Charles has taken to coloring much more than he used to. The last couple of days he’s been much more aggressive about getting out markers and then demanding paper. He opens up the drawer that we keep the Magic Color Change Markers and gets out the markers. Then he locates Dad and drags him over to the cabinet where the paper is. Mostly he draws by himself but sometimes he makes Dad contribute something to to the drawing. Charles tends towards either monochromatic works or highly variegated ones. His color mixing doesn’t follow any particular pattern. Sometimes the separation of colors is clear, as Charles tries to express the disconnectedness of being a non-verbal person in a world of talkers. Other times Charles seems to be reaching out to attempt to unite with The Other by blending the colors in a tight multi-layered conglomeration. This shows through as well when The Other (as represented by Dad) is asked to directly participate. I just hope that as Charles grows into his art that I will be able to keep up with his technique. Even now I struggle to understand why the sun that I drew with the tree and stream for him was so wrong that he had to immediately scribble it out. Did my use of standard symbolism subvert the emerging transgressive gestalt of the piece? I tried to ask but Charles responded only with “Bah bah bah bah dootz!”
When I come home from work, Corwin generally greets me near the door by announcing to Mom, “Dad’s home” in kind of an indifferent voice. This evening Mom got him to agree that it was “OK” for Dad to be home. Charles is somewhat warmer. He is very insistent on coming over and giving Dad a hug when Dad gets home but after that he’s off to some other activity. But at least he recognizes me!
This evening at dinner Corwin asked us how clouds stay up. He has been studying about gravity in school (which pulls us all down and holds the air to the Earth). Corwin was confused about how clouds stayed up if gravity pulls everything down, so we did an experiment with water and ice to show that something float even though gravity pulls at them. Corwin claims that he started wondering about clouds all on his own which is neat.
A year or so ago I got Mom a little push cart for stacking newspapers in. Charles has always liked it and over the last year or so has spent quite a bit of time rolling it around the kitchen and most of the downstairs. Of course, his coordination is not the best so the cart has been slamming into walls and refrigerators the whole time and it’s now starting to fall apart. This doesn’t deter Charles, however. He noticed that the vertical dowels to hold the newspapers were coming loose so his solution was to pull out all of the newspapers so that there wouldn’t be anything pushing on the dowels to move them out of place. I ended up helping with the unloading so that there was a single pile of unloaded newspaper rather than a storm of newsprint all over the house. We’ll have to work on the “mine” and “yours” a bit more…
Charles is definitely becoming facile with the word “No”. For the first time he was reluctant to go off to daycare in the morning. When I told him it was time to go to see his little friends he would reply “no no no”. This morning he objected to a bath the same way. I suspect that he just likes using the word, since he’s always liked baths and now that he’s in the tub he’s happy. Charles is also getting close to using an affirmative, although he just says “eah” in kind of a gutteral way.
I’m convinced that Charles is beginning to speak. He seems to say things that sound appropriate, but soft enough or unexpectedly enough that I’m never quite sure he’s said them. I think he’s said “yes” or “yeah” a few times. I also think he said “fix this” when he handed me a broken Transformer this morning. When I say this to Mom she just smiles and says “Yes, dear”. But I believe! I believe that one day our boy will speak! And he will say “Daddy, I need more toys!”
When Jacob came over this morning to wait for the bus, I commented that next year Jacob’s sister Jesse would be coming over with Jacob. Corwin and Jacob were unenthusiastic.
Jacob: Jesse just plays on the computer all the time.
Dad: Unlike you guys.
Jacob: That’s right, we do other things and then we play on the computer.
Charles has up to now liked be clothed. He tends to panic if part of his diaper comes loose. However, over the last few weeks he has become more resistant to clothing. He’s actually starting to resist having clothes put on, where before he was always very cooperative (in sharp constrast to Corwin). Last night Charles made me take off his pants, which is a first for him. Charles doesn’t seem to like his legs to be exposed, though. Charles tried to resolve this conflict by pulling down on his shirt while crouching. It was really quite amusing to watch as he would get everything nicely covered and then start walking, ruining everything.
