Co-sleeping

This is a big topic these days. The boys are almost always angling for to be able to have some form of sleepover. The most common one is for me to sleep in a mattress in their room. This can be very cozy and I love that they want me to do this. I've gotten relatively used to the loud breathing/snoring that emanates from them all night. The only harsh thing about it is that Jamie wakes me up by jumping from his top bunk bed almost on top of me. Then he snuggles for a tantalizing moment during which time I imagine going back to sleep, before he unceremoniously gets up and not only leaves, but drags the blanket right off of me, so he can sit under it and read in the living room.

For his part Connor has been especially into sleeping with Mommy recently. A couple of nights ago he asked if he could sleep in her bed. Well, she said, where would Daddy sleep? He smiled brightly and said, "I'll show you," and escorted her out of the bedroom, into the guest room. He happily pointed and the futon and said "There!" matter-of-factly. Ouch.

The cutest thing though is that Jamie often wants to sleep with Connor. The success of this, recorded above, is very rare. Usually Connor can't settle down and stop talking so eventually we move him, which angers Jamie, who blames both us and Connor. For his part Connor doesn't much care for it. I suspect he realizes that Jamie has woobie-ized him a bit because he is impatient with the degree to which Jamie wants him to be merely present so he can go to sleep, whereas Connor wants to have some silliness. Sometimes, in moments of real frustration Jamie claims to want his own room, but the fact of the matter is he's pretty dependent on having the bunny in there with him and has admitted it a couple of times.

When we travelled to NY of course, they each wanted to sleep in a bed with us, which means in the end, not a lot of sleep for the adult. I think sleeping with Connor is worse. First of all he snores. Secondly, he has some absolute magnet to whoever he is sleeping with so you end with about 1/8 of the bed and a snoring child pressing his pointy little elbows in your rib cage.

House music

It's a little hard to explain why this one was so funny, but I'll give it a shot. There are a couple of elements to this, one being Connor's love of dinosaurs and the other his tendency to mix words up and make his own little versions of things.

So there is this beautiful pop-up dinosaur book we have, which is a big nighttime books favorite for Connor. It happened that he and Sarah read it a few times together and they began to make a series of silly games with the various pop-ups. The T-Rex, for instance, would try to bite Connor's and Jamie's noses and generally tear around roaring mightily. Then it would argue with the Archeaopteryx on the next page, taking objection to the notion that it could be related to a chicken. For the Anklyosaurus, sort of an armored tank kind of dinosaur, they started making it dance by pulling the book open and shut. The next time I read it to Connor, I was aware that they had developed some pretty elaborate scenarios and I was keeping up OK, but I wasn't prepared for what happened when we got to this page. He grabbed the book and started opening and closing it really fast so the Anklyosaurus bounced up down spastically. Then Connor started saying, with great enthusiasm "The bass is pumpin'! The crab is jumpin'!" over and over again. Jamie has learned to delight in Connor's malapropisms and improvisations so soon we were all saying it and roaring with laughter. Connor just got more enthusiastic the more we laughed. It's sort of a catch-phrase around here now.

When will we learn?

This is a cello update, but the larger theme is that at some point Sarah and I are just going to have to stop doubting Jamie's mojo. He does these things and we think we need to give him some advice only to see that he's got it totally under control. For instance, it has made us crazy for years the way Jamie is completely poker-faced around girls. We tell him to be nice otherwise they won't want to talk to him anymore. But then everyday it seems more girls say "Hi Jamie!!" as he walks down the hall. We should stay out of it clearly.

In the last cello post, I suggested that Jamie's usual wait-until-he-can-do-it-all, rather than learn incrementally, method wouldn't work for music. Au contraire mon pere. Yet again, he has proved that you can run at least at the same time that you can walk. After weeks of barely being allowed to use the bow and being the only child who hadn't satisfactorily performed any songs, suddenly he's shot forward and is about pass his third song. His teacher remarked a couple of weeks ago that he would probably pass about four in a row at once. So there you have it, the Jamie method strikes again.

I don't know if he's enjoying the playing the cello exactly, but he definitely likes knowing songs and is actually rather a quick learn. His teacher is still doggedly trying to get his posture and bow hand position correct and is learning what it can be like to work with Jamie. In the lesson yesterday he sat there with this expressionless face he gets during lessons and as she tried to push his fingers in place, get his back straight, his elbow up, etc., she finally looked up in exasperation and said, "He's pushing against everything I'm doing!" Welcome to our world. Love that little guy, but lord can he be stubborn. Got to come to it his own way.

Napoleon Costello

We have all known Connor, since the time of his birth, to be a very good-natured, sunny little fellow. We have also seen him have to contend with the force of nature that is his older brother. Generally, he goes along with what Jamie wants and finds places to insert himself where he can.

