by-side elevated, front-facing child seats with steering wheels. These we call "race carts" of course. Now readers of this blog will already be aware of Jamie's preoccupation with wheeled vehicles, and young Connor seems to be going down the same road as it were. The boys sit up there steering happily as I bang into things (the cart is about half as long again as a regular one). I don't see them from the front too much but judging by the faces coming towards us they must look awfully cute.

This no doubt was what led Jamie to proclaim in the car yesterday that when he was bigger he would have real race car and it would have two steering wheels, one for him and one for Connor. Another future automotive plan emerges when asked what he'd like to receive on his 16th birthday. One will always receive the same answer: "A purple Audi" (see Suzanne's comment on the first blog!). I'm afraid Jamie doesn't understand about academic salaries.

Connor does an endo

Little Connor is becoming increasingly ambitious with respect to interacting with the world, especially as relates to Jamie's toys. He can't quite crawl yet and has faced some obstacles in getting there. One big problem, literally, is that at presenthis head weighs about as much as the rest of his body, if not more. This makes going from a sitting position to a crawling one difficult, because as he leans over there seems to be some threshold at which point gravity takes over and pulls his big head to the ground, which it hits with an audible thud (We make sure to keep him sitting on the rug). For a pretty good idea of what this looks like, refer to the scene in The Godfather, Part II, where they put baby Sonny on the stolen rug and over he goes.

This maneuver we've come to call an "endo" after the mountain biking term for going over the handlebars of the bike. It has become something of a spectator sport for Jamie who, when we may be a few feet away in the kitchen, enjoys proclaiming loudly "Conno' did a endooohh!" Sweet Connor is so mild-tempered, he usually doesn't even cry. One comes over to find him with one cheek mushed to the floor and his arms stuck under him, quietly looking around with the one eye that's pointed upward for somebody to come pick him up.

Hola!

Jamie speaks almost completely non-stop at this point. He also frequently seems not to hear anything we say (e.g. Jamie, please don't dump that water on the floor!). We are actually quite used to this for the most part, but the other day, particularly frustrated with this state of affairs, Sarah began speaking to him in French. This had absolutely no discernible effect on the boy, lending credence to the notion that, in fact, he really isn't listening, or just doesn't care what we say. Not long after, when Jamie again ignored a direct request from Sarah she said, a little desperately, "Maybe you really do speak another language!" He turned, smiled, and said with real gusto, "HOLA!!!"

Shades of lucky

On the way home from pre-school the other day, Jamie abruptly announced that a little girl in his class has two mommies. Sensing an opportunity to encourage open-mindedness and to emphasize the beauty of all kinds of families, Sarah said, "Well, isn't she lucky to have two mommies." Jamie agreed and said, in fact, "I'm not lucky, I only have one mommy." It was pointed out that he had a very good mommy indeed, and a daddy, and that that was pretty lucky. He was willing to concede the point but only so far: "I'm a little lucky," he said. "Not lotsa."

Interviewing the sitter

One night fairly recently, we had a sitter over for the first time in a while. Not, of course, that we were going anywhere together, since it is scarcely to hoped for that we might leave the house together after 7 PM, but we both had engagements that had to be kept.

Since Jamie is a little high maintenance as regards the bedtime routine (I'm putting it gently)and we weren't going to be late coming home, we figured we'd put Connor to bed and let Jamie and the sitter, Jen, watch the Cars movie until we got back. This, to be quite clear, is Citizen Kane, The Godfather and Star Wars all rolled into one for Jamie and can be watched over and over. We told him that we were bringing a friend over to watch the movie with him and that he would need to tell her all about it. So by the time she came, he was very excited about this viewing and his responsibility. When Jen got upstairs however, Jamie looked at her and then looked behind her and all around and said "Where's the little girl?" Must remember "friend" for Jamie usually signifies someone about 3 feet high.

Anyway, he began breathlessly filling Jen in on every detail of the movie, explaining the various characters, their personal histories, motivations and various intertwining plot strands. Literally mid-breath, however, he stopped and asked: "Jen, if I do a poopy, do you know how to clean my bottom?" Our James, you see, has recently mastered the potty, and so takes the matter very seriously.

Bad manners/Good presents

The background to this story is that Jamie loves toy cars. That understates it really.

We've been working on manners a lot lately with Jamie, with mixed success, albeit, but he has shown an interest. So we were riding home in the car one evening and Jamie wanted to talk about manners. Bad manners, actually, which turn out to be far more interesting than good manners. After bringing up a seemingly endless number of situations in which good or bad manners might be exercised, we asked him about presents. We agreed it was polite to say "thank you" when receiving a present, but asked him what he might do if he received a present he didn't really like, a piece of clothing perhaps. He replied matter of factly: "I would tell them they should put a car in there. Then I would like it."