This anti-pants view provided additional amusement / stress (these are often provided by the same actions) this morning. It was getting to be time to go so Dad told Charles “It’s time to go see your little friends so let’s get dressed”. Charles was all eager to go so he wanted his coat on right now even if he didn’t have any pants, socks or shoes. It took some gradual coaching to convince Charles that a complete outfit was a good idea, but once we got past the pants he was ok with socks and “shooooooes”. Charles was even willing to wait for slow poke Dad to put his own shoes on. What a nice boy!
This afternoon we went out to Sam’s to pick up a few things. As we were headig for the checkout, Corwin wandered off to look at a game. I thought that he would just meet up with us on the other end of the aisle, but he didn’t. So I headed off to search for the missing boy. After looking in the local area for a bit without success, I headed out for the further reaches of the store. As I was doing that I saw a very distraught Corwin being escorted to the front of the store by another woman (who I think was just a customer). Corwin didn’t react at all when he saw me, but he was willing to go along and go back to meet Mom. Corwin claims that he won’t wander off again, but Mom tells me that he promised the same thing after he got lost in WalMart. Corwin was completely recovered by the time we finished checking out so I suspect that Mom’s cynicism is justified.
Last Friday night was carnival night for Corwin’s school. Mom and Dad had volunteered to help out. We took Corwin with us so that he could enjoy the carnival a bit while Charles stayed home with Grandma so that she could have some quality time with the Pooper Loops.
Dad had the first shift so Mom went around to the various games. Corwin did reasonably well and accumulated 20 prize tickets. Unfortunately when he went to the prize room the prize that he wanted was 25 tickets. Mom and Dad, the embodiment of Evil, decided that it would be a “personal growth experience” for Corwin to confront the fact that he can’t always get the best toy so we ignored his pleas for additional game tickets (also, it was getting late). So Corwin settled for some lesser toys. I think that he’s already forgotten the toys so he’s probably recovered from his trauma.
In addition to helping to run the games, Mom also baked a couple of cakes for the “cake walk”. This consisted of a bunch of people walking around a set of numbered chairs until a signal, at which point they all sit down. A number is then drawn and who ever is in the chair with the same number gets to pick a cake from the assemblage of cakery. Some people were walking around with three cakes. Mom’s comment when I was going off with Corwin was “if you come back with a cake, you’re dead”. Cryptic as always, that Mom.
Grandma came down last weekend. Corwin had the day off Friday so Grandma was able to have a day with just Corwin. Of course, since Corwin didn’t have to go to school he took a long time to get moving and basically just hung around the house all day. Grandma finally had to use a crowbar to get him to go outside the house. Their expedition consisted of going to the local WalMart. As a bribe, Grandma promised to get Corwin a toy (he tends to expect a toy every time we go to WalMart, leading to many disappointments) and Corwin picked out a ZOID. This toy is based on a show on Cartoon Network that Corwin has seen a few times. Going to WalMart and getting a new toy all in one day - potentially overloading. Fortunately, due to long conditioning, Corwin was able to handle the excitement.
Mom has taught Charles to blow kisses. He goes around making smacking sounds. Sometimes he remembers to put his hand in front of his lips first. He’s very amused when Mom or Dad blows kisses back. Of course, he looks exceptionally cute when he does it.
We went to visit Corwin’s teacher today. Corwin is doing fine in school, with an extra large vocabulary. He likes math and science and numbers but doesn’t like writing very much. The most interesting bit was Corwin’s new choice of career. His former plans to be a scientist have been discarded - now he’s going to grow up to be a gold miner! The children in the class all had to draw pictures of what they would be doing when they were 100 years old. Corwin drew a picture of himself in a dark area. The teacher asked him “is it night?” to which Corwin replied “No! I’m in the mine! Looking for gooooooolllllllld!”
