I'm not bragging, babe, so don't put me down...

Really, I don't mean the following to come across as bragging about Jamie--though we are really very proud of him--more as reflections on how he has developed over the last couple of years.

Some of you have seen bits of this, but Jamie has really become a swimming star and we're not sure whether it's the cause or the effect, but it has coincided with a real period of opening up in terms of Jamie's personality. When we started him on lessons last year, he reacted at first with the sense of caution and reticence which we had come to expect from him. I don't think we worried about this, as such, but were sometimes concerned that it might inhibit his social growth in some ways, make certain things challenging for him. The breakthrough seemed to be when he managed to put his face under water. He was really proud of it, and it seemed to give him a real sense of confidence. Those of you who have been in a pool with Jamie since have seen demonstrations of this, especially the Bradys, whose pool is so often the site of them. And really, in the past year Jamie has become so much more outgoing and so fearless in a lot of ways that really impresses us. I think his lack of concern at being made fun of a little about his tricycle is one sign of this sense of self-control and confidence. We have always known that Jamie is a very sweet, sensitive little boy but this self-assuredness is really wonderful to see.

These reflections are prompted, in part, by his recent performance in an intensive two-week swimming class. The other kids in his class are 5 1/2, 7, 8 and 9 but Jamie is regularly among the most successful. One thing that was great was to see him scared to do new things the first day, but really soldier on and keep trying. He cried a bit the first day, but then the very next lesson suddenly he started to do the forward crawl entirely by himself in water is over his head. His teacher gives him a boost about 10 feet from the edge of the pool and then little Jamie just motors himself right over. It's quite a flurry of skinny arms and legs, but he gets there. He has some trouble with the coordination required for the backstroke and the breaststroke, but is completely game about trying it.

What's impressive is that he is so self-controlled. He swims with his head in the water, picks it up, breathes, looks for the edge, and when he's not there yet, he just puts his head back down and keeps going. The sight of his little face, beaming at us with pride as he picks his head up at the edge of the pool, is literally priceless. Nothing could match it. Nothing.

Bad parents

Well, as much as Megan was very congratulatory about Sarah getting the light-up Spiderman shoes, it seems we have dropped the ball on the bicycle. We have been plotting with Nonni and Diddy for some time to get a bicycle for Jamie for his 5th birthday. At school this week, however, they had bring your bike day and Jamie was the ONLY one with a tricycle still. Sarah has been losing sleep about it, fearing he would get teased. So we asked him how it went and he said two of his friends made fun of him about it.

But he seemed non-plussed. I asked what he told them and he said that he just told them "Don't make fun of me!" and rode off. I then asked if he told them that he was getting a super-hero bike for his birthday and he got a sort of sneaky, pleased expression on his face and said "No, I want it to be a secret."

Difficult concepts

Jamie is at an age where he has a good deal of information at hand, but not quite the conceptual ability to piece it all together in an understandable way. It makes conversations rather challenging sometimes. Here's an example: on the way home from swim lessons tonight I told him that his much-loved baby-sitter Merrill is coming tonight. This pleased him greatly and he began anxiously asking when she would be there. That is, asking if she would be there right when we got home. No, I said she'll be here in a little while. "How long?" he asked. "An hour and a half," I replied. "How much is that?" he asked.

Now, I was ready for the question and knew that I was required to supply a number of some kind. "90 minutes," I said, hoping that would settle it. But no, he pressed: "How long is that?" "I just told you I said." "No," he continued, already getting a little frustrated with me, "How long is that?" "Jamie," I said, "I don't know what else to tell you. She's coming in an hour and half and there are 60 minutes in an hour, so it's ninety minutes." Here the conversation threatened to veer into an Abbott and Costello routine. "NOOO!" he said, "I'm asking how LONG!!!" I stopped trying at this point and he spent the next minute or so mumbling in the backseat until proclaiming triumphantly: "I think an hour and a half is TWENTY!"

Making an impression

This doesn't concern the boys directly, but it seems close enough. Sarah recently went on a field trip, too, accompanying the class to the schnazzy new kid-friendly park in downtown Houston. In her group with Jamie was a certain young girl named Ravenne. Ravenne is one of the older kids in the class, and is a rather precocious young person with long curly brown hair and a distinctly fashion-forward sensibility. Well, Sarah introduced herself to Ravenne, who began giving her the fashion eye. "I like your shoes, Sarah" she said. "Thanks Ravenne," Sarah replied. "I like your shirt, Sarah," Ravenne next said. Then, "I like your bag, too." And finally looking Sarah in the eyes, after a pause, she said with some solemnity, "I like everything about you." Don't we all?

