The joys of travel

For some time now Jamie has been an excellent traveller. He has been clamouring lately for a plane ride, so while the reason for our recent trip up north was very sad, he was looking forward to the flight. Jamie is generally thrilled by transportation, so the fact that we get to ride the polka dot parking shuttle bus as well as go up in the airplane is great. Also, being on the plane, he has quickly come to understand, tends to mean that the normal rules regarding show watching and treat limits are considerably relaxed, if not altogether waived. But beyond this, his ability to find interesing things in almost any circumstances makes him a traveller of very good cheer and adaptability, and he is often complemented by other passengers. He is also very into helping with the luggage, which, to be honest, can actually make a real difference at this stage, as he goes from someone to be carried, to someone who can carry.

On this last trip, however, he did get a sense of some of the downside of travel. First, as we rode in the back of the polka dot bus early Friday morning and got bounced around he complained of a headache. He was pretty cranky as we got into airport and stood in line to check-in. We thought this was just tiredness and Sarah prepared a dose of the magic herbal rescue remedy that we have used for calming effect with some success in the past. In a sense it worked. It seems to have been the final straw for Jamie to throw-up from lingering car-sickness, which he did on the floor and my shoes. Once we cleaned it up though he felt much better.

On the way back, with just Jamie and I, we were comfortably seated playing with some new dinosaurs I'd gotten him for the trip when the plane encountered some fairly intense turbulence. This went on for much of the flight and for the first time Jamie was a little afraid. He handled it very well, though. When it would start to get a little bouncy he would immediately put away his dinosaurs, "so they don't get hurt." I think it was his way of sort of reassuring himself that he, put away in his seatbelt was safe too, and a way of controlling a situation, which clearly was beyond our control. I realized very soon that my constant reassurances to Jamie may have been doing much the same for me, as well as the person sitting next to us for that matter.

For his part, Connor slept for much of the trip back with Sarah yesterday. When they landed he picked up his head and exlaimed "Yook Mommy! We're on EARTH!!!!"

A little New York?

We are frequently amazed that we are raising two native Texans. I picture them going off to college and being nicknamed "Tex" immediately. That's cute, but not quite what we expected in life.

But there are some signs that there is a little New Yorker in Jamie yet. First of all, as we were driving from Newark airport to our hotel in Rutherford this weekend, he said, "New Jersey is beautiful! I love it! I want to live here!"

The notion that he has a certain fondness for the Tri-State area (just think what he would make of Yonkers!) was reinforced this morning. There is one store in town that makes what could legitimately be called a bagel. It has a certain authenticity, from the no-nonsense/cleaniness decor to the surly staff to the joyous fact that they make salt bagels. Jamie, to my great pride, tried one today and absolutely loved it. He nibbled away the outside of the entire bagel leaving only an irregular area from the middle without one single grain of salt left. Next, I'll try to get him some whitefish salad to put on there and we'll really know.

Say what?

Jamie has an impressive vocabulary, there is no question. His ability to mobilize terms like "pyroclastic flow" at appropriate moments is great, though it is matched by an anarchic drive to speak in nonsense, a language in which he is fluent. Sometimes we confuse the two categories. He came home the other day talking about a "sensorial decanomial." We had no idea what this referred to until we got these pictures from his teacher, in which he is working on the sensorial decanomial at school. Gotta love Montessori.

Awwwww....

Jamie and Connor have sort of been at each other's throats lately, fighting about seemingly everything, especially toys, since each one seems to decide that he only wants to play with the toy that the other one has at the moment. There are some moments of detente and mutual play occasionally, and even affection. One such moment occurred at bedtime recently.

Now to set the stage, one must be aware that although Jamie is very demonstrative with his friends, often greeting them with big bear hugs, his expressions of affection with Connor are perfunctory at best. For his part Connor's idea of hugging and kissing tends to be simply leaning forward and proffering a cheek or his shoulders to receive attention. But he has been very into the phrase "I love you" lately. He says this particularly when we put him to bed now. Sometimes after we close the door we can still hear him in there saying it for a couple of minutes. He really understand the sentiment, too. Sarah recently came to give him a quick kiss while he was eating and he responded to the kiss with "I love you too!" Very cute.