Corwin finally caught me pretending to pull things out of his ear. He had asked me to bring up a sippy cup of water. I did but hid it in my back pocket and then found it in his ear. After that he suddenly said “I know your secret!” and explained that I had been faking all of those things all along. I asked how he knew and he said that the sippy cup wouldn’t fit in his ear. Now he claims that he knew it all along…
Corwin went shopping to today with his allowance. He bought a pair of plastic flying toys with a spin gun. One was a helicopter and the other a plane. These are attached to the spin gun after which pulling a string causes the blades to spin up and the toy to go flying. Corwin said that it cost $3.74 very proudly. Of course, he had broken it by the time I got home but after some fiddling I restored it to an operational state and didn’t even charge Corwin for the time and labor.
As part of our morning ritual, I shut down my little laptop to prepare it for the trip in to work. Charles had been a double bumper grumper boy this morning with only scattered showers of happy. He perked up a bit as we got ready. As soon as I got his coat on, I went over and hit the power button on my computer. Charles then closed the lid, carefully pulled the power cord out, picked it up and handed it to me. Then he went over to the bag I use to carry it and pointed at the compartment for the laptop in case I had forgotten or maybe because Dad just wasn’t getting him in the car fast enough.
Charles has been particularly fascinated by light switches the last few weeks. He has been fiddling with the light switch next to his changing table for quite a while, since he was about one. It’s just lately that Charles has realized fully that there are many other light switches about the house. He’s been a bit put out to discover that some of them cannot be reached by an unaided two year old boy, but a number of them are set low in the childrens room so that Charles can get at them. He goes around turning them on and off. Sometimes if it’s not obvious he makes me show him where the light goes on and off when he flips the swich. This weekend he discovered the switch for the gas fireplace. He saw it there on the wall and of course started flipping it. he was confused for a bit because he couldn’t see a light go on and off but I eventually convinced him that it controlled the fire. As any parent has already realized, we’ve now had to restrict Charles’ access to the switch so that he doesn’t flip it on and off 20 or 30 times a minute. But at least he’s starting to process object categories.
Charles has become insistent about washing his hands, particularly after meals. This evening, as soon as Charles was done with supper, he came over and rousted me out of my chair and dragged me over to the bathroom so that I could turn on the water for him while he washed his hands. Charles doesn’t have a good grasp on the actual washing part but he does like to have soap put on his hands and run them under the water. Afterwards he holds his hands out to be dried. It’s almost as if he knew instinctively how to have servants.
Charles likes to dance. He has been groving to the Teletubbies for a while. Recently Dad ended up watching an episode that involved dancing and Charles made poor tired Dad get up and dance with him. As with Corwin when he was young, Charles has two dance techniques - random spastic motions or spinning. Dad was hoping for random spastics (as he has few serious competitors in that realm) but Charles opted for spinning. We held hands and spun around as fast as Charles could move, which was surprisingly fast. Dad tried keeping his eyes closed to hold on a little longer but the vertigo leaked in anyway. I managed to find the couch by touch because I couldn’t maintain constant eye contact with it. Charles was only mildly affected.
But Charles has since discovered a variant of the spinning dance, the maypole dance. Dad likes this one because his primary responsiblity is to stand still and pat Charles on the head as he goes by in his rapid orbits around Dad until Charles starts veering off into the furniture at which point Dad gently re-orients him with a horizontal surface.
Mom and I have been discussing giving Corwin an allowance for a while, but we finally took action on Sunday, telling Corwin that he would get $5 a week. He got very excited. Although he’s been doing well with counting and adding, he’s still a bit fuzzy on coinage. We gave him some dollar bills and some dollar coins. Corwin counted this up to announce that he had $102. Eventually we persuaded him that the dollar coins and bills had the same value (100¢). The Corwin announced that he was going to buy whatever toy he wanted with his new found wealth. We responded that the toy he had been looking at on Saturday at the book store was $20. Corwin claimed that he had enough, at least $22 because he had “a couple of tens”. By this Corwin meant dimes. Ah, the poor boy is in for a bit of shock the next time he goes shopping…
Of course, being parents, we couldn’t let his joy go untrammeled. Mom had explained that Corwin was going to get an allowance because he was getting old enough to use money. Dad explained this evening that Corwin was also old enough to start doing chores around the house. This, oddly, did not generate the same level of excitement.
