Spending the past four days bed-bound has given me lots of time to ponder big questions. Such as, while we watch Luke's language skills take off, which is funnier/cooler? The things he knows or the things he gets wrong?
We're still laughing about when he aked Grandma Bobbie if she had a pool in her house and before she could register her surprise he added, "I was just kidding." And of course we got a big kick out of the lengthy story he told us about how he needed to pack his suitcase because he was getting on an airplane tomorrrow, by himself, to go to San Diego for two weeks, to do some work.
But I can't help laughing when he comes close but doesn't quite get something right. As in:
The "skeleton board" (bulletin board, which we just happened to hang up around Halloween)
The "bull-zoh-der" (bulldozer) in the empty lot
"Will you draw me a smelly face?" (smiley face)
"Is he Spanishing?" (when Raffi was saying something in French)
"That's the biggest hammer I've never seen!"
"Hush little baby, don't say a word, Papa's gonna buy you a walking bird."
And of course the big family dinner disrupted by song: "I know an old lady who swallowed a PIE! Fuh-naps she'll die!" (pause for gusty swig of milk) "Fuh-naps she'll die!"
Then there's "This is called robbers," which he says whenever he sees a hot dog, some roast beef, or a table full of food. It's not even worth trying to explain but suffice to say Dave and I have been laughing about it all week.
I'm still in bed this afternoon and Luke is perhaps a little perturbed or disturbed about my lack of activity. That said, he's been a great help, along with Dave, bringing me food, books, DVDs. I think we're all looking forward to when I can get a vertical perspective on things...
Friday, November 24, 2006
Sunday, November 19, 2006
pinecone seltzer
Something about Luke's cheery talkativeness around strangers inspires them to give him things. Like the waiter (not ours) he befriended at the restaurant who was suddenly inspired to offer Luke his pick of desserts from behind the bakery counter (Oreo cheesecake, which he didn't really like anyway). Or the waitress named Pat at our truck-stop breakfast joint who brings him a muffin before we even order. Or the homeless lady on the beach who stopped her cart to offer Luke a small snack bag. (Luke: "What was that lady trying to give me?" Papa: "A bag of cookies." Luke (nonstop for the next hour): "I want to go back to the BEACH! And see the LADY! And eat some COOOOOOOKIES!")
We've been living it up for the past few days with Grandma Joan and Papa in tow; strolling through town at the merchants' holiday open house and seeing reindeer and (inexplicably) a zebra; walking to the beach; day-tripping to the mission; baking and cooking and eating incessantly. Yesterday, on our sunny cloud-free day at the mission, it was one of those rare times when by about 2 pm all I could think about was how much I would love to rewind the day and get to do it all over again. There wasn't a single bad moment that I would have been unhappy about reliving.
Luke is astounding us with his sense of direction. Even at nighttime he can tell you where we are ("There's the doctor's office! There's In N Out Burger! There's the 99 Cents store!"). Grandma Joan tripped and fell about a block from our house when we were walking home the other night; two days later, when we were approaching the same block from a different direction, Luke called out, "Grandma Joan! Be careful! Don't trip and fall!" Everyone started laughing, but perhaps hadn't even realized that we were about to be in the same place where she fell. Then when she stepped over the fateful crack, he said, "Make sure you walk in the middle where it's nice and straight!"
There may have been significant, weighty moments during our visit but the times that we are most likely to remember are the most ridiculous, because Luke wants to re-tell them ad nauseum. I'll let him tell this story: "Grandma Joan was clearing the table for dinner. She picked up the pinecone but by mistake she dropped it into Papa's seltzer! Papa picked it out but then he said, 'It's OK, I'll drink it anyway!'" (followed by fits of uncontrollable laughter).
This visit could perhaps best be characterized by the sound of non-stop toddler conversation. Being in a long drive on the freeway brings out the worst of it. Tonight when we got home from Long Beach, we had had our ears completely talked off for the last 45 minutes. Dave, in the front seat, pulled out his wallet and said to Dad, "Here's the $4 I owe you." I wasn't sure what it was from so I asked them jokingly, "Did you two have a wager of some kind?" "Yeah," said Dave grimly,"Four bucks says this kid doesn't shut up the whole way home."
We've been living it up for the past few days with Grandma Joan and Papa in tow; strolling through town at the merchants' holiday open house and seeing reindeer and (inexplicably) a zebra; walking to the beach; day-tripping to the mission; baking and cooking and eating incessantly. Yesterday, on our sunny cloud-free day at the mission, it was one of those rare times when by about 2 pm all I could think about was how much I would love to rewind the day and get to do it all over again. There wasn't a single bad moment that I would have been unhappy about reliving.
Luke is astounding us with his sense of direction. Even at nighttime he can tell you where we are ("There's the doctor's office! There's In N Out Burger! There's the 99 Cents store!"). Grandma Joan tripped and fell about a block from our house when we were walking home the other night; two days later, when we were approaching the same block from a different direction, Luke called out, "Grandma Joan! Be careful! Don't trip and fall!" Everyone started laughing, but perhaps hadn't even realized that we were about to be in the same place where she fell. Then when she stepped over the fateful crack, he said, "Make sure you walk in the middle where it's nice and straight!"
