Major promotion

I will blog more soon about some very positive behavioral developments with Jamie, but for now one very exciting development has been a real upswing in his treatment of Connor. They have been playing so much more together the past couple of weeks and it is now not at all uncommon to hear Jamie call out "C'mon Con, come with me!" Music to our ears, sweet music. Connor is of course thrilled with this and comes running, "I comin' Ja-jame, I comin'," he says.

There have been a number of other manifestations of this new affection, including Jamie calling Connor his "best friend" while Nonni was here last week. But the biggest, most unmistakable sign of Connor's new status is that he has FINALLY been named Robin to Jamie's Batman. Jamie had resisted this for a long time, and we had taken to calling Connor "Little Blond Sidekick." But now when we say this Jamie says, "No! He's Robin!!"

What a pair!

There's not a whole lot I could say that could compete with this picture from a recent trip to the aquarium. The boys are wearing the shirts Mommy brought back from France for them. They both like them a lot and ask to wear them. Connor will point to the drawer and say "ooof shirt?" Anyway, enjoy.

One step forward...

Connor has always been a talker. We never really did a lot of signing with Connor, as we did with Jamie, because he just seemed to gravitate immediately to verbal communication. These days, his language is increasing by leaps and bounds, but the more complex possibilities this opens up for him to tell us things, and for us to understand what's going on with him, the more challenges it presents and he comes up against the limits of his comprehension.

For example, he woke up this morning and announced to Sarah before he was even downstairs that he wanted a "waff-o" for breakfast, "not pan-CAKE". Very well, she said. So I took him downstairs, and as I was making the waffle, I asked him if he wanted jelly on the waffle. "No," he said, "Waff-o!!!" "Yes," I said, I'm making you a waffle. Do you want me to put jelly on it?" "No, no je-yee", came the answer. "OK, Connor, do you want me to put something else on it?" "No, put waff-o in mouth," (pointing to emphasize this, since Daddy is clearly stupid). So, sensing that the jelly question really wasn't being dealt with I put some on and he ate the whole thing.

Day two

OK, I promise I won't blog every day of Jamie's school life, but we want to remember all the details of these first couple of days and we have this cute picture of him being led off into school.

Jamie seems to have had a great day again. He was his usual silly self getting into the car, and I asked if it was "totally fun" and he said, "YES! Totally Totally fun!" I asked what he did and he said he sang zoo animal songs and played with toys. Then I asked if he'd played with any friends and he said "Yes, Jordan. No, Thomas. Thomas is a boy." I asked what they'd done and was a little off-put to hear: "We pretended to be dead." But later it came out that he and Thomas had raked the grass outside. I think the playing dead had something to do with the animals discussion, too.

One down

Yep, Jamie had his first day today at his new school. They are working on a gradual schedule, so this week he and the other new students are there from 8:15-10:15. He has been expressing a little nervousness about the new school and sadness about leaving his old school and friends, but on the whole has been pretty calm about the whole business. It's helped that a lot of his other friends from Pre-K are starting to leave to go to new schools as well. Plus he gets to go to the old school in the afternoon this week, so I think that has given him a comfort zone as well.

We were a bit nervous because at St. Catherine's does a curbside drop-off as one of the teachers or assistants walks all the kids from the car to the classroom and Jamie has always liked to have some lingering time for hugs as we get to the classroom. But he was non-plussed by the new system and was chatting away with his escort as we pulled off. And then, when we picked him up, we had a more or less best case scenario as he got in the car and said "That was TOTALLY fun!" Pretty proud of the little fellow.

We are not impressed

It seems there is a rash of people claiming they could swim faster than Michael Phelps, from pro baseball and football players to Cousin Finn. Well, add Jamie and Connor to the list. Given Jamie's immersion, as it were, in swimming of late, we turned on the Olympics during a swimming event to perhaps inspire and instruct him. When Sarah, remarked that the swimmers kicked really hard, Jamie said, "I kick harder than the E-lympics. I can swim faster." Connor then chimed in "I go fast!! I go fast!!!"

The Law Offices of Costello & Costello

Jamie, we think, has the makings of a fine litigator. He has an astonishingly long memory and, in cases where it serves his interests, his 4-year-old mind can be almost preternaturally logical. When, for instance, we are asking him to do certain tasks and offering a reward for doing them or a punishment for not doing them, he listens very carefully to the terms of the offer, often looking for loopholes. He is also very much inclined towards making deals. Dinner often becomes a site for negotiation: "If I eat 2 broccolis, 1 piece of chicken and all my avocado can I be done?" It can get very complex, but whatever deal has been struck he remembers it to the letter.

