August 27, 2008: Twenty-two (and then some) months old

Our days together this summer have been filled with conversation. You talk to me all the time now; with me even more. We discuss your trains and their configurations, what your daddy and grandparents and pets might be doing, who poops and sleeps and lives where, and the functions of the trucks rumbling in and out of camp. You can identify a backhoe, bulldozer, excavator, and grader by site, and pronounce each more clearly than your own name. And when you make friends with other little tykes at the playground, I hear you jabbering with them, telling anyone who will listen, “Daddy Toby, Mommy Shannon.” Pointing to yourself, “Name E-yut.”

Your experiences have laid down layers of vocabulary into which you dig without (apparent) provocation. Sitting on the floor of your bedroom with your helicopter and toy airport parts scattered all around, you look up at me and say, “Gampa, no pinch. Look up. Playground!” Out of the blue, you have remembered a Wisconsin morning when Bill wedged you into the bike seat, told you to put your chin up so he could clip the helmet strap, and zoomed over to one of the parks in Stevens Point. I tell you this story again, and you grin big, say “uh-huh!” Then you go back to tooling your luggage cart around the carpet.

As you pick up words and their meanings, you uncover the quirkiness of the English language. This morning as we were playing in bed, I suggested we get up and go make toast for breakfast. You grabbed your feet and said, “Toes? Bek-ast?” Grinning and giggling. “Not toes!” I said. “Toast!” You cracked up. You might be the only person who has ever needed to differentiate between a flyswatter and a glass of ice water. On the way to the library the other day, I heard you in the back seat of the car saying, “not blueberry. Li-bary!”

Of course, your end of the discussion often begins with “no.” As in, “No breakfast. No nap. No outside, no inside! No, no, no play sandbox.” Even “no saying no!” I suppose refusal is your prerogative. How else would you stay in charge of your sliver of the world? Sometimes you employ the Sit-Down method, dangling one-armed at the end of my grip. Or, when I have seen fit to remind you that you are an excellent walker, you engage the Lazy-Legs. You are also adept at the Arch, the Flail, and the always successful Violent Head-Shake with Eyes Glued Shut.

Frustration is just part of your daily routine. Your words are still fairly gummy and often hard to decipher, which leads to an extended guessing game. In the yard at grandma and grandpa’s, you started saying, “an-do.”  I began my list. Candle? Uncle? Under? No, no no. You repeated, “an-do.”  Then you looked intently at me, “Oh! An-do, ohhh!” Because when I do finally figure it out, my moment of discovery is usually accompanied by a big “Oh!” You like to try speeding the process along by saying my “oh” for me.

You grabbed my hand and dragged me to the fence. “Show me! An-do!” Because, again, I usually ask you to show me. You pointed across the street. “Show me! An-do!” Canoe? Lumber? Then I heard the train whistle a few blocks away at the switching yard. “Oh,” I said. “Handle! The train whistle made you think of the way the station-master pulls the handle in the song, ‘Little Red Caboose.”

 “Oh!” You cried, your grin a slice of sun breaking through the cloud of frustration. “Han-do!”

Sometimes when you want something – especially something you cannot simply gesture towards – you resort to wailing “dis thing, dat thing,” repeatedly waving your pointed finger in some vague direction. I have to remember that you are still small. What you want is sometimes not what you need, and what you see is often not even what you think it is. Camping with family on Lake Michigan, you were completely out of your element. You needed contact with familiar and comforting things, but collapsing lawn chairs are not living room sofas, snorkels are not candy canes, and every adult you encounter is not a free amusement park ride.  

The excitement of the new – the horde of uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents and teenagers, toad and snakes and rocks and raspberries, hot cinders and rough sand and cold water – kept you from sitting still long enough to find your rhythm. You charged from one pleasure to the next until you suddenly realized how far you were from home. Then came the howl. The desperate, miserable cry. “Mama! Nuh-nuhs! Ma-maaaa! Nuh-nuhs!” Your wail carried from boathouse to campsite. Every person vacationing on Rock Island the week of August second knows I am still nursing my toddler.

Your growth this summer is certainly not all verbal. I am astounded to discover how capable your body is becoming. You run more and fall less. Your cousins helped you practice jumping off steps, and your uncles caught you in running leaps. Grandpa Bill stood back and allowed you to slither and stumble around every playground in Stevens Point, so now you climb ladders and zip down corkscrew slides entirely on your own. Your grandmas accompanied you into pools and freshwater beaches, allowing you to find your footing and wade ever deeper to retrieve a ring or rock just out of reach. You are mastering the art of the piggy-back ride, and you can whack a whiffle ball over the fence.

Your strength even surprises you. Trying to rouse Bill from his sleeping bag at sunrise, you pressed your weight against his tent and called “Gampa!” Swish, swoosh. Down came the tent. The entire structure, poles and all. You stepped back and gaped at the empty space a building (of sorts) had just occupied, trying to figure out the rules of this new peek-a-boo. Is it any wonder your mommy, daddy, and doggy all block and fake when we see you rumbling towards us with your head down and eyes wild? Gymnast, swimmer, wrestler, shot-putter, and hurdler. Is someone already scouting you for the pentathlon in 2020?

