tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27950647154388565882024-03-13T23:58:52.368-07:00Little BugJust another opinionated lesbian mommy blog.Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-72842031276257198622013-08-22T12:04:00.004-07:002013-08-22T13:21:02.358-07:00Happy Home Day!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For most parents, a child’s birthday is filled with unmitigated joy. For us–for me–it’s more complicated because the day Little Bug was born is also the day he almost died. So we didn’t have unmitigated joy. The overwhelming feelings we had were fear and sadness. Laura followed him to the NICU when he struggling to breathe, sickly pale grey, and it was an hour before he worked UP to turning blue. I didn’t see him for 14 hours and didn’t hold him until 10 days after he was born. So his birthday, in some ways, is like our legal marriage–a significant life event misplaced out of emotional time. Because just as our love and commitment to each other occurred years before our marriage in 2009, that unmitigated birthday joy didn’t happen until 17 days after his birth when we brought him home from the hospital, August 22, 2010, three years ago today. <br />
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So each year I’ve had mixed emotions as Little Bug’s birthday approaches. Happiness for sure, joy that he’s still here, but also sadness about his birth and those 17 days that followed. And I hope that as the years go by, and his birthday becomes an exciting event for him, that I’ll be better able to embrace the joy of it, and the pain of his birth will recede in my memory and will not feel so palpable. But I feel a bit robbed that we didn’t get the birth we had hoped for. We’ll never have that memory of him being born and lying on my chest, looking up at us, or holding him for the first time in blissed out joy. Or giving him a bath when he was days old. Or leaving the hospital together shortly after his birth. <br />
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Instead, he’s covered in tubes and needles and machines in those first pictures we have of him.<br />
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While PPNH is rare, occurring in only .1% (yes, point one percent!) of full term births, about 20% of infants die from the condition. And of the 80% who survive, about 20% of those have long-term physical or developmental disabilities. So it isn’t a small thing. And when I tell people that x, y, or z causes me to be concerned because of his birth (i.e. his torticollis, his speech, etc), and someone says back to me “well, everyone worries about their kid,” all I can think is, “ Did your child almost die at birth? Did your child have a birth experience that caused them to be followed for a year by various specialists? Were told that your kid could have developmental delays related to his birth that could appear years later?” And it’s true that I can’t know how other people experience concern for their kid, but what is true for me is that sometimes it’s just regular concern and I’m not thinking at all of his birth, and sometimes, the kaleidoscope turns, and I’m experiencing it through the lens of the NICU. <br />
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Which is not to say that I (we) are not also incredibly grateful: grateful that we lived a mile from a University hospital that could expertly treat his PPHN and that we didn’t go to the community hospital that couldn’t; grateful that we had unending and amazing support from our friends and family who visited us, sat with us, and brought us food–to this day the kindness we experienced still takes my breathe away; grateful that while Little Bug was part of that unlucky .1% who got PPNH, he was not part of the 20% who died and is not yet been part of that other 20% who is permanently disabled; grateful that Little Bug was born in 2010 and not 15 years earlier when the death rate was three times higher. So I’ve come to realize that the incredible challenge (gift?) of a NICU experience is that you get to experience the emotional whiplash of holding incredible pain and gratitude at the same time.<br />
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But still, I keep waiting for that moment when the NICU will recede into my memory and I won’t seem him through the lens of “he almost died.” And it’s hard and it pops up when you don’t expect it. Most recently, in the preschool paperwork we just filled out for him which asked for birth complications, serious illnesses and hospitalizations, and a developmental history. So I fear that he will be 16 and refusing to take out the trash, and I will say, “That’s ok sweetie, you were in the NICU.” And I know this isn’t good for him–or me–so I’m working on it. Part of that is writing this blog post. Part of that is thinking about how we want to talk with him about his birth and starting to write his birth story for him. And part of that, I think, is just waiting for the passage of time. <br />
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So today for me, August 22nd, and probably all future August 22nds, is the day of unmitigated joy. Three years ago today, we took our baby home and for the first time he slept in his own house and we were a family outside of a medical setting. For sure, the craziness of the NICU followed us home–how would we know he was OK without all of the blinking lights and beeping sounds of the machines?–and we frantically called the NICU nurse after 2 hours to report that he was sleeping, we couldn’t wake him, and he was shivering. She calmly asked what he was wearing, and we said “a diaper” and she said “well, he’s tired and probably would like some clothes or a blanket.” So we put clothes back on him, but stayed up all night to watch him breath. And things got better from there, until, unbelievably, he is a happy, joyful, sweet, sensitive, funny, smart, caring, coordinated three year old. Happy home day sweetheart! Your mamas love you.<br />
