The Age of reason(ing)

All of a sudden, C. (who turns 3 in May) has started making counter-arguments. He woke up first from his nap yesterday, and I asked him to be quiet, so as not to wake up G. "But Van isn't being quiet," he said. Easy to defend (but difficult to explain to a nearly 3-year-old). And when we were at a party at a house with a big yard out back on Sunday, C. tried to tell his dad to go inside. "The other kids don't have their dads outside with them." True. But the next-youngest kid was twice his age, and most likely had enough sense not to try to drag a big toy with wheels up a ladder and send it down the slide, or some such stunt C. was sure to have on his clever but judgement-impaired/developing mind. I love when he exposes his thought process through these arguments. It makes me anxious for G. to get beyond "cat" and "banana".

Singles' night

OK, I know we are hardly the first to have this problem. But do we get a gold medal or something for the rather extreme extent of the collection? A growing, increasingly frustrating, and surprisingly colorful mound of deserted socks. Loners. I have searched high and low. And let's not talk about the adult socks pile; they deserve a montage of their own. Forget the obvious and oft asked "Where do they go?" question; I would love to know, but the black hole theory seems the only real possible answer. That, or a finicky, hungry drier. More importantly, what to do with all of these dear, but now useless, socks?

Cause for applause

G. learned to clap yesterday. He started doing it, and basically kept doing it all day long, he was so proud. It gave new meaning to the phrase "one hand clapping", though. He would hold his left hand still and move his right hand back and forth, while bouncing up and down with excitement. This morning's efforts are already more symmetric.

English vocab asymmetries exposed!

I went with a tabloid title to counterbalance the post, which is a little dorky. My dissertation focused on what I claimed was a deep-rooted asymmetry in a word-formation process (reduplication, to be specific). So I loved a couple of recent C-isms that show more asymmetry; he made these mistakes, and by figuring there had to be a reason for why he made them, both times, the answer was, "Duh".

- Mommy, can you buckle me out? (cf. buckle me in)
- Daddy, can you put me upside up? (cf. upside down)

Long ago, when e-mail was new, I remember getting a list of conundrums about English ("Why do we park on a driveway and drive on a parkway?"), and these reminded me of it.

Desperate measures

I've been working the food processing wand thingie that I got as a wedding gift years ago. It's coming in quite handy, as I puree up a storm, embracing the vegetable-sneaking tricks endorsed in The Sneaky Chef. It's a commitment, and a scary one (what if I go through all this and C. still won't eat it?), but desperate times, as they they say.

It's off to a rocky start. But still, starting from near-zero, there's plenty of room for improvement. It gives me gratification to see him eat just one bite. I have to be careful, though. The author warns to start off using smaller amounts of the puree and to build up to larger amounts. I made the stuff, I want him to eat as much as possible! my mind screams as I pour. But I don't want my enthusiasm to thwart my efforts. Using a light hand may have been the key to my success adding a hint of carrot/sweet potato spread to his grilled cheese today...

Spinach: 0, Marshmallows:...0

Carter has a nose for vegetables. Anything green is out, and anything with too many vitamins is an automatic "no", unless it's an especially sweet fruit. We are having to learn to be stealthy. On the other end of the equation, he offers a hearty, "yeah!" when he is offered something new and nutritionally vacuous to try. Today at a birthday party, it was a marshmallow, his very first. It was a big fluffy, sugar-coated square, almost the size of a tennis ball. I cut him a strip. Upon fingering it, he turned skeptical. "What's coming out of it?" he asked, handing it back to me. I thought for a moment, and then realized that he was experiencing the special marshmallow sticky ooze for the first time. Just as well if it repulses him; less work for the toothbrush tonight.

No real insight

Flipping channels last night, I came across an episode of the "Real Housewives of Orange County" that promised to tell, among others, the tale of culture shock experienced by one Housewife and her daughter as they traveled to Berkeley. It sounded interesting at the time; perhaps it would give me insight about my culture shock in Orange County, as I feel much more at home in Berkeley? No such luck. Nothing deeper than that the "bums and hippies" weirded them out, wheat grass smells funny. Too bad. But what did I expect, really?

A friend from my writing group lives in "Coto". I really like her. OK, so she's a republican, but she's clever and funny, and college-educated... which, she pointed out to me once, is something that none of the "Housewives" is, alas. But at least the daughter is enrolled in UC Berkeley, (and talking about transferring to UCLA, where I guess the bums and hippies are fewer.) Party/study/shop on.