weekend ends

This has been such a great weekend with Elias.  He's been so endearing and entertaining and active.  His language is exploding along with his exploring and making sense of teh world.  His ability to learn new things and memory is simply amazing.  I recognize my own mental processes have slowed considerably over the last 15 years or so, but it's hard to believe I was ever like that.

Elias' speech is getting clearer.  He loves yelling out his entire name:  Elias Daniel! AshenAFI! ****!  He's also pretty pleased that he learned how to say "banana" tonight (rather than "nana.")  "Computer" is now "pooter" rather than "abu."  I still like "burrito," though:  "bee-doe."

He has some definite favorites. 

Chickens:  the rooster, Verdi.  Incidentially, he's the least favorite of all of my friends.

Shapes:  a semicircle.  He'll often nibble off 1/2 a cookie and hold it up, declaring semicircle!

Treats:  He loves vitamin D's, and now daily requests them by color:  White D?  Red D?

Body parts:  elbow

Song:  "The Bear Hunt"--a partcipatory song/story, part of the "Kids in Action" CD

Food:  green beans or cookies.  More often than not, when we get home he immediately starts begging for beans, then carries the can lovingly from garage to kitchen, where he fishes out the can opener and follows me around asking me to open it:  Beans!  Mommy cut?  He eats the whole can at a sitting, then sucks out any liquid at the bottom of the bowl:  I drink bean juice!

I cut my thumb pretty badly tonight and have it all wrapped up.  When reading books with Elias I warned him that Mommy has a hurt thumb, so be very gentle.  He immediately became very concerned and upset.  He showed me one of his fingers he said hurt, too.  Mommy owie? I'm sorry Mommy!  Thank you, welcome, Mommy.  (He often crowds all his "polite" words together for emphasis.)  He kept stroking it, asking if it hurt.  It's sad to think how our hearts get hardened as we grow up.  For now he's still blessedly compassionate.

a traditional black Friday

In some families Black Friday is a day of fighting early morning crowds for me-too "bargains" at the mall. For me, the day after Thanksgiving always recalls a wonderful family time with various cousins' families at my grandparents' house (now, "the cabin") in remote northern California. We enjoy a big breakfast to satisfy stomachs stretched out the night before, then, in our caravan of pickups, drive to the national forest to cut Christmas trees. (All perfectly legal: permits are only a couple of bucks.) We hope for a little snow at the higher elevation--just not rain. We traipse through the woods looking for one that is just right (and invariably too big), cut it down, lash it to the truck, and drive back for turkey sandwiches. Rampant materialism and daily worries are worlds away. Even though I've not gotten to participate in this tradition since moving away, I still cling to it, and typically hole up alone, hiding, that Friday. Today is perhaps as close as I've gotten to a "proper" day-after-Thanksgiving in almost 2 decades.

Elias let me sleep in, happily watching PBS Kids and playing with his new truck. After breakfast he spotted the next door horses out the window and proclaimed "I clean up!" and hurried about, picking up the many toys and books scattered about the living room. This was to butter me up so we could go outside. So we got coats and shoes on. As we were leaving he ran back in and grabbed the bag of carrots in the kitchen for the horses. I let him bring one carrot, supplemented with apple peels from breakfast and some aging celery. He was so cute running over to the pasture with the carrot held out in front. Unusually, though, the horses kept their distance, even the big brown one Elias calls "Happy." We got a few to approach within vegetable tossing distance, and one took a tentative bite of the carrot I held out. When I held Elias up with the carrot I discovered the problem--as the horse took a bite, my arm protecting Elias' connected with the newly-electrified top wire. I got quite a jolt, and from his response, apparently the horse did too, and took off running. Elias didn't understand why they were rejecting his offers and wanted to follow, now picking grass for them (since apparently carrots weren't working). I distracted him by suggesting we walk across the cornfield to check out the tractor parked in the distance. It was a nice, sunny, crisp day and he liked stomping though small puddles which had iced over overnight. After admiring the huge tires on the tractor and a giant abandoned pumpkin, we set off back, Elias forging his way through high weeds at the edge of the cornfield and I following. He suddenly plopped down on his back on a bunch of fluffy dried grass and invited me to join him "I lie down...Mommy lie down?" So we lay there on our backs, pointing out clouds and neat looking plants, and generally enjoying nature. We did that a couple times on the way back. He wanted to visit the mailbox, his thinly-veiled excuse to watch cars whiz by, and was duly rewarded by a couple of fast trucks "Whooooooaaaaaa!!!" Then we played catch and some basketball (he yells "Yea! Mommy!" and claps when I make a basket), and let the chickens out and gave them some corn. What a great morning. I pity the clueless, stressed out masses at the mall--this is what the day after Thanksgiving should be.

fall photos

We got a great, early Christmas present from Auntie Te: a photo session. However, when the photographer cancelled at the last minute last week, I decided to go ahead and do our own photo session at the small farm of a dear couple we know. He looks so grown up!