But one of his main skills is the search for precedents. He forces us to be very consistent in the application of rules, because id we have ever bent in the past he will remember it. This can sometimes be a little embarrassing. One thing Jamie likes to do is eat anywhere other than a table. A particular favorite is the couch. Seemingly food tastes better if it can be dropped behind the cushions or onto the rug. When Sarah told him recently to that we must always eat at the table because that is good manners, he quickly responded, "But Daddy ate breakfast on the couch yesterday!" Ouch.

By the book

It has always seemed to us a little bit like Connor got hold of a baby manual at some point and decided to follow it to the letter. As a baby, he would cry when he needed something and then stop when we gave it to him, just like the books say. Jamie, of course, would cry when he needed something, then cry when he got it, then cry some more afterwards, so this really never ceased to amaze us.

And the very day that he turned 2, Connor started acting exactly like a two-year-old. As his abilities and ambitions expand, he has gotten more and more impatient with not getting what he wants, and suddenly much more prone to have some really impressive tantrums. One thing he wants, of course, is to everything Jamie does. Most afternoons he stays home with one of us while Jamie goes off to swim lessons and this makes him so angry. The other day as Sarah and Jamie had gone downstairs to the car, Connor started to go down the stairs, after them, saying, not a little desperately, "I coming Mommy!! I coming Mommy!!" As he saw them go out the door, his face twisted into a mask of indignation. I was punished for this.

He has also expanded his emotional range in the expected ways. He has a greater capacity for understanding relationships, and has, not surprisingly, particularly latched onto the mother/baby dyad. All women are now Mommies and anytime he can pair something small and big, it is a mommy and baby. The other day at the park he found two rocks for instance, and said "Mommy rock." And then with exaggerated cuteness, and a cherubic smile, "Baaaabbbeee rock!"

Finally, he also seems to know that along with all of this 2-year-old-ness comes an accompanying set of expanded fears. He's gotten very touchy about loud noises and now knows the word "Scary" (comes out sort of "Saaiir-ee"). And just as when he says baby, he has a kind of exaggerated gesture to accompany this reaction, cupping his two hands under his chin and putting his fingers on his cheeks, while his brown furrows. This also often leads to a snuggly boy, which is very nice. Not that we like him being scared, mind you, but we're happy enough to enjoy the snuggles where we can get them.

Alert the media!

Well, Tropical Storm Edouard came through Houston. It was Jamie's second named storm and Connor's first. For a while it looked like it was going to hit Houston directly, and we were worried mainly about a prolonged power outage, but I have to say that the experience was actually quite pleasant. The storm jogged a little to the north and east of us so we weren't on the "dirty" side of it. What we got was a day of rather nice, steady, soaking rain of the kind that we rarely get in Houston, where it tends to not rain for weeks and then pour buckets and buckets down for an hour so everything floods.

The boys were home from school anyway so for the first part of the day we just cozied up inside and watched the rain. Except that we had to go out briefly because someone called and wanted to show the house. Then in the afternoon we went to the "Dinosaur Museum" (Museum of Natural Science) before heading to Jamie's swim lesson. Connor had a lot of fun with what he calls the "Waya-saurs", roaring away at the T-Rex. At some point we went through a section that had some displays in windy corridors and he would lose track of Jamie and I for maybe two minutes. When he saw us again, he would act like it had been AGES and say "HI DADDY!!!!" and come running up and give my leg a big hug. Very nice.

The funny thing was that earlier that day I had noted to Sarah that in anticipation of a big news day, the local media had fanned out all across the city (nothing gets them worked up down here like a storm-I think all the reporters think it's going to be their Anderson Cooper moment.) The best they could come up with were stories like people at the local Denny's who didn't have rain gear and had to walk 20 feet to their car. I'm not kidding: "Focus over there if you can, see... they're getting very wet!" GASP! So I said to Sarah that morning if we go out today there is a 1 in 2 chance we'll be interviewed. And sure enough the second time we went out we got approached by a reporter for the Houston Chronicle at the Museum. We didn't really have a lot to say, because there was NO STORY! Except that our boys are very cute.