Peace in the valley

The entry on Jamie thinking that Connor lived at the neighbors has gotten a lot of good feedback, so I thought I'd update the status of relations between the two of them lately. In fact, things have improved considerably. Jamie has come to find a number of fun games to play with Connor, most of which involve the two of them rolling around on the floor giggling and being silly. Many, inevitably, involve balls as well. I think the shift that has occurred for Jamie is being able to think of Connor as a potential partner in creating havoc and chaos, rather than as a rival for our affection. Connor is learning to bring Jamie towards him, too. Connor likes to be tickled and invented a sign to ask for this (he opens and closes his hands from a fist). He will now go to a particular spot on the floor where he likes to be tickled and give Jamie the sign.

A couple of other general notes about the boys:

Jamie's latest favorite construction is "I noticed something." You ask what and he will tell you, for instance, "I noticed that you forgot to bring my milk downstairs." He has also taken to turning our phrases back against us. Last night while I implored him to eat, he got annoyed and said "I'm disappointed in you Daddy."

As some of you know, Jamie's class sang the "Twelve Days of Christmas" for his pre-school pageant. Jamie excelled doing "Six geese a-laying," never once missing his cue. He knows the rest of the song too, and if you say a number from 1-12, in any context, he will supply the appropriate gifts for that day. The lyrics can be a little strange though. Day 7, for instance, is "Seven swamps of swimming."

Connor, meanwhile, has been saying "Thanks" (hard to transcribe, but unmistakable), "Eat" ("eeeeee!"), woobie (wuuuh, wuuuh, wuuuh), "Car" (rummmm, rummmm, i.e. "Vrooom vrooom"), and "Jamie" (Jay!, sometimes Jay-Jay"). He also likes to do high fives and to point at you and say "Yoooouuu", a la Robert De Niro in "Analyze This."

The princess within?

Jamie and Sarah were looking through a Playmobil toy catalog recently, which features elaborate settings for small figures (Jamie has the police station--it comes complete with a stubble-faced criminal who may be repeatedly apprehended). They came across a princess page, which had a castle and all manner of pink accessories. Jamie asked what the girl was and Sarah said a princess. She then asked Jamie, who has never shown the slightest interest in any kind of doll if he might like a princess. He looked thoughtful and asked "What would I do with it?" Well, Sarah said, you dress her and comb her hair and other things. Jamie just looked at her with complete uncomprehension and then turned the page.

Accept no substitutes

Jamie is very much into Santa Claus this year. There was some sense last year but this year he has really internalized the idea of a kindly older gentleman who will reward good behavior with a toy. Jamie is still very specific about what he wants. Last year it was "McQueen, the noisy red race car." This year, from the first moment we asked pretty much, Jamie has been very clear about wanting a big cement mixer. He's very into working trucks these days especially and the cement mixer, a important part of any construction site, is really the missing link in his garage.

We haven't had him visit a Santa, knowing his reticence about new people, especially men, but we did make it clear that we would pass the request on in no uncertain terms. At his school last week they dressed one of the teachers, Ms. Rosa, up as Santa. Jamie was typically wary and to try and ease his mind I told him it was really Ms. Rosa and did he want to tell her about the cement mixer? "No," he said, "I just want to tell the real Santa." Good man.

We have, I have to admit, used Santa as a motivating factor for good behavior, especially eating dinner, suggesting that Santa was very detail-oriented in his evaluation of good/bad. This morning we talked about how Santa was coming tonight to bring toys. Superego beginning to work Jamie said, unbidden, "If I don't share the toys Santa brings he will take them back." For the record, I said no, Santa wasn't in the repo business, but that it would go on the scorecard for next year.

Fear the T-Rex!

Jamie is very much in the dinosaur phase right now and the particular fascination with the T-Rex is in full force. He was given a dinosaur book a while back and was already enthralled, primarily by the ones that had "shark teeth" as he used to put it. But there was also some fear there. Then for a while he would tell us that he and his friends had been hunting T-Rexes on the playground at school. Well, things have certainly shifted now as hunted has become hunter. Jamie now likes for all of us to stomp around the house pretending to be T-Rexes looking for food (woobies are not to be thought of as prey, however). Even Connor tries to do this, picking his right leg up a little higher and jerkily bringing it down. Car stories on the way to school have reflected this shift as well as they are now to be about a family of T-Rexes. In particular, lately they have been hunting Triceratops. Sounds like someone is getting a little more comfortable with the idea of the food chain, as long as he's on top!

More on the decisive little fellow

Sarah went to the store today to buy some shoes ("booes") for Connor. His current ones have fallen a part a bit and he still trips over himself in the next size we have from Jamie. She pulled one pair off the rack and he seemed interested, which she didn't make too much of, but they didn't fit. She began to pull another pair off though and he immediately said "no, no, no!" and pushed them away. She went for another and the same thing happened. She then spied a pair of Elmo shoes and this received an approving "Momo!" They fit and so all is well. But, as Sarah said, how can a person who needs shoes that small have such decided opinions about them?

The payoff begins?

For some time, at difficult moments with the boys we have looked forward to the time when they would play together as the payoff for some of the more challenging things about having two children. We have been getting a glimpse of this over the past few weeks. Mostly, these moments are fleeting, where Jamie finds some way to include Connor productively in his little world. Often this involves Jamie placing something on Connor's head, squirting him with water in the bath, or some other one-sided activity in which Connor is in essence transformed into a toy. But they've also been hiding together, sometimes, for hide-and-seek, for instance. Connor, of course, loves to do everything Jamie does and so he is thrilled, even when it is evident that he has no idea why, exactly, they are doing whatever it is that they are doing.

Then last night we were playing a very good energy-burning game where I stood in the kitchen on the other side of the gate that blocks Connor from the stairs. Jamie would fetch balls and throw them over the gate and I would throw them back into the living room and he would go tearing off after them. Connor got right into it and Jamie liked the sense of traffic of them both going back and forth and bombarding me. When Connor, clearly tired, took a rest on the ride-truck, Jamie actually lamented his absence and said "But now who's going to play with me?" A momentous occasion truly.

A decisive little fellow

Yes, our Connor, small though he be, knows what he wants and tends to be very effective in getting it. Sure, this is true of lots of babies and toddlers but in comparison to Jamie there is something so much more direct and decisive about Connor. This is particularly true as relates to food of course, but covers lots of things. Often he becomes fixated on one particular object of desire and shows remarkable tenacity when we try and remove it from his mind. When, in a blatant attempt to curry favor with Jamie, we went to Chuck E. Cheese the other day, for instance, Connor got OBSESSED with the hard, orange skee-balls. He usually tries to mimic Jamie, who was himself hurling them up the ramp with limited success, but in this case Connor really wanted to place the ball over his own very round head and then fling it forward so that it smacked hard against the plastic side of the ramp. He wanted to keep doing this. We, however, after about 20 minutes, wanted to leave. He screamed, I mean screamed, the moment a hand was laid to the ball to take it away.

This morning when I took him to school, I put him down on the floor while I got his lunch and blanket ready to give to the teachers. By the time I had readied myself to go Connor had decided he wanted to stay with me (Mondays tend to be a little clingy), so he started marching towards the door I had just opened and raised a surprisingly strong arm to stop it from closing while he marched through. I picked him up and brought him back in and he was about to really get mad when his teacher produced his sippy cup and a snack. He then turned his back on me, flung his pacifier and woobie to the side and marched over saying "ma-ma-ma" (yum yum yum).