July 5, 2008: Twenty-One Months Old

A small leap of faith has moved me a little further away from you in the past few weeks. It was time. I had not intended to manage and direct your play so completely, yet I found myself doing just that. When we went outside with the sidewalk chalk, you would tell me to draw a fish or a dog or daddy, and I would scrawl all over the driveway. It took me a while to notice that you were only making minor swipes with your own chalk before giving up. And when we dumped out cars and fire trucks on the floor, you were happy to let me act out a complex story, moving the characters around our make-believe town. With you mostly watching. A captive audience.

But what meaning can come from being a spectator? Your delight in play will grow as you practice in your roles as conductor, play-write, and artist. So, I backed off. And while this is not an easy thing to do – sometimes I find you clawing at me, begging for my direction – it is clearly working. Just a few days ago, I walked into the living room to find you seated at your table, a crayon in hand, scribbling madly in a notebook. The page was filled with your designs. I sat down next to you. You looked at me, pointed at the page, and said, “fishy!” Then you turned the page, scribbled again, and said proudly, “doggy!”

Now, I can put on music, take out some scarves, drag down the couch cushions, and you move like Martha Graham around the living room. I pull out your bears, blocks, and utensils and you arrange your friends in an elaborate picnic that commands several re-constructions and lasts a blessedly long time. In the new sandbox your daddy built, all you need is a few old bowls and maybe a cardboard tunnel to build a thriving metropolis. And when I am stumbling over you trying to make dinner, it takes little more than opening a cabinet and giving you a wooden spoon for you to find complete, if momentary, satisfaction.

The leap of faith is in giving up control. I have to trust that your mind is as completely creative and autonomous as I say I believe it to be. That your imagination is intact, that the universe is holding you and feeding you separately from me. And I have to trust in Toby and myself. That we are providing a home that nurtures the best in you, and helps you tap into worlds fantastic and unique.

So, while I back off, I also keep trying to introduce new materials that allow you to shift your perspective ever so slightly. Last week, we erected a tent in the front yard and had our first mommy-son camp-out. We cuddled up under a pile of blankets and looked out the screen at the cloudy dusk, listening to the crickets. “Chirp, chirp,” you whispered. The wind blew through and we heard four different elk calls during the evening. It took you a while to fall asleep, but unlike your zany pre-sleep windup when we are inside, you lay still next to me, your eyes wide open in the dark, sensing, listening.

When I set you loose in camp or the playground, I am amazed by your daring. You only need to glimpse a fence or a ladder to be ready to scale it. You are mastering the art of contortion more quickly than I imagined possible. You do not want me to put you into the swing or stroller. You want to figure out how to shimmy and twist into it yourself. While your climbing on the dining room table is an ongoing battle, I am coming to see that you simply need to ascend. Rocks and windowsills, hillsides and staircases, jungle gyms and grownups. When I think of all the fun you may someday have clambering up mountains or rocketing off the high-dive, I want to cultivate this tendency in you within the reasonable limits of safety and hygiene (I’m sorry, but those little feet do not need to be where we eat our oatmeal).

The worlds into which you occasionally disappear are shaped as much by language as by physical play. I hear you babbling and singing, mimicking the rises and falls of the voices around you every day. While you have many dozens of words at this point, joining them into coherent ideas is an evolving process. But when I back off, you do just fine with piecing together a language that makes sense in your little universe. In the bathtub a few weeks back, you were singing and talking to yourself while I busied myself with other tasks. My attention wandered for a bit, but when I brought it back, I heard what you were saying. Moving your plastic snail up the side of the tub, you sang, “up, up, up, up, up.” Then, “boat!” as you plopped it in a red boat. Next came “down, down, down,” as your snail slid down the side, then, “swim, swim, swim,” as it traveled along the bottom under the water. I had never played with you and your snail in this way. Entirely on your own, you and your snail designed and then lost yourselves in an elaborate aquatic journey.

Your awareness of feelings and experiences more complex than you can express continues to exist inside your daily life, influencing you and often frustrating all of us. But you continue to attempt placing names on both objects and desires. “Elmo” means both television and apple juice, because DVD’s and juice boxes tend to feature Elmo. When you want any snack, you ask for granola, because while snack-time might involve things other than granola, granola only ever appears snack-time. Most men are “da-da” and women are “ma-ma,” (which I don’t mind so much when you are pointing at a picture of Angelina Jolie). All rough-housing begins with a request for “back,” because physical fun is what follows climbing on daddy’s back.

But when you simply need to be close, you walk up to me and wrap your arms around me, saying, “hugging,” and then, wiggling back and forth, “cuddle, cuddle.” For these concepts, your language is dead-on.

