Friday, September 28, 2007

More stories of stories

One holdover from Yavont is that whoever drives the boys to school in the morning is obligated to tell Jamie a story. It can get a little difficult coming up with new scenarios every morning, so Sarah came up with a very productive source of material: Toonces the Driving Cat, who is also a Cat in a (Purple) Hat. Jamie often determines Toonces's mode of transport for the day. Thus, over the past few weeks, Toonces, who drives poorly by human standards, but very well for a cat, has driven: a purple rainbow car he built with his friend Phil, police cars, a commuter bus, a school bus, many fire trucks (front and back), an ambulance, excavators, bulldozers, front loaders, dump trucks, cement mixers, a helicopter, a jet plane, the space shuttle and several monster trucks. Toonces has also gone hiking and took over a donut shop one morning, uttering, in meows of course, the unforgettable phrase, "Time to make the donuts."

Lately, however, this seemingly inexhaustible wellspring of stories has dried up. Jamie now demands a story "about Toonces, the driving cat in a hat, who is a guy and doesn't wear a hat and never drives." Fortunately, the last rule is not too firm and if you put Toonces, in whatever form, into a monster truck, you won't go too far wrong.

Monday, September 24, 2007

The joys of a bed

The falling-out incident of a couple of weeks ago notwithstanding, Jamie has really never looked back after getting into his new big boy bed. We noticed, for a little while at least, some slight tendency to sleep a little later in the morning and attributed this to the fact that he just had to be more comfortable on the new bed than he had been on a mat on the floor, or even, since he frequently rolled in all directions, just the floor itself. We didn't have too much material proof of this, however, until a couple of days ago when he asked Sarah: "Mom, why my arm doesn't hurt when I sleep anymore?"

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Goooaall!

A displeasing, but admittedly funny, postscript, as it were, to the previous post. Connor now also likes to yell "GAH!!!" (Goal!) when he throws food, which he does quite often these days.

Connor's throwing food, incidentally, pleases Jamie because he likes hearing us tell Connor no, instead of him.

He walks! He talks! He still only has 1 tooth!

Yes, Connor is progressing by leaps and bounds--well, small shuffling steps would describe it better. I arrived at school to pick him u on Friday and his teacher said, "He's been walking all day." "He doesn't walk," I said, but sure enough after couple of attempts he shuffled a few steps towards me, quite unaided. The teacher said that they could get him to do it by pushing a car in front of him. Just like his brother with the cars! To Sarah's not inconsiderable frustration, we can't get Connor to do it at home though. I think it must be the example of seeing toddlers all day that gets him in the mode. Here he just pushes his truck from Nana around until he hits something, then screams at the top of his lungs until we get him pointed in the right direction.

He has also been developing his vocabulary and song repertoire. the Lewerenzes gave him a little tractor with animals that plays "Old Macdonald." Very quickly we realized that as it was playing he was saying "Eeyaiyo Eeyaiyo." Now all he has to do is hear 2 notes of the song or catch sight of the tractor and off he goes singing. His stable of b words is increasing too: "ball" (Bah) and "Bottle" (Bah bah). Birds are still a favorite though.

One of the things we've noticed is that he tends to do whatever Jamie does, even though he doesn't understand why. For instance, Jamie loves to put things in the compartment of the seat of his rider truck and in the cab of a large toy pick-up truck named Clake Big (See earlier blog on Stories and strange names!). So Connor tries to do the same, but having no sense of spatial relations, he tries to put things in that are far, far too large and gets frustrated and angry. Jamie has also been into a kind of soccer game in which he runs around kicking balls and then yells "Gooooooal!" So Connor, sitting, throws the balls from over his head and yells "GAH!" And, having watched Jamie throw balls down to the first floor from the second floor landing, Connor pushed a rubber ball through the rails and watched it go down with great fascination. Then displaying his usual sense of timing, looked at me and said, "Byyye-byyyyyyyeeee!"

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Ouch!