So on the night in question we told them as usual to give each other a hug. Jamie put his arms around Connor and seems to have realized how nice it is to hug Connor. So, suddenly he's giving Connor another big hug. Connor of course responded with a big, heartfelt, "I LOVE YOU JAMIE!!!!"

Gooaallll!!!!!

Yes, our experience of youth sports has begun, albeit in very gentle fashion. For a few weeks, while it was still hot (Texans only do outdoor activities when it is painfully hot), we participated in the primary soccer program at St. Catherine's. Jamie tended to claim that he didn't to go at first, but was then pretty enthusiastic once he was there. It was fun for us because he's talking to all kinds of kids, they are saying hi to him, he's joking with them, thus providing evidence that he has lots of friends at school even though he will report none of this.

Jamie's a little more coordinated with his hands than his feet at this point, but he gave it a good try. Some kind of turning point came when I started helping out by reffing/coaching his game every week. He was tickled by this and waited for the first moment when I knelt down to tie somebody's shoes (a major part of my role here) and took a running start and jumped on my back. This is one of his favorite ways to show affection to me and he seemed to feel after that he had a real stake in things.

So me and two teams of 4 4-5 year-olds. Interesting. It started out with Jamie, inexplicably, biting my shirt (another sign of affection, I guess). The other players were pleased by this and came forward to do the same. So I put a stop to that, saying "No biting the coach's shirt," which they all thought quite funny. But then a young boy named Will came towards me. I stopped him, but he said, "I'm not biting, I'm going to hug you," which he did. So I said, "Hugging the coach is OK," and we did that for a bit. Then we started to play. This goes about the way you can imagine, a great scrum, out of which eventually emerges a ball and one running child. The others follow. Often this is towards the goal but sometimes they simply shoot off the side of the field and keep going until stopped. Coaching involved some measure of the futile effort to get them to pass the ball but also a lot of consoling, for kids who received a variety of injuries, and some negotiating of feelings. One boy stopped playing, and made everyone stop, because he felt a girl had laughed after he was struck in the stomach with a glancing blow from the ball. So I had to bring them together and effect a conciliation. I also had to encourage some kids to try and put the ball in the goal rather than themselves.

Jamie generally did well. The first few weeks he tended to simply trail after the ball and he was not fast enough to catch the slightly older kids so got a little lost. But by the last week he started to get the idea of going where the ball/person is headed and that was good. He was also on a very weak team and actually seemed frustrated with the fact that the other three players tended to wander off to inspect pieces of mulch. Then he scored a goal and that was exciting. I have to admit that I sort of used my power to rig it for him. We did a free kick from near the goal line. I positioned him directly in front of the goal and without encouraging the defense to pay much attention, I told his teammate to pass it to him. But to be fair, he took advantage of the opportunity and kicked it on the roll and buried the ball in the net, some 2 feet away. He seemed highly pleased by this. Final score 8-1 other team, but that was the last goal of the season, so this will give the fans something to think about over the winter.

Using the lingo

Jamie is very sensitive to the meaning and usage of words and phrases. He asks what words mean all the time and is very quick to use them in context. Sometimes this results in very adult-sounding comments, many of which begin with "Actually..." or "In fact..."

Today, he used some of the lingo from the neighborhood. He and I were doing some work in the backyard and garden. Jamie was actually being fairly helpful, ferrying plants for me, watering and digging some holes. We talked about how happy Mommy would be to come and see the work we had done and he said "Yeah! 'Cause that's how WE roll!"

Maverick parents

Jamie and Connor have both been pretty politically aware, relatively speaking, this election season. Jamie was very excited to go vote with Mommy and happily proclaimed, "I'm voting for Obaaaaama!" Sarah told him she wanted him to remember this because it was a historic occasion. He said, "Oh I didn't know that. OK, I'll try to remember!"

Today coming home from school, he suddenly busted out with the question: "Dad, why lately you and Mommy have been saying the word 'mavericky' a lot?" To be honest I was a little too stunned to even answer at first, but I tried to explain it as mildly as possible. Then he said, "I just wouldn't like it if McCain won." He then mentioned a friend at school who was for McCain, so it was a good parenting opportunity to talk about diversity of opinion, blah blah. No, really I meant it of course.

We all watched part Obamercial the other night and Jamie asked alot about where Obama was and if was in Texas. No, we assured him Florida. Connor kept looking at the TV, saying, "That's Obama!"