'Dillo empathy

Tonight Elias & I were reading one of my very favorite books: _But Not the Hippopotamus_ by Sandra Boynton. A hog and a frog do a dance in a bog...but not the hippopotamus. It goes on and on like that, the shy hippo just silently observing from afar while all the other animals are out having fun. At the very end they invite her to join them, and joyfully, she does (!)...but not the armadillo. At this point Elias fell silent and studied the armadillo. "Sad," he said, touching the picture. He thought a bit more and said "I hug," and put his cheek down on the book, cradling it. Awww! Then he offered me the book, "Mommy hug?" so I gave the poor armadillo a hug too.

Odds & Ends

I got back from my LONG (well, 2 day) business trip on Friday night, so Elias and I have been spending extra close cuddle time together this weekend. It seems he talks so much more now, although I'm not as good at understanding him as I wish. I find quite often that he is just reciting lines from one of his books or a song. Some common ones that I did figure out:

• "Bob's tea" (left at home when Bob the Builder went to his work site.)
• "Oh, Corduroy! Why didn't [you wait for me? I went looking for a] pocket!"
• "Check out this cool creature." (an alpine salamander)
• "A new fish bowl? No, couldn't be!"

Elias corrected my grammar today. I don't remember the direct object, but the conversation was along the lines of: Elias--I eat carrot. Me--Maybe you can eat two carrot. Elias--Two carrots (looking at me and emphasizing the 'S').

Yesterday I asked him how many horses he saw in the field beside our house, and he counted all the way to 20! Pretty neat...even if there are only six horses. I partially heard a radio program that same day that said kids don't really get the concept of numbers beyond 1, 2, and "many" until about 3.5 years old. Today he counted--or, rather, recited to 12 in Spanish.

Elias loves looking at pictures and video clips of himself on "Abu," his name for my laptop computer. I showed him what button to push to replay them, and he'll sit there watching them over and over, his face lit up with joy as he relives memories of his not-so-long-ago past. His favorites are "pool," "park" and "hokey pokey" (all on YouTube--search on "utubecarrie").

Despite the early false start, I backed off working on potty training. He's interested in the whole potty training issue, but I don't think he realizes what his body's doing yet. He sits on his potty, and tells me more often now when he has poopy diapers--but then immediately denies it, because he hates being changed--but he is quite often mistaken. Recently I was sitting in the living room and he asked me if I had to go potty. When I said no, he ran behind me, pulled out my waistband to peer down, and declared "Mommy no poopy."--so apparently they don't believe him when he denies it at daycare, either.

When he wants me to do something for him he often comes up to me saying "please; thank you. Please; thank you, Mommy." Today he sneezed and said "bless you!" It's soo cute with that little high-pitched voice.

Song & Dance

Elias has always loved music. Poor kid, he landed in a household without much music: my only "sound system" is an old under-the-counter radio in the kitchen, if you don't count my laptop, and that's usually tuned to NPR. I am in the market now for a cheap iPod to use with the speaker dock I bought, to try to satisfy some of his musical longings. I have hopes of him being a great cello player, actually. (No, Pappa, not drums--cello.) Plus, each night I still sing what songs I know to him just before bed. Despite his love of listening to music, he has only recently begun to sing, himself. Quite often now he'll request songs by name, or just start singing them, breaking off with "Mommy--sing? Mommy sing?" if I don't catch on right away. Dancing, however, was a participatory thing for him from the start. A favorite now is "Hokey Pokey." He'll bait people to start it with him by squaring up in front of them then taking 1/2 a giant step while saying "foot--out? One foot out?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWeoYfSDgrs

Halloween

We survived Halloween. It was fun, yes, but also a test of endurance. It was one of only about 3 days that Elias had ever skipped his nap, despite all attempts. I had basically invited us over to friends' house since they live in a nice neighborhood and have a daughter just a little older than Elias. First we all marched in the neighborhood parade, finished by hot cocoa and homemade cookies. Then we went back to their house and I played with the 4 kids downstairs while E made a nice dinner. Elias was in heaven, playing with their Thomas the Train toys. The last several weeks he's been obsessive about Thomas& Friends (AKA "Percy"), begging constantly for our video and/or books. He didn't want to abandon his new-found Thomas delights for dinner. He screamed, he wailed, he bounced up and down, he went limp. It was his biggest tantrum EVER. We "timed out" in the bathroom to try to muffle the noise, but every time he'd get himself under control we'd go out, he'd ask for trains, I'd say no, and we were right back into tantrum mode. That pretty much went on until it was time to suit up again and try trick-or-treating. Sorry, Paulsens!

A nighttime walk in a strange, decorated neighborhood with hundreds of costumed kids roaming the streets can distract someone even from Thomas. I suspect he didn't really know what people were giving him (he doesn't get much candy), but he certainly enjoyed traipsing around with the gang, trying to keep up with the big kids. The second house we came to was un-manned, with only a bowl of candy on the porch. Elias quite naturally took the candy in his bag he'd gotten from the first house, and started to put it in the bowl--aw, my little Robin Hood. He did get the hang if it, strange as it is, and had a lot of fun. He got tons of complements on his costume--one car packed with teenagers even stopped and all inside oohed and aahhed, and declared him the costume winner of the night. With all the stairs in that neighborhood, and the missed nap, and the crying, we were both pretty tired after a couple blocks, and parted company for home. He slept in an hour later than normal (2, really, considering DST) and we both took very long, deep naps today.