Saturday, April 25, 2009

Fort Cave

I came home from running errands yesterday to find that my son (with the babysitter's help) had collected all of the dining room chairs in the living room, and draped two big blankets over them. The memories came flooding back... I used to love building "forts", with the light filtered through the dark pastel mix comforter I would use, where friends and I would make up games. To make the fort bigger, we would stack books on the coffee table on top of the seams where we put two blankets together... fine, until the books inevitably fell on one of us when the other inadvertently yanked the blanket with her head at a low point in the "ceiling". And once I cleverly added on to our structure by using masking tape to secure a sheet to a painting, which my mother was NOT happy about. Thankfully, she is artistic (and forgiving), and "fixed" it herself.

One thing, though. C. called his construction a "cave". I almost corrected him, until I stopped and thought... and realized that I liked his word for it better.

Friday, April 17, 2009

The Question

We know that there are as many different paths to acquiring English as there are speakers. Along the way, C. was an enthusiastic reduplicater, (maymay for raisin or airplane, didi for cd, etc.) and he went so far to avoid making the "y" sounds that he said es for yes, and orange for yellow. Of course, we are all enjoying the typical over-production of -ed verbs: goed, builded, doed. Another stage I had heard about, and looked forward to (It will be great! I will be patient; I'll get to explain so much to him!) is upon us. All preschoolers seem to converge on one key point, whatever path they are on: the "Why?" stage. Now I know from experience, as cool as it is that he is curious, it gets old fast. For example, he asked us why it was dark outside. Russ pulled out a globe and a flashlight, and gave a full mini-lecture: the rotation of the earth, the concept of a day, the whole deal. When he was done "...So that, C., is why it is dark outside," all he got for thanks was, naturally, "Why?"

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Helmetlessness

The headless helmet over there is now just a memory, fading fast. Two days ago, G. and I said our farewells to the outstanding clinician who guided and supported us through the last two helmets. For the first helmet-free day, G's head looked naked without it; I kept taking a second look. And, I would have feelings that maybe the improvements weren't as good as I'd hoped, that his head was still narrow and long, that he might always stand out -- even after surgery and ten months of helmets. But today already, I'm getting over it, starting to focus on more exciting things (walking, talking, music making...) And G., for his part, has shown no signs of regrets about leaving the thing behind. Ciao, clever but cruel contraption!