June 13, 2008: Twenty Months Old

The first week of camp has proved you are a glittering star in the Shady Brook constellation. Every day, we wander up into the thick of things, and you stop kids and counselors in their tracks by shooting your rosy-cheeked grin in every direction. Giving high fives and pounding fists with anyone who asks, you are a pint-sized mascot in a roaring stadium of kids. In the past few weeks, you have learned dozens of names and faces. Now when you see Madan or Aldo or Jesse sidling down the dusty road, you point and sound out the name just loudly enough to elicit an instantaneous smile and a radiant pride. In your own, unique way, you contribute to the well-being of this team.

Your vocabulary keeps growing to encompass more of the choices and ideas you have throughout the day, meaning we can make decisions together about how to spend our time. Sometimes you want to walk into camp, trotting along on your own unstoppable feet. Often you would rather ride in the wagon, filling it with as many balls, hunks of sidewalk chalk, pails, blocks, snacks and sippie cups as you might ever need for some weeklong wilderness excursion. Some days, you are content to park yourself on the crumbling hillside at the back of the house, hollering at me every so often to trade shovels or replenish the water you dump repeatedly in your construction of custom-made puddles.

I have had a few stunning moments of unplanned wind-sprints when I have looked up to see you turning the corner at the bottom of the driveway, happily chasing a grasshopper and heedless of my whereabouts. Most days, however, you want me to come along on your excursions. “Mom-my?” you call. “Hand, hand.” You hold out yours and wait for mine, broadcasting repeatedly your breathless request to grasp my forefinger firmly before striking out for new horizons.

The fear I have been awaiting to emerge in you has finally made its appearance. Maybe no fear, exactly, but apprehension. Wary examination. When you see one of the ubiquitous blue-winged beetles crawling along a porch step, you call for me. “Mom-my? Bee-tuh." You point, demanding I come witness this phenomenon. Your daily dirt-digging yields a plethora of unknown insect life. Called over several times in an hour, I try to help you differentiate flies from grasshoppers from bees from ants, testing the limits of my entomological knowledge. You do not want to face these new creatures on your own. This puts your reluctantly evolving mother in the position of having to overcome her own squeamishness about bugs.

One afternoon last week, we played on the porch of one of the lodges during a rainstorm. After you exhausted yourself tramping over the vinyl-covered mattresses and scaling the stairs several hundred times, we happened upon a giant moth resting on a wooden railing. Your busy activity ground to a halt. You stood a solid twelve inches from the furred wings, refusing to step closer. “Mom-my?” You pointed. I asked if you wanted to touch it. “Mom-my?” You pointed again. “Moff,” you said, not taking your eyes from it. I found the courage to poke at the moth’s backside. It took a few drunken steps up the post then settled back into its slumber. “Mom-my? Moff.” You pointed again. I gave it another small nudge, and it flared its wings briefly, shook off my annoying prod, and settled back into rest. I decided teaching you to respect the desires of other living creatures squared nicely with the limits of my courage for the day, and we wandered off to scramble over some slippery logs down by the creek.

This ability to direct our doings and make choices has become a central theme of your existence. Each decision is enormous. Bigger than enormous. It is the only thing that matters. How your brain is making sense of these choices and their consequences is a mystery and a marvel. When we sit down at the dinner table, I most often have in my bowl exactly what you have in yours. But you still need to sample mine, use my fork (repeating “mommy ork” while earnestly indicating your newly acquired utensil), move bowls and plates around to achieve the correct configuration. If I offer you water, you ask for milk. When I bring the milk, you ask for juice. If I pull out the juice, only water will do. With ice. Out of my glass.

The final moments before bed inevitably yield the thorniest decision of your day. You get to choose your pajamas. Between two pre-selected sets, you have to make the hard choice. Will it be the purple jammies with the polar bears, or the green jammies with the penguins? Oh, how you muddle. You put your forefinger to your lip, your eyes dancing between each tempting outfit. “Hmmm,” you murmur. I show you the penguins, point out the bears. Name the colors again. Torture, I can tell. Finally, wavering, you venture out a finger and point. The bears? Okay.  And you say, “uh-kay,” with a grin. But then when I set the green penguins aside, you start shaking your head, face reddening. “No, no! Pen-gins! Pen-gins!” Okay, so penguins it is. But once I have one foot in the green pajamas, you start kicking your foot out as if you’ve disturbed a nest of scorpions. On the verge of tears, you cry, “Beaws, beaws!” And on it goes, until you finally give up and give in.

When we first put you in your own bed a few months back, we let your baby doll accompany you to sleep. A few other critters have slowly migrated into your crib. During the long hours between morning and night, the green elephant, purple monkey, fuzzy ostrich, and floppy bear all keep watch over your crib alongside you baby. When you finally curl up on your tummy for the night, I kiss each friend and hand it to you. Grinning, bottom poking up in the air, you grasp every one of your stuffed buddies and cram it under your arm, the next beneath your torso, the next up next to your belly. Re-positioning yourself atop this menagerie, you make sure no creature slips outside your reach. You seem happy not only to have chosen but to have been free to choose everything. All friends are invited to the slumber party. You are able to rest easy in the company of an unquestionably wise decision.