A quick note on Spiderman shoes

I chaperoned Jamie's field trip to the fire museum yesterday. I was responsible for Jamie and two other boys. Imagine my surprise, when I looked down to see that both of them also had not just Spiderman shoes, but light-up ones as well. So all three boys in the group had them, and interestingly, not one pair was exactly the same as another. Nice market, it seems. I said that I felt a little left out and that maybe I should get some, but no, they told me, that would be very silly.

Connor Costello, come on down!!!

Little Connor really enjoyed his birthday. He actually seemed to have grasped what was going on and would break into the biggest, goofiest grin of unallayed pleasure that I've ever seen anytime anyone sang happy birthday to him. In fact, he liked it so much he started singing "Happy Birthday to Connor" by himself at one point.

He also had a great time with the cake, as you can see. He tried to blow the candles out but didn't quite get the notion that one has to blow AT the candles for them to go out. Sarah made a wonderful homemade chocolate layer cake. Connor liked the cake, but really liked the raspberries with which it was adorned. He ate about half of them before I had to take the cake out of his sight.

The presents were also a real revelation to him. As Sarah observed, every time he saw a new present he looked rather like a contestant who's been called down on the "Price is Right"- a mixture of surprise, joy and deep materialist yearning for STUFF.

Who's the boss?

Yes, our dear Connor, who, as many of you know, is a very happy, easy-going spirit by and large, has been developing a definite bossy streak. This is mostly just a 2-year-old being a two-year-old, I think, but the contrast between his usual easy agreeability and this increasingly demanding streak is marked. Jamie has learned well to play on the former quality. When Jamie wants to watch another episode of Spiderman and we tell him it's Connor's turn to pick a show, he quickly asks, "Connor do you want to watch Spiderman?" Invariably Connor happily says, "Yeah, Mayer-man!" Too easy.

But as his desires increase, so too does his ability to inform us of how we should meet them. It started very sweetly at the Children's Museum. When he was done with one area, often just as one of us would find a comfortable place to sit, he would beckon with his fingers pointed downward, European style, and say "Mum-on! Read' to go!" Very cute. But lately at home when he wants us to come somewhere he says forcefully "'Tand up!! 'TAND UP!!!!!" and then tugs on us until we oblige.

Every so often he decides he wants something in particular and woe-unto-us if it can't happen. The other day we got a bunch of their toys out of storage, including a motorized Thomas the Tank Engine. Now, the trains we have had so far are those wooden ones that link together by magnets, so Connor is used to being able to pull the trains apart and reconfigure them at will. Well, this Thomas train has three cars and two of them do not detach. This made Connor utterly, hopelessly, inconsolably sad. And of course, angry at us, because CLEARLY it's all our fault.

Who is that unmasked man?

As I have noted, Jamie is fond of saying that his real name is Spiderman. Fittingly, he would like to wear his Spiderman costume everywhere he goes. We allow this when we can, but often we have to say no. Sometimes we let him wear the body part of the costume without the mask. We've explained to him, for instance, that wearing the mask to school might scare people because they wouldn't know who he was.

Jamie has been needing some new sneakers lately, so of course we've been thinking to try and find some Spiderman shoes. He added to this that he wanted light-up shows. Well, clever Mommy hit the jackpot and found light-up Spiderman sneakers (could it be that Jamie is not the only 4-year-old with this desire?). Jamie was very pleased and looked immediately forward to showing them off. Then he asked us, "Will people recognize me with these shoes on?"

He has a friend at school named Aiden Prusmack, who is big with the superhero stuff too. This morning Jamie declared, "I'm can't wait to show Prusmack these shoes!"

Loving the brother, pt. 2

Despite the usual conflicts, namely always wanting to play with the exact same toy, Jamie and Connor have been getting along pretty well lately. Connor idolizes Jamie of course, and Jamie, despite not letting Connor be a part of the superhero team, does seem at times very fond of his little brother.

At school last week they made collages by looking through pictures and finding things for which they were thankful. The results for Jamie were generally predictable: a pool, a car, a slice of pizza, race cars, a rocket ship. But there was also a rhinoceros
(can't explain that, but it's nice), and, a picture of a baby who looks surprisingly like Connor. Then, last weekend we had some friends over for a playdate and the mom, who has always rather adored Connor, jokingly said, "Oh, Connor I'm going to take you home." Jamie looked up in real alarm and yelled, "NOOOO!"

Loving the brother

A number of people, including ourselves, have wondered how Jamie would react to Connor's birthday, and the party, attention and presents that will accompany it. But we have been presently surprised so far. While there has been some sense of longing, Jamie is very clear that his birthday is November 7 and that is a few months off, and he seems genuinely happy for Connor. Today, Connor got a couple of cards in the mail and Jamie asked if he had gotten any. Sarah said no, and said that Connor would be getting a lot of cards and presents soon. Jamie said, "Because it's his birthday? Is he going to be 2?" Yes, Sarah said. Then as she was getting him out of the car he jumped up and gave Connor big hugs and kisses to congratulate him on the feat.