Apparently the only exciting thing we do these days is go swimming. It was freezing rain last night and it’s a blizzard this morning (high winds with hail / snow) but that didn’t deter Mom. This week Mom was not feeling well so Dad went in the water with Charles. Charles definitely likes the water but he hates it when he is supposed to swim on his back. I didn’t get to watch Corwin but the instructor said that he was doing well. I had some other witty observations but Mom made us go to the bookstore afterwards and I forgot them before we got home. We made it to the bookstore for story time. Charles was playing at the Brio table when the moved it to clear space for the audience and he started crying. This got him instant sympathy from all of the parents because he is so cute. I managed to calm him down and then we listened to the stories. Even Corwin came over to listen as well. Afterwards Charles wandered until he found the little books with small vehicles attached and other books made in the shape of vehicles with wheels. He had great fun with those until we had to leave.
It’s been a quiet week here. The main effort has been having Corwin address all of his valentines for today. Mom made him write both the To: and From: names on valentines for everyone in his class. Corwin is getting much better at recognizing words. When we double checked the valentines Corwin was able to find all of them just from hearing the name read.
Charles does not like bubbles in his bath. I put some soap into his bath water early on and it started forming bubbles as water ran. This made Charles upset and he tried to kick the bubbles away, which wasn’t particularly successful. Fortunately I hadn’t put too much soap in so the bubbles never got thick. I gave Charles a glow rope because he like those as bath toys. This time he used it to strike out at the bubbles, whipping them with his glow stick. He liked it because where ever he hit, the bubbles would be blasted away. After a bit of that he decided to switch to a plastic hammer and started pounding the bubbles. Charles valiantly maintained the attack until there were but small skeins of bubbles around the edges. Satisfied that the bubbles had been vanquished, Charles turned to the serious business of splashing water everywhere.
After swimming we went to the bookstore over Corwin’s objections. Charles was happy just to be going somewhere in the car. We looked around for a while. Corwin went shopping on the theory that since we were at the bookstore, there must be something he wanted and he was going to find it. Eventually he settled on a Lego Mars Mission set. Mom and Dad weren’t completely thrilled with Corwin’s desire to help the economy, so we told him he could have it only if he gave up TV for the entire weekend. Unexpectedly, Corwin agreed to that condition (which means that Mom gets to watch HGTV all weekend without any Corwin whining). We’ve been concerned for a while that Corwin insists on toys but watches TV instead of playing with them so we thought that maybe we could get him into a different habit. Corwin has been obsessed with the kit since we got home, so we’ve already gotten our money’s worth out of it. The only problem is that the parts are too small for Charles but he’s desparate to play with them because Big Brother is. Charles has been crying and frustrated about this all day, but he’s getting old enough that we need to start differentiating his toys from other people’s toys. Mom and I both went out on errands to keep Charles busy (because going anywhere in the car is good for Charles). But after the last trip Charles seems to be starting to accept that he can’t play with Corwin’s new legos, which is quite a rapid adjustment. I suspect that that is why the twos are so terrible — that’s when children become old enough that they must be told not to do things rather than having Mom and Dad just arrange things out of the way. For the first time, he can do things he shouldn’t. Such trauma! But he’ll get over it.
Charles may be going slow on the verbal skills but he’s moving on in his use of utensils. Last weekend he started drinking out of a cup by himself. He insisted on using a cup and so I used a small plastic shot glass and he did as well as Corwin does. He’s starting to ask for a cup more often now and he’s doing well (no serious spills yet). Of course, I only put about ½ inch of liquid in at a time but Charles is ok with that.