There may have been significant, weighty moments during our visit but the times that we are most likely to remember are the most ridiculous, because Luke wants to re-tell them ad nauseum. I'll let him tell this story: "Grandma Joan was clearing the table for dinner. She picked up the pinecone but by mistake she dropped it into Papa's seltzer! Papa picked it out but then he said, 'It's OK, I'll drink it anyway!'" (followed by fits of uncontrollable laughter).
This visit could perhaps best be characterized by the sound of non-stop toddler conversation. Being in a long drive on the freeway brings out the worst of it. Tonight when we got home from Long Beach, we had had our ears completely talked off for the last 45 minutes. Dave, in the front seat, pulled out his wallet and said to Dad, "Here's the $4 I owe you." I wasn't sure what it was from so I asked them jokingly, "Did you two have a wager of some kind?" "Yeah," said Dave grimly,"Four bucks says this kid doesn't shut up the whole way home."
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Name that tune
It is cracking us up that whenever someone asks Luke his name now, he answers with first and last names (usually resulting in a polite, "What?"). It could be a function of being one of just too many Lukes. Or it could be a function of a new growing skill of being able to identify your full name, the town where you live, your parents' names, etc.
In fact, Luke has a whole cadre of different names that he keeps stored up for special occasions. When he's working as a worker or builder, he prefers to be called Harry. (Sort of an offshoot of wanting to be called "Scary" when he was a painter.) Lately, he's been asking me to call him "Team" (most likely a direct outgrowth of when we're getting all of our stuff ready to go somewhere and I say, "Come on team, let's go!")
He's also excited about the idea of being someone's friend. Like after we visited Mom and Dad (and Mark), Luke went around proudly identifying himself as "Mark's friend." Sometimes he'll take it a step further when he calls me, "Daddy's friend."
Of course, he doesn't always get names quite right. Yesterday before he left school he was talking with one of the teachers from the older kids' class. Later I asked him what her name was. "Her name is... (pause for deep thinking) ... Lawn..der..ee" "Laundry? Like a laundry hamper?" I asked, incredulously. "Hmmm. Yes. Laundry," he declared. That's one I'm going to have to investigate further.
So lately I've been feeding my amusement by asking him what we should name various characters or animals. He will give it a great deal of thought, and then often settle on the old standby "Harry." But sometimes he'll surprise us. Yesterday I asked him what he thought were the names of two cats in a book we were reading. "Their names are Harry and... (pause for deep thinking) ...Keet." Keet? I don't know where that came from but it has a nice, jaunty, feline kind of sound to it.
Last night when we came home from work and school I surprised Luke with a two-foot-high nutcracker. As expected, he was beside himself with delight. Lacking nuts to crack, he amused himself by flattening chunks of play-doh and announcing that he was working with his new "machine."
"What do you think we should name the nutcracker?" I asked him over dinner. This was apparently a great question because he literally had to tip his head back and scrunch his eyes closed to think about it. "I think we should name him... (pause for deep thinking) ... Sis." So that's our new nutcracker: tall, bearded, standing sternly in uniform with axe in hand. Go ahead and call him Sis. I'm sure he'll endure worse in the coming weeks.
In fact, Luke has a whole cadre of different names that he keeps stored up for special occasions. When he's working as a worker or builder, he prefers to be called Harry. (Sort of an offshoot of wanting to be called "Scary" when he was a painter.) Lately, he's been asking me to call him "Team" (most likely a direct outgrowth of when we're getting all of our stuff ready to go somewhere and I say, "Come on team, let's go!")
He's also excited about the idea of being someone's friend. Like after we visited Mom and Dad (and Mark), Luke went around proudly identifying himself as "Mark's friend." Sometimes he'll take it a step further when he calls me, "Daddy's friend."
Of course, he doesn't always get names quite right. Yesterday before he left school he was talking with one of the teachers from the older kids' class. Later I asked him what her name was. "Her name is... (pause for deep thinking) ... Lawn..der..ee" "Laundry? Like a laundry hamper?" I asked, incredulously. "Hmmm. Yes. Laundry," he declared. That's one I'm going to have to investigate further.
So lately I've been feeding my amusement by asking him what we should name various characters or animals. He will give it a great deal of thought, and then often settle on the old standby "Harry." But sometimes he'll surprise us. Yesterday I asked him what he thought were the names of two cats in a book we were reading. "Their names are Harry and... (pause for deep thinking) ...Keet." Keet? I don't know where that came from but it has a nice, jaunty, feline kind of sound to it.
Last night when we came home from work and school I surprised Luke with a two-foot-high nutcracker. As expected, he was beside himself with delight. Lacking nuts to crack, he amused himself by flattening chunks of play-doh and announcing that he was working with his new "machine."
