Monday, December 29, 2008

The battle between good and evil

Jamie has responded at some kind of core level to Star Wars, and it seems clear that it is so because he is fascinated with the idea of some elemental engagement between the forces of good and bad. While he is very certain that Yoda is his favorite Star War and has the appropriate level of interest in Luke Skywalker, he is also very curious about Dark Vader, as he calls him (this rather appropriate malapropism reminds me of his previous use of "shark teeth" for all sharp teeth). He has all kinds of questions about why Dark Vader was good and is now bad, but he seems very understanding of the idea that it was a bad decision that Dark Vader made, rather than some inherent evil. There's room for forgiveness here. He asked Santa Claus to bring me a red light saver (also an appropriate slip!) for Christmas, so we can now stage the battle ourselves. It is reassuring to me that Jamie is very definite that the light side must always win, even if that means experiencing defeat dozens of times a day.

It can be a bit exhausting at times, however, because he wants to apply this to all things. He has come to understand that I like sports and that I often root for one team or another. He now asks which one by demanding to know, "which is the bad team?" Given that the Costello family views North Carolina/Duke basketball games in very much the terms of the title of this post, this is rather perceptive, but I'm trying to make him understand that there are times when the fate of civilization is not at stake in a sporting event.

A pair of jokers

As noted previously in this space Jamie seems to see his role at dinner as providing entertainment while everybody else eats. Connor mostly likes to enjoy the show, but lately he has been getting very jokey himself and the two of them just crack each other, often with the very same joke repeated endlessly.

There is a girl at Connor's school with whom he is great friends named Amelie. One day he came home calling Sarah "Mom-elie" and Jamie "Jam-elie" and oh, how he laughed at that. Then yesterday I took him downstairs to get him ready for bed and said, "OK Connor time for pajamas." "No!" he said "Time for VA-jamas!!!" And then he laughed and said "I joking DADA!!!!" Crazy times.

Jamie has also discovered the knock-knock joke. His delivery needs a little work though. In the first place, upon hearing this, Connor started saying "Ding-dong" and now Jamie's picked it up, so he says, "Ding-dong!" "Who's there?" we dutifully provide.
-"Orange," says he.
-"Orange who?"
-"Banana"
-"Banana who?"
-"Orange you glad I didn't say orange?"

Or sometimes he just keeps saying banana.

Friday, December 26, 2008

The fascination continues


Jamie has been into castles and knights for some time. He views knights as a sort of early super hero and the whole pageantry business seems to fascinate him. Also, swords are like light-savers, as he calls the weapon from Star Wars, so they must be cool.

He had been asking for sometime for Santa to bring him a castle, which Santa duly did, though not the accompanying 2-headed dragon. So this morning he got up and started playing with his castle and had some questions. This was further prompted by having heard "American Pie" in the car yesterday. He was very interested by the references to the King and the Jester, so he wants to know what the knights do, the jester etc. Sarah did some explaining and then he asked, "Are there really knights?" (He does a lot of this these days trying to figure out what's real and imaginary.)And then he asked, "Are there really knights in the castle of New Jersey?" Now Sarah was confused. She tried to gently suggest that she wasn't sure that there was a castle of New Jersey, but he vehemently protested, "No, Mom, Connor and Dad and I all saw it." Soon she realized he was talking about the Medieval Times restaurant in Lyndhurst which we drove by. New Jersey truly is a magical place!

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Winter wonderland




Yes, we have very little of real winter to experience here in Tejas. Usually "winter" means temperatures in the 40s and everybody rushes to the mall to buy a sweater since they packed away the one from last year in March. When Sarah and I visited Ft. Worth the February after Jamie was born it snowed the night we got there and it was cold the whole weekend so the snow stuck. In our minds now Ft. Worth, since we've never been back, is like Canada. But we had never seen it snow in Houston until...The Blizzard of 08!!!!!!!!!! OK, that's overstating it, but after threatening all day, it snowed for about 3 hours tonight. We had been telling Jamie all day that it might, and we were beginning to despair of it happening while the boys were still up, but about an hour before bed it started. We rushed to put warm clothes on in the fear that it would stop before we could get outside.

But it just started snowing harder. The boys were immediately screaming with delight and I can't say that Sarah and I were much less excited. We walked to get the mail and around the block and Jamie squealed with with delight and announced every flake that went into his eye, nose, ears and mouth. Connor proclaimed "'now AWESOME"!

