Bizarre love triangle

Jamie's return to his preschool here has meant a reunion with his great friends Siler and Leah Mei. The three of them have been in class together for a couple of years now and make quite the triumvirate. They are usually there before Jamie in the morning and his arrival often instigates a battle for his heart and mind between the other two. This morning they were playing with balls in the gym. Poor Jamie, who generally needs a little time to warm up at school, was immediately confronted with the two of them saying "Play with my ball Jamie," "No, play with my ball Jamie." The complexity of the interactions between them has quite surprised us. The other day Jamie reported that Leah Mei, who certainly fancies herself the ringleader, "always orders us around, so we try to stay away from her." For his part, Siler has a birthday coming up and has been trying to use this for leverage. Jamie informed us yesterday that Siler had told him that if Jamie shared his book with Leah Mei rather than Siler, he would "wipe Jamie's name off my birthday party list." I think Jamie called Siler's bluff on that one.

Woo-woo-woo!

In response to the previous post, I have been asked about the new underwear in question. Firetrucks, police cars and rescue vehicles. So you see the excitement level was high. This morning he began running around the house wearing only the firetrucks saying "Woo-woo-woo!!!!"

Showing off the vocab...and other things

Jamie has really advanced not only his vocabulary of late, but also his phrasing, which can often sound surprisingly grown-up. He has adopted a number of interesting phrases recently. The first, actually some time ago, was, emerging from his room at night, "Dad, I didn't realize I don't have my woobie." Then lately we've heard "I just happen not to be hungry right now," and in the car, "Oooh, I clearly saw two working trucks." But perhaps best, he announced, quite of nowhere, today after school: "I was determined to show my friends and my teacher my new underwear."

"It's a bird! It's an...another bird!"

Connor's developing vocabulary tends to go from one favored word to another, one at a time. Now the in word is "bird," which comes out more like "brrrr". The kid loves birds and uses it all the time. He is really into going for walks because he can do lots of "brrrr". He sees planes, and these are "brrrr", too. He's also learned to take a kind of quantum approach to the thing, pointing to general areas in which there might be birds and saying "brrrr". If one is holding him by a window, for instance, there may be birds, and one walks away from the window only at risk to one's eardrums for he will not be happy. He even likes to point at the tree that Nonni and I painted on the wall and say, speculatively, "brrrr."

One final cute bird detail is that we have a little lullabye toy is his crib that plays a song and has little birds that fly around a nest. We put him down to sleep and come in later to see him fallen asleep with the birds going, positioned so he can look right at them. Very cute.

J'accuse!!!

As previously discussed, Connor expresses himself forcefully when he sees others having food that he is not. This morning at breakfast this was a most serious matter as BOTH Jamie and Mommy were having strawberries with their pancakes. Connor screamed and cried pitiably until he got some, which was not very long. But soon he finished them and Sarah and Connor still had some. Connor also likes to point and this time he stuck out his two pointer fingers at each of them, as if to say "Both of you, both of you are guilty of depriving nice babies of strawberries." Later, Daddy was implicated, too.

We ask the impossible every day

Jamie is discovering the world of conflicting desires that is life as a three-year old. I have already mentioned here his requests for baths that are both hot and cold. Lately we have augmented that that with this statement about his dinner: "I'm done and I'm not done." Also, when being tickled he will proclaim: "I want you to stop and not stop." Hard to know what to do exactly.

Bombs away!

Over the first couple of days after our return from Yavont Jamie would remember various games and toys that we used to play in Houston. He was very excited to remember what he calls "Throwing balls down to Daddy." I was less enthusiastic. This games involves Jamie standing on the second floor behind the railing while I go to the first floor and look up. He then hurls balls down at me while laughing maniacally. He takes particular joy in my expressions of fear or pain, both of which can be quite genuine. He has figured out to throw multiple balls at once and to vary them by size, weight and hardness, making it impossible for me to defend myself against all of them. At one point he was holding a plastic ball of Connor's, a little larger than a golf ball and about as heavy and hard, with his arm cocked to hurl it at me. I protested, saying "That will hurt Daddy!" "Yeah," he said, "Let's do it!!!"