"What do you think we should name the nutcracker?" I asked him over dinner. This was apparently a great question because he literally had to tip his head back and scrunch his eyes closed to think about it. "I think we should name him... (pause for deep thinking) ... Sis." So that's our new nutcracker: tall, bearded, standing sternly in uniform with axe in hand. Go ahead and call him Sis. I'm sure he'll endure worse in the coming weeks.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Monday, November 06, 2006
Mistakes were made
Sure, Halloween was great. It was the day after that was really scary. Mistake #1: I vowed not to use the car all day, so I pushed Luke in the stroller from the library, to downtown for lunch, to a toy store, and then back home. By the time we got home, I was completely wiped and Luke hadn't had any physical exertion all day. Naptime was a battle royale. I would have been glad to skip the nap altogether except I could tell from his protests that underneath his bravado, there was a super-tired kid just waiting to collapse. After his last-ditch attempt to cry for Daddy, he finally gave up the fight, conking out completely in my arms at an unreasonably late 3 pm, and having to be roused from some sub-human hibernation phase at 5 pm.
At class that night, I told the teacher I was glad to see that the discussion topic was temper tantrums, because the afternoon had been such a mess. "Oh, you just have to write off the day after Halloween entirely," she told me. Now why didn't someone think to tell me this earlier?
Luckily Luke has the presence of mind to remember these things and talk through the post-mortem. That night, it was a topic he couldn't get enough of: "What did Mommmy say when it was time to go to sleep? What did Lukey say? I was MAD!"
On Friday I drove to the park and gave Luke plenty of running-around time; then we had friends over for lunch and wore ourselves out running around the house. By the time naptime rolled around Luke seemed tired enough and we had even joked about how Wednesday's debacle wasn't going to repeat itself. We sat down in bed to read stories...and then...more nap protest! I decided to let Luke run around (safely confined to my room and his) while I took a breather in my bed. That was fine until he took Dave's basket of coins and dumped it into our laundry hamper. I marched him back to bed and kept him there until again, he gave up the fight.
On the way to dinner that night, Luke told Dave, "Daddy, at naptime, I made some mistakes." Dave gave me a sideways glance and asked Luke what kind of mistakes he made. "I dumped your money into your basket and Mommy was MAD. But I was MAD because Mommy said 'it's time to go to sleep' and I said 'no, no, no!'" "Well, thank you for being honest with me," Dave said. The next afternoon Dave put him down for a nap without even a whimper.
Lest it start to sound like Luke is all-Daddy, all the time (which he sort of is), I should point out that Luke and I are quite a pair in the kitchen. It's been progressively more fun as we unpack the kitchen boxes and find new tools that I have to think of some immediate use for. When we unpacked the meat grinder, we made chicken salad. When we found the Foley food mill, we made cranberry sauce. When we found the potato masher and the nut grinder, we made banana bread with a brown sugar/walnut topping. This morning we pulled out a little pie plate and Luke made an apple/Lego pie, which come to think of it, is still "cooking" on his little grill.
When we cuddled up on Sunday morning, he said to me, "You're a good cooker, Mommy. You're a good breakfast cooker, you're a good lunch cooker, you're a good dinner cooker..."
*sniff* See? I can't have made that many mistakes...
At class that night, I told the teacher I was glad to see that the discussion topic was temper tantrums, because the afternoon had been such a mess. "Oh, you just have to write off the day after Halloween entirely," she told me. Now why didn't someone think to tell me this earlier?
Luckily Luke has the presence of mind to remember these things and talk through the post-mortem. That night, it was a topic he couldn't get enough of: "What did Mommmy say when it was time to go to sleep? What did Lukey say? I was MAD!"
On Friday I drove to the park and gave Luke plenty of running-around time; then we had friends over for lunch and wore ourselves out running around the house. By the time naptime rolled around Luke seemed tired enough and we had even joked about how Wednesday's debacle wasn't going to repeat itself. We sat down in bed to read stories...and then...more nap protest! I decided to let Luke run around (safely confined to my room and his) while I took a breather in my bed. That was fine until he took Dave's basket of coins and dumped it into our laundry hamper. I marched him back to bed and kept him there until again, he gave up the fight.
On the way to dinner that night, Luke told Dave, "Daddy, at naptime, I made some mistakes." Dave gave me a sideways glance and asked Luke what kind of mistakes he made. "I dumped your money into your basket and Mommy was MAD. But I was MAD because Mommy said 'it's time to go to sleep' and I said 'no, no, no!'" "Well, thank you for being honest with me," Dave said. The next afternoon Dave put him down for a nap without even a whimper.
Lest it start to sound like Luke is all-Daddy, all the time (which he sort of is), I should point out that Luke and I are quite a pair in the kitchen. It's been progressively more fun as we unpack the kitchen boxes and find new tools that I have to think of some immediate use for. When we unpacked the meat grinder, we made chicken salad. When we found the Foley food mill, we made cranberry sauce. When we found the potato masher and the nut grinder, we made banana bread with a brown sugar/walnut topping. This morning we pulled out a little pie plate and Luke made an apple/Lego pie, which come to think of it, is still "cooking" on his little grill.
When we cuddled up on Sunday morning, he said to me, "You're a good cooker, Mommy. You're a good breakfast cooker, you're a good lunch cooker, you're a good dinner cooker..."
*sniff* See? I can't have made that many mistakes...
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