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Postscript: Little Bug just had his three year doctor appointment and got a clean bill of health! Normal hearing and vision, an ongoing concern due to the medications and treatments he received in the NICU. He’s not anemic (for the first time), his lead level is down (our landlord did some remediation in the fall) and he’s 31 pounds (43%) and 38 inches (64%). For the first time, they measured him standing up instead of lying down and gave him a johnny to wear, which he danced around in–so I guess this means he is officially “not a baby” anymore and is, as he would say, “a big guy.” <br />
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<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-91486300893262876782013-07-16T12:34:00.001-07:002013-07-16T12:34:06.179-07:00Risky Bug-ness<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We recently spent a week at the beach--well, Jennifer and Bug spent two weeks there, but I, stupidly, was at a conference for the first one. It's probably the last long, unbroken stretch we'll spend together before Little Bug gets himself all grown and goes off to preschool in September. Preschool marks the end of his baby- and toddler-hood at home, and while it's a great beginning, too, there is something just a little bittersweet about it all.<br />
There is still something so wonderfully whole about him that I wish I could preserve in amber and mail forward in time to him when he is an acned and insecure teenager. ("You haven't broken him--<i>yet</i>," says a friend.) Sure, the snake is in the garden--the world's judgement and his own uncertainty are already whispering in his ear. I can hear it when he puts himself down if he misses his swing playing t-ball in the back yard and says, "I'm not very good at this." Or sometime last month, when he worried out loud about whether he would have friends at preschool.<br />
But mostly he loves himself and thinks he is perfect how he is, down to the scabs he picks on his knees. He really likes having long hair, and mentions this a lot. He sings, "I'm cool" to himself. He wants to be a rock star when he grows up, and is reasonably certain this will happen. He plays air guitar all the time, and peers around corners with a shy, flirty smile, certain that whoever he sees next will smile on him. He's just figured out about numbers above 100, and sometimes calls out from the backseat something like "372!" because he is so impressed with big numbers, and wants to show off all that he knows about them. He is so amazed with himself about potty training progress--"I peed in the potty!" he shouts, jumping up and down and getting real air.<br />
It all comes together when he dances. One day at the beach, when I could only get him half dressed because he likes himself naked, he was dancing in his effortlessly graceful and slightly quirky way. It was wonderfully unselfconscious, like Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear alone in <i>Risky Business</i>. And I watched him, deeply inhabiting his body and his coolness, I felt the thrill of being in the presence of something mystical and sane and whole, as if that's what <i>dancing</i> meant at the beginning of time. There was perfect joy of moving, of knowing you are beautiful, and being in love with the pure sound of the music.<br />
And I thought, for the umpteenth time, of my amazing luck in getting to watch Bug grow.<br />
<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-15556792736252691382013-05-22T13:08:00.003-07:002013-05-22T13:08:38.591-07:00Froggy<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-R7YRCRcAibc/UZ0dzQdWyqI/AAAAAAAABL8/y5I4Vm8h7RA/s1600/jax+w+haircut.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-R7YRCRcAibc/UZ0dzQdWyqI/AAAAAAAABL8/y5I4Vm8h7RA/s320/jax+w+haircut.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We talked Bug into a haircut--as long as it was still long hair, he said.</td></tr>
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Last week, Little Bug remarked on the gathering fog ahead of us as we walked in the park. He was just far enough away that I didn't hear him clearly, and I replied, using my favorite of his mis-pronunciations, "Yes, it is getting froggy."<br />
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"No, Mama Laura," he corrected me earnestly, taking my hand and looking up at me seriously. "Foggy. It's fog-gy."<br />
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My heart broke a little, as he rushed on toward childhood, less and less a baby every day. He is a wonderful child, full of jokes, music, love, and laughter, and I wouldn't want trade anything about him. But they change so much faster than we staid and boring adults that the pace is sometimes hard on me.<br />
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Keeping up the blog is good for hanging onto the memories. But I've come to realize why there are so many more baby blogs than children blogs. Babies don't do much, and they sleep a lot. Writing is a good way to spend time with the baby, visiting with recent memories while your little one sleeps. Children are a mile-a-minute, and spending time with them requires you to put the computer down and look at them.<br />
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The other day Bug was practicing his typing with my iPad, and I was trying to get him to look at a book with me. "Bug," I read, "Where is the green sheep?"<br />
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Without looking up he answered distractedly, but not unkindly. "Keep looking, Mama. You'll find it."<br />