Well, poor Jamie fell out of his bed 2 nights ago. We first heard the screaming and Sarah went down to discover the poor little guy had a gash next to his right eye, probably from hitting the corner of the dresser on the way down. So we've belatedly got bedrails on now. He had done so well I think we were lulled into a sense of false security. He seems to really like the rail there and actually slept sort of snuggled up to it last night.

We were scared at the time, but the cut is healing and he is otherwise fine. We were all up with him for a bit afterward and Sarah and I were worried about him having a concussion. She started trying to test him by having him cover one his eyes and watch her with the other. She tried to get him into it by calling it a game. At first he was tickled. He spends all day wanting us to play with him so the prospect of a game in the middle of the night was pretty excited. But very soon he said "Let's play a different game, Mom." It was about then that we started to think he was very much himself. Maybe he thought we were going to play "Candyland."

He got to spend the rest of the night in bed with Mommy, which was pretty great too. He immediately said that he wanted to sleep "REALLY CLOSE" to her. He lay on the side of his face with the cut all night, because that way he was facing her, and would only let her sleep so that she was facing him. Not that she had room to turn over anyway.

Monday, September 10, 2007

You'll always be Mr. Sillypants to me

During the first few months after Connor was born, many people asked how Jamie was dealing with it, of course. Although there was undoubtedly some emotional difficulty that was expressed in some potty regression, we were at first really pleasantly surprised at how well he seemed to accept Connor into the family, often calling him "my baby." He seemed to get a kick of Connor's baby habits and made up nicknames for him, like "Mr. Sillypants."

Since Connor has been on the move, however, things have gotten a little more ambivalent. Toys, of course, have been a source of conflict, especially since Connor follows Jamie exactly in his regard for cars above all else. Also, sitting in Mommy's lap has become a particular point of jealousy for both. Then the other day Jamie announced to Sarah: "I don't like Connor. I love him and he's still Mr. Sillypants but I don't like him."

Friday, September 7, 2007

Do as I tell you

Jamie has developed the very appealing habit of creating conversations between his toys as he plays with them. This must be nice because it is clear that we don't always say the things he wants us to. This was demonstrated in a recent exchange. First he told me to sit on the low window sill of our living room window, behind the chair. He then stood on the sill, only about 6 inches off the ground and said "Dad, tell me to get down." Well, I said I don't think you need to get down. "No, Dad, you have to tell me to get down," he said impatiently. So I told him to get down and figured that was that. But no, he stayed there and said "Say why Dad." "Okay," I said, "Why." "No Dad, tell me why I have to get down." "But I don't know why Jamie," I honestly answered. He sighed, "Tell me I have to get down so we can hide from Mommy." So I told him. Seems the whole thing was about playing hide and seek with Mommy, who was of course upstairs and had no notion that she was supposed to come find us. Even so, I stayed put until I had express permission to leave.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Big boy/little boy

Well, we thought the day, or night I guess, would never come, but Jamie has spent the last two nights in a big twin bed. No more sleeping on a mat on the floor, after almost two years. He has been saying for a while that our bed is cozier than his, but we mainly thought that this was a ploy for us to let him sleep with us, but he persisted and claimed to be ready for a big boy bed. We had heard such talk before only to discover that he would shy away at the last minute in favor of the little bed. This time, however, he was serious and saw it through with very little hesitation. Predictably, he woke up the first night having fallen in between the bed and the wall, but last night he stayed up the whole time.

He has been feeling his big boyness in lots of ways lately. When he first got back to school he was talking about having helped another child with something because he was a big boy. He also imagined that Connor wouldn't recognize him at school because he would be with the older kids. At the same time, however, there is clearly some ambivalence. Sarah was telling him the other day to eat so he would get big and strong and he answered that he didn't want to get big, he just wanted to stay a little boy. He likes to pretend that we are airplanes and we all fly around and we have to call him "Baby plane".

As happy as we are to see him cozily settled in a bed, which must be so much more comfortable than the floor, it is a little bittersweet for us too. This seems like one more tie to baby Jamie that has been lost. On the other hand he looks so small in that twin bed it helps us remember that he really is still a little boy.