Then, tonight after he had been in bed for a few minutes, Jamie called up from downstairs. He knows that we will not mind coming down if he has a scary dream, but he's learned that we won't buy it if the "dream" comes 5 minutes after we put him down. So now he claims to have had scary thoughts, so we tell him to think of happy things. Tonight he said, "OK, I'll think about Connor's birthday party."

I suspect that Jamie also knows that whomever they are for, this is going to mean an influx of toys into the house that will benefit him. So it's not totally disinterested, but I do think he is genuinely happy for Connor.

Of superheroes and relativity

Jamie, to put it mildly, is into superheroes of all varieties. Spiderman is still the big one but Batman has an important role to play and Transformers and Ninja Turtles, too. There is quite a culture of playing superheroes on the playground of course, where he learned all of this. Yesterday I picked him up and he had been playing with his friend Austin, who is a little younger.

Jamie informed me that at school he was Batman and Austin was Robin, "Because I am big and Austin is small. But at home, Daddy is Batman and Jamie is Robin because Daddy is big and I am small." Connor, a natural fit for Robin, it would seem, is not quite eligible for participation.

A well-spoken almost 2 year-old

We have long marveled at Connor's ability to express himself verbally, or at least orally. He never really took to sign language like Jamie did as a baby, because very early on Connor seemed to be able to give voice to his feelings and needs. As he approaches two, we are still amazed at this. Connor does not like not knowing a word and is very curious about learning the names of the things in his world. While reading a book he will often point now and say "Was dat?" and the repeat the answer many times, until he gets it. Last night, after books, I put him in the crib and started to walk away and he sat up and said "Daddy, banky?" Seems he wanted me to tuck him in under his blanket, something Jamie NEVER let us do.

This was actually unusual in a way because more and more he also tends to speak in sentences rather than in 1 or 2 words utterances, which is very funny to hear. Connor really likes to roar and has been doing it a lot because Jamie has a little kids version of the The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, which we often read together. Connor just roars away at every picture of Aslan, but when Jamie did the same yesterday Connor, no doubt tired of Jamie's constant policing, said, "No, Ja-yee, don' roar!!" Jamie was a little taken aback.

He also walked up to Sarah with a plastic sword of Jamie's and tapped Sarah on the arm with it and said "Hit Mama!" and then had a good laugh. Sword people nicely we told him. He laughed again, a little maniacally.

I'm #2!!! I'm #2!!!

Many of you have asked, of course, about Sarah's reunion with the boys. Interestingly, while Connor seemed much more even keeled about the whole business, having got used to seeing the computerized version of Mommy, he was a little more ambivalent when she arrived. Jamie went running up to her and practically tackled her at the airport. Connor hung back a little and wanted me to hold him. He was a little shy around Sarah for the first 24 hours or so and would actually ask to come to me.

Very soon, however, the natural order of things was restored. We went to the Brady's today, revisiting the pool that was the site of great good times during Mommy's absence, with Connor clinging to me and then jumping from all sides of the pool into my arms. Today, however, he was sitting with her and when I asked him if he wanted to come jump to Daddy he looked at me like, "Are you crazy? Do I even know you?" Alas. Well, it was good being number one while it lasted.

Remind me again why we are doing this?

Connor is a wonderful mimic. His ability to recreate sounds on hearing has been noted before and continues to grow. He can recite entire books from memory now and can count to at least 13. He likes to do this before jumping, about which he is quite fearless. It makes things a little intense sometimes because he will starting counting and then sometimes at 3, sometimes 8, sometimes 13 will suddenly launch himself off whatever edge he is standing on.

Very much of this comes from watching Jamie, of course, and he will imitate any behavior, activity or language of Jamie's. What's funny is that it's clear a large portion of the time that he doesn't really know WHY they're doing it, but just that this is what they do. At dinner recently Jamie began playing a peek-a-boo game in which he chewed a hole out of a piece of cheese and peered through with one eye (never mind the table manners issue here for the moment). Connor was pleased by this so, he picked up a grape, stuck it in his eye and started saying "PEE-A-BOOOO!"

Then there is the exciting game "Heroes". This is a Jamie invention, of course, and starts with him wearing his Spiderman costume. I get to be the bad guy of course (Mommy gets to be Mary Jane - go figure), and it seems that bad guys in this house try to steal couch pillows. So I abscond with the pillows and Spiderman comes after me, first taking back the stolen goods then slinging webs and hauling me back to jail. Connor saw this once and then as soon as I started walking away with the pillows came running after me, chubby cheeks jiggling away, and grabbed a pillow and took it back to the couch. Batman has Robin and this Spiderman has Connor, whom we've started referring to as "Little Blond Sidekick."