Corwin had his swimming lessons again this morning. I was watching him from afar as the instructor vainly attempted to get Corwin to use his arms to swim, and later both arms. Corwin looked like a little T. Rex thrown in the water, his little arms flapping uselessly as his mass pulled him under, his only thought to heave his body close enough to the edge that he could pull himself up. The children wear floaties but even with those Corwin still has negative bouyancy. Beyond using both arms to swim, Corwin is also struggling with the concept of diving. His technique is to form his arm in a very nice diving position and then step off into the water. Corwin enjoys it so perhaps there is still hope.
This morning wasn’t a good one. Most mornings tend to have something go wrong but today I managed to hit a lot more than usual. I woke up late so that I had to get Corwin to hurry. Normally he takes all of an hour to get ready for the bus but we only had 30 minutes this morning. Things went ok for a while until Corwin decided that he needed to pry the mud off his shoes with a butter knife in the living room. I managed to persuade him to do it over a garbage can. However, his efforts were ineffectual. One bit of luck was that Corwin had, for no apparent reason, taken to wearing an old pair of shoes so I could switch him in to a new pair in time for Jacob to arrive. It was almost time for the bus so of course Charles woke up screaming. After running upstairs and rescuing him it was time to go out to wait for the bus, at which point Corwin informs me that he “has made a problem” which consists of knocking old yogurt from the garbage can on the living room rug. I put Charles down, send the boys out the door and grab a dishrag. Something (I never did find out what) upset Charles as the boys left and he spent a while crying. After that it was time for bath. I gave him a glow stick to have as a bath toy, but he wouldn’t let me activate it. He just clutched it pathetically, an inert lump of plastic. The bath went ok but Charles didn’t want to get out as he sat there in the water, still clutching his non-glowing glow stick. He didn’t really look happy in the bath, but holding out a towel for him (the signal that bath is done) made him go “Nooooooerererrrrr”, a long “no” that transitioned into a growl. Charles had let most of the water out so I ran some more in for him. This was repeated several times. Eventually I realized that Charles didn’t like the bath, he liked the running water. After the third fill, I told him “no more water” and he proceeded to cry for a while. As I had been stuck in the bathroom while Charles enjoyed his water flow, I had fired up Alita, my Sony picture book, to read e-mail and communicate with Mom. Of course, one of my co-workers caught me with the instant message tool right as I had to tell Charles that he’d had enough baths for one day. I ended up typing in between drying off and diapering Charles. After all of that it was downhill. I got Charles dressed and off we went to see his little friends (by this time it was quite late in the morning). Charles was cryed out, I suppose, because he was in a much better mood after all of the baths. As he has been lately, he was reluctant to put his coat on but once on he was hot to get in the car and go, so off we went.
Charles said his first sentence this morning. He only knows two words but he’s figured out how to combine them. I was trying to get him dressed (which he was not in favor of) and I told him “Ok, we need to put your shoes on”. Charles replies immediately “no shoooooes”. Unfortunately I was not able to re-enforce his verbal behaviour because I put his shoes on anyway.
I got Charles to say “milllk” over the weekend, although he may have just coughed instead of enunciating the “k”. This morning, after the shoes were on, he said “car” but I wasn’t able to get a repeat of that. I’ve been working on “car” for a while and maybe it will finally pay off.
Since Corwin was young I”ve “found” things in his ear when there were lost as in this story. Apparently Corwin really believes that things get lost in his ear. When I got home this evening Corwin had lost one of the little penguins from a game he got for Christmas. As soon as I’m in the door Corwin comes running over and says “you need to look in my ear for the penguin!”. I told him that I had to do a coupl of other things first. Corwin then wandered off while I searched for the penguin. After I located I walked over to the room Corwin was in and told him I was ready to look and wow! there it was in his ear. I suppose he’ll find out the truth once he reads well enough to read this.
