Happy Spring!

Happy Spring to you; happy anniversary to us!  When you look at the weather predictions in our area, it's rain-rain-rain-rain-rain, for as far into the future as predictions go, but right now, there's a little break in the rain and I can see some blue sky.  While part of me equates "spring" with warm sunshine, and flowers, and baseball, there is definitely a piece of me that loves this edge of springtime: the rain interspersed with the sunshine, wanting to drink hot chocolate while walking outdoors, etc.  I was thinking back on our wedding, which was also an edge of springtime day: there was grey fog hanging over the mossy trees surrounding the Unitarian Church where we had our ceremony for most of the day, but then there was a burst of sunshine while we said our vows.   Here we are at Lovers Point: we drove through a little sprinkling of rain but then as we got out of the car to take pictures, there was a break in the rain and a huge rainbow. 

I think my teeth were chattering a bit there.

Because my Aunt Judy and Uncle John are awesome, we get two anniversary dates this year: they came over last night and babysat while we went to the movies, and then they're coming back tonight so we can go out to dinner.  Awesomeness.  We saw Black Swan last night, and ohmygoddidyouseethat?  Talk about being on the edge.  I loved it -- I don't get to go to the movies that often, and it was definitely a fun movie to see in the theater: I got lost in the story, fascinated (creeped out?) by what was going on, gasping and grabbing onto Patrick and covering my eyes.  I don't tend to get that lost in movies on DVD, so that was fun.

Hope that this is the beginning of a lovely spring for you!

This Into That

While not desperately trying to get someone to read him a book about trucks, or looking out the window at trucks, Seamus spends a lot of his time putting things into other things.  He has a yellow wooden schoolbus with six differently-shaped blocks that fit into it, and he is starting to master getting the circle-shaped block into the circle-shaped hole, the triangle-shaped block into the triangle-shaped hole, etc.  He likes to stack up his stackable cups in the bathtub, and sometimes he likes to change it up and stick a rubber ducky into one of the cups.  He likes to load things up into the driver's seat of his toy dump truck, too, and he's getting more consistent at getting the alphabet pieces to fit correctly into his singing ABC's fridge magnet.  Or, sometimes he gets the magnets, blocks, and cups to fit correctly into the laundry hamper.

Or sometimes he finds new places to put the things that someone else has put in the laundry hamper -- this morning, for example, I was in the bathroom washing my face while he fished two dirty socks out of my laundry hamper and threw them into the bathtub.

And, as skinny as he is, he eats a ton and he LOVES to put food into his mouth.

I don't know if you can really tell, but this picture was meant to show you that he mostly puts food into his mouth with his left hand, with his right hand sort of dangling in the air nearby, until it swoops down on the tray at the end of the meal to help the left hand smoosh the food around. While he definitely uses both his hands to play and work with the blocks and magnets and do other things that use his fine motor skills, he seems to favor his left hand right now.  [I wonder if that means he is left-handed?  When does "handedness" (is that a word?) develop?]

The "putting things into other things" came in handy at our friends Cassie and Andy's housewarming party last weekend -- Shay spent a good 15 minutes taking beers out of six packs and stocking them in the ice bucket. (And then taking them out of the ice bucket and putting them in the six packs.  And then putting them back into the ice bucket.)

It has come in less handy as he has discovered how to put things into the top opening of the diaper bin and swing the handle down to deposit the thing into the smelly, gross depths of the bin -- we've lost a stuffed koala and a stuffed bear so far.

I, meanwhile, nearly poured coffee from the coffeepot into my oatmeal this morning, instead of pouring the water from the kettle.  And when I finished eating a yogurt while working on a lesson plan, I absentmindedly stuck the licked-clean spoon into the pen pocket of my schoolbag. What things are going into unexpected places in your house these days?

Do You Think I'm Talking to Hear Myself Talk?

About two years ago, there was a Facebook thing going around where you were supposed to write "25 Random Things" about yourself. It's one of the only Facebook notes I ever wrote, but I remember having lots of fun with it. One of my "things" on that list was: "I talk to myself a lot.  I'm actually never really talking to myself, precisely.  Sometimes I rehearse my part in conversations I'm eagerly anticipating or nervously awaiting.  Other times I find myself sort of explaining recent events to an unspecific reader/viewer/listener, like I'm my own first-person narrator.  I usually don't talk out loud, but I almost always move my lips.  And sometimes I get caught.  And getting caught, animatedly but silently talking to myself, is pretty embarrassing.  This is, in fact, the one thing on this list that I'm embarrassed to share." 

After I had Seamus, I found a new way to be less embarrassed about this talking to myself: I could say the stuff out loud, to him -- I could narrate what was going on, practice conversations with him, etc., and suddenly I wasn't having to do it silently, and no one would look askance at me, talking to my kid.  In fact, many of the books I read on parenting and language acquisition encouraged me to talk out loud to him, all day long -- they said that was how he'd get the rhythms and sounds and words and structure of language.

So, for over a year, I've been talking to Shay/myself, all the livelong day, just chattity chat chat.  I talk about what we're doing right now, what we're going to do later, what color things are, what the ducky says to the froggy while they're riding in the tugboat in the bathtub, what I'm thinking about, what I might say to my students tomorrow, what I would say to Scott Walker if I could get five minutes with him (expletives removed), etc. etc.  I have stopped feeling funny asking questions that get no response, or talking and talking and talking without leaving any pauses for response.

Then, the other day, I was trying to get Shay's dinner cooked and organized, and in an effort to get him out from underfoot so that I could move around the kitchen a little, and also partially just because I was thinking out loud about all the dinner things I'd need to have assembled before settling him into his high chair, I said, "Ooh, we need a sippy cup too. Hey, bud, where's your water? Do you see your green sippy cup?"  He let go of my leg immediately, and walked out to the edge of the living room and peered out at his sea of toys.  After 30 seconds of searching, he pointed frantically at a sippy cup nestled in amongst 14 books on trains, buses, and trucks. "Hey, yeah, you're right!" I responded.  "There it is!  Can you go get it and bring it to Mama?" He toddled off, grabbed the sippy cup, and brought it back to me.  "Thank you, Shay! What a good helper you are!" I exclaimed, and he grinned, proudly I think, dropped the cup, and hugged my leg.

This morning, we were in the car heading over to the freeway to head toward my school and his "day care" with Grandma and Grandpa, and we approached three yellow schoolbuses parked outside one of the local elementary schools.  "Look, Shay," I exclaimed, pointing at the buses.  "Buh! Buh! Buh!" he replied, clapping his hands.

I have an interlocutor, it seems.