What's funny though is what happens when Jamie is not around. First of all, this is usually a big problem because inevitably he wants to be where Jamie is. He hasn't quite got the idea yet that if one of Jamie's buddies invites him over for a sleepover, Connor doesn't automatically get to go. But, finding himself back here alone with us, something changes. Suddenly he realizes he has the field to himself and two things happen. One is that he becomes very bossy, producing a series of requests and generally keeping us both and his bidding. Believe me, we try to keep it under control and at least get him to ask politely but the onslaught is really extraordinary.

The other thing that happens is that he NEVER stops talking. I mean that literally. Until the moment he falls asleep and starting again immediately when he wakes up, it is a constant stream of consciousness, as if all the stuff he's forced to keep quiet about as Jamie fills the space suddenly comes pouring out. He has this way of moving from one utterance to another, beginning with the phrase "Oh and mommy??! or "Oh and daddy??!" (sometimes he confuses us, but it doesn't really matter). This can often introduce a topic that had been dropped days ago as if we had been just talking about it, so you have to stay alert. We hear that phrase about 50 times an hour.

This has happened the last couple of days with Jamie around, however, and I think it has to do with Legos. See, he got a bunch of them for Christmas, about which he is thrilled, of course. He has now tasked us with building them, and our initial responsiveness with this seems to have sort of empowered him. Seeing us doing his bidding like that must evoke those brief periods of solitary power and so he is in full on Connor rules mode. But of course Jamie cedes no sonic ground whatsoever, so the last two days have been a real cacophony of sound here.

Jamie spreads holiday joy

We were riding home in the car last week, I think on the way back from our traditional Monday after school ice cream, when Jamie, out of no where said. "Dad, it was kind of funny watching you struggle to put the cardinal on top of our Christmas tree." This nice observation then led to some thinking about presents under the tree. Jamie then began saying, as he likes to, that on Christmas he can get up whenever he wants. I said, that wasn't quite true but that he could get up at 6 (he would prefer 4:30 or 5). Connor, on the other hand, is like I was and figures the presents will still be there so why not stay in bed. This, in turn, frustrates Jamie because he has to wait for Connor.

So Jamie then said that when he was twenty (read: generic age signifying adulthood) he and Connor wouldn't be living together so this wouldn't be an issue anymore. I pointed out that they very well might live together, noting that his mommy and Aunt Carolyn had lived together when they were about that age. "Yeah!" Connor said. Jamie actually cleared liked this idea quite a bit, but said "Fine. But I won't wait for you to open presents!"

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Well, we're getting ready for the big Costello road trip up north. A big part of this is the possibility of snow, so let's hope for some well-timed (ie not days when we're on the road) inclement weather. We went to New York last winter and the combination of snow and cousins was by far the biggest hit. When we flew into New York last year it was extremely cold and had just snowed quite a bit. As soon as we stepped outside of baggage claim at Newark, Jamie found a hill of rather unlovely snow and insisted on climbing it before anything else happened.

Once we got into the city we braved the extreme cold (really, it was very cold, not just to us soft Houstoners) and headed a few blocks north to Central Park. The wind was so intense that at one point as we waited to cross the street Connor burst into tears, I think in part because the feeling was so unfamiliar. As soon as we hit the park the boys just barreled into the snow, much of which was not, ahem, altogether pristine. Jamie was fearless in climbing snow and ice covered hills. Connor needed a bit of an escort but was excited too.

From there we set out overland to the Central Park Zoo, getting there just in time to see some penguins and the snow leopard. Sarah and Connor went ahead of Jamie and I because Jamie insisted on ascending every hill and snow bank there was to be found. Really he showed impressive fortitude against the sub-freezing temperatures. Eventually we made our way out of the park and the boys discovered the joys of NY hot dogs. It turned out not to be the end of our Central Park adventures, because we came back with a friend after visiting the Natural History Museum. They liked the dinosaurs well enough but it was basically a prelude to finding a hill to go sliding down on their bellies.

But all of this in turn was the prelude to their favorite thing of all which was having a snowball fight with their cousins in Armonk. They have literally not stopped talking about it since. So let's hope for snow!

Holiday logic

The boys are, as a rule, not into getting rid of things. I don't suppose that makes them very unique, but Jamie is particularly tenacious about wanting to hold on to stuff, and Connor of course takes his cues from big brother. When asked to purge some old unused toys Jamie has learned to mobilize his big brown eyes and to look at us and say, quietly, "But this is very special to me." Hard to resist and he knows it.

Another bit of the psychology that may be in play here was recently revealed. There was a used book drive at school, so Sarah asked the boys if there were any books they wanted to donate. Jamie, predictably, said no. Sarah then explained that this was for kids who weren't so lucky and didn't have any books. Jamie replied, "I know. I don't want to be one of those kids!" Gotta admit there's a certain logic there.