Both of the boys have an unnatural tolerance for sour tastes. There are those that claim that young children have a finer sense of taste than their elders, but I no longer believe that. Corwin, for instance, eats lemons. He will ask for lemon slices off other people’s plate and then suck the juice out of them. This is also the child that used to eat pepper as well. Charles is on track for this as well. Once upon a time Mom bought a box of super belts which are strips of soft candy impregnated with a heavy dose of citric acid. Corwin like these, of course, but Charles loves them as well. Charles will take one and stuff the entire thing in his mouth at once, something I’m not sure that I could do.
But there are some differences. Corwin has a pathological fear of capsaicinoids . Charles on the other hand enjoys wasabi enhanced snacks and spicy Slim Jims™ which are anathema to Corwin. They are not, however, what I expected a two year old boy to eat.
I had to go in to help Mom last night at work. Corwin went over to Jacob’s house with Jacob and I took Charles in to the office. We ended up staying there some what late but eventually Charles and I left Mom there and went home. Charles was asleep before the first turn. I had originally intended to have Corwin walk back but since Charles was already asleep I decided to drive over and bring Corwin back. Corwin didn’t want to do that — he insisted on walking home while Dad and Charles drove there. It’s close enough that Corwin actually got there ahead of us after his brave trek through the dark with his trusty flashlight.
After Jacob came over today Mom fled for the safety of her cubicle. After much whining about no TV or computer games Jacorobwin decided to play Yu-Gi-Oh, a role playing card game.
Charles was still distressed at Mom having left. As she was getting her coat on, Charles took her over to the coat rack and pointed at his coat. He started crying when Mom told him that he couldn’t go along. He took me over a bit later and was upset again when he didn’t get his coat. He was so sad that I put his coat on and that made him very happy. Eventually, though, Charles wanted to actually go outside. He was a bit taken aback when we went out the garage door and the car wasn’t there, but he recovered once Dad got out the shovels for the snow. Charles likes to work on the snow. Dad cleared the walk while Charles moved snow around.
After a bit Jacorobwin came out and decided that they wanted to play with shovels and snow as well so we had the whole gang out there moving snow. However, since Jacorobwin had neglected to put on coats (Corwin had actually tried to come out without shoes at first until Jacob explained that wearing them would be a good idea) they got cold after 20 minutes or so and went back inside, demanding hot chocolate with peppermint candy canes. Even though this pushed the limits of Dad’s culinary skills, he was able to come through.
I’m convinced that Charles knows the word “shoe”. If I point at his feet and ask “what is that” he’ll say “shhhoooo!”. He certainly can say “no” and mean it. This morning I first heard him say “go”. We were getting ready for swimming and while Mom prepped the diaper bag I was herding the boys. I told them “Allright, let’s go” and Charles got excited and starting saying “goooo!”. I’m still waiting for “car” but that’s probably a harder word to say.
I finally made it home. I called the night before I left from California and while neither of the boys would talk to me over the phone, I could hear Charles saying “uh-oh!” whenever the people on the TV would drop something. But I decided to come home anyway. I did get an enthusiastic welcome after I got off the plane. Corwin even told me that he didn’t want to to go tennis so that he could spend more time with me. Of course, this meant either watching me play my new game or watch TV with me. He’s still bugging me right now to play my new game so that he can watch.
This morning Corwin and I played a little bit of Robot Arena. Corwin was initially pumped about playing until he didn’t win the first outing. He almost broke down in tears until I told him that we wouldn’t play anymore if he did. We did a few more rounds until we got better and won. Then Corwin decided that he didn’t need to play anymore.
Dad decided that that was enough electronic interaction for the day and turned off the TV and computer. Corwin figured that what he needed was Jacob to come over. Jacob must have been in desparate straights because he came on over despite the electronic ban. Now they’re running around the house fighting bad guys and exploring planets that have health packs.