And then almost immediately said "Want go home!" Seems he was cold. We offered Jamie to stay outside and play some more and he said, "No that's OK. My hands are freezing! I want to go in too." Ah, these boys are just not conditioned to the cold.

Different kid, different sleep issue

Many of you have heard of our struggles with Jamie's sleep issues as a two-year old. He started climbing out of his crib at about 20 months and the fight was on. It only ended about a year ago when he finally agreed to the big boy bed. Connor, on the other hand, still sleeps happily in his crib. With Jamie, once we put him in his room to go to sleep we wouldn't go back in there unless it was absolutely, impossibly unavoidable, because if we did and he saw us, it might be hours before we could leave. With Connor on the other hand, we can put him in there, forget something, go back in, tell him good night again and leave with no problem. It was also not until Jamie was almost 4 that we could put a blanket on him at night, whereas Connor happily "nuggles" (as he says) up under a blanket.

Interestingly, though, lately Connor has been taking a very long time to go to sleep. We didn't realize until one night I went in there an hour and half after he'd gone down and was shocked to see him staring up at me. "Go to sleep Connor" I said. "OK," he whispered and rolled over. While Jamie, no longer getting a rest time at school tends to drop off like a log now, it is common to find Connor composedly looking through a book in the dim light well after we've said goodnight.

Silent treatment

Connor, though agreeable and of a very sunny disposition, is also a very forceful, even stubborn little creature, though in different ways from Jamie. Disciplining him has proved interesting. As he turned two, he clearly had the idea that if he didn't like what we were saying he could just not listen. Inevitably, this led to conflict. Sarah instituted the "naughty step", to which we would send him for not listening. At first, this OUTRAGED him. He would just scream at the first mention of this sentence being imposed and the whole time he was relegated there. But soon, for whatever reason, he came to like the naughty step. It may have started when he started trying to send Jamie there. Jamie was not amused, you can imagine. But now he will gleefully disobey us and march off saying "I go Naughy step!" We're working on some alternate methods.

What's funny, though, is that Connor's method of having a temper tantrum is in essence to go silent and pretend that the rest of us don't exist. He drops his head a makes a kind of poopy-face and stares off into the distance. It's a real miscalculation on his part because a) it's fairly cute and we enjoy seeing the face and b)after Jamie's drag-out screaming tantrums, it's really quite easy to wait Connor out. Sometimes we actually forget he's staging a protest at all and go about our business. Eventually, he will come out of it at the offer of putting cars down a ramp.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Ho ho ho

Here are actual letters to Santa, as dictated to Mommy, who also offered a little help in polite forms of greeting such as "Dear Santa," rather than beginning with "I want":

Dear Santa,
My name is Jamie. I was good and I helped my mommy and daddy and I didn't wake my mommy and daddy up at night like I did yesterday and they were so tired and grumpy.

Please bring me a blaster, but mommy and daddy say no. Please bring me a castle. Can I please have a castle with some guys. I want some books from school like sharkpedia and superfriends and star wars. Can my daddy have a red light saber?

Love, Jamie
oh, and a batcave
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Santa,
I want Santa bring cheese. And a car.

Love,
Connor

Monday, December 1, 2008

Parental warnings

Like many parents of children Jamie's age, I assume, we struggle with his entertainment choices. His fascination with superheoes is so genuine and enthusiastic that we enjoy watching him get excited about new programs and discoveries. But, of course, we worry about what is appropriate for him. One thing that has impressed us ever since he has gotten into superheroes, however, has been his ability to understand the make-believe quality of it, so he is often non-plussed but things that we might think are scary. Sometimes we're a little sad I guess that he is already such a big boy, but recently we had proof that he is very much still our sensitive little Jamie.

On a chilly Saturday afternoon, Sarah and the boys found the Christopher Reeves Superman on TV. Jamie had never seen it and Sarah figured, here's a superhero show where there's not too much scary stuff to worry about. As the movie started, Jamie had lots of questions about why Superman's planet was getting to close to the sun and various details. But then as Superman's parents were sending him away and he realized they were going to die his questions became much more anxious until he proclaimed to Sarah, "Now I'm crying Mommy!" and then proceeded to do just that. She was pretty happy to console him and tell him no one would ever take him away from us.