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And I heard myself. This is why it's so hard to write when I'm not working. Because that's what I sound like when I <i>am</i> working.<br />
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So, a little bit of catch-up: <br />
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<b>April: Pig-e-let</b><br />
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Sometime in the spring, Bug stopped saying "Pig-e-let." We prompted him for it one too many times, and, smart guy that he is, he realized he was a source of amusement. Although he laughs at himself more easily than I do, that was a small affront to his dignity, and he picked up that the rest of us were saying "Piglet."<br />
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But it didn't lessen how much he loved the little pink guy, whom he carried everywhere.<br />
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We were taking a plane home from San Francisco (his new favorite place) on the day of the Boston Marathon bombing, and it heightened everybody's anxiety. Little Bug was making his way through security (somewhat more smoothly than he had last fall in Puerto Rico, when he took off through the maze of machines, and for some reason the TSA folks let us chase him down without getting too wound up about it). We had talked about what was going to happen, and he was preparing to let Jennifer carry him through the machine with Piglet in his arms.<br />
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A TSA officer, though, insisted that the stuffed guy was going through the x-ray tunnel.<br />
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Bug burst into tears as his best friend disappeared.<br />
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As we tried to assemble stroller, shoes, belts, computers, and diaper bag, Little Bag stood at the end of the x-ray machine and watched for Piglet, fiercely determined and unblinking.<br />
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When he could reach him, he gathered Piglet in his arms and took off at a dead run, determined to escape with his friend.<br />
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If I'm ever unjustly detained by unreasonable security officials, Bug is the stalwart, brave guy I want at my side.<br />
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(And if I ever see an adult in sagging pants and socks running across an airport after a toddler with a stuffed animal, I'll remember having been there...) <br />
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<b>March: On the moral order of the universe... </b><br />
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"Mama Laura, are goats naughty, or polite?" asked Bug as we strolled past them at the little zoo nearby.<br />
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I was nearly stumped, which happens rather a lot. "Hmm. I guess they are full of mischief, and eat laundry and all sorts of things they shouldn't, so I'd have to say naughty."<br />
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"What about peacocks? Are they naughty or polite?"<br />
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"Well...polite I suppose. I've never heard of them doing anything mean, and they are delightful and beautiful when they are free to wander."<br />
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Trying to guess what was behind the questions, I asked, "Bug, are you naughty or polite?"<br />
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"Oh, naughty!" he said with a smile full of mischief. And while he enjoyed my subsequent praise of his good qualities, he didn't change his position.<br />
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The next day, he was on the swings at the park and we watched a girl, about 7, have a full-throated tantrum about going home.<br />
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Bug: "Mama, what's wrong with that girl?"<br />
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me: "I guess she's not ready to leave the park, and is having a lot of feelings about it." We do a few more rounds of this, as I name what her feelings might be: angry, sad, disappointed, maybe also hungry and tired, which make everything worse. It's clear I'm not getting to the heart of the matter in his mind.<br />
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"But what's <i>wrong</i> with her?"<br />
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"She's having a fit because she's mad at her mom." Slightly moralizing, I add, "You know, you almost never have tantrums. If something doesn't go the way you hoped, you usually just say, 'Oh well.'"<br />
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"Yeah, but I throw my dinner on the floor."<br />
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That night, he did his one truly rotten behavior, something that had all but faded away: he flung his dinner plate, full of food, at the wall. "Mama, that was <i>naughty!"</i><br />
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The moral order of the universe was restored. The pressure to be polite-guy was off his shoulders. Our Bug could be naughty if he liked.<br />
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<b>February: If you give a boy a truck...</b><br />
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It's February, and I'm teaching the gender-disparities in early childhood literature in my Biology of Difference class. We're reading Lise Eliot in <i>Pink Brain, Blue Brain</i> and Anne Fausto-Sterling in <i>Sex/Gender</i>, who argue that the sex differences in brains and perception in children under 2 are small, the studies that show them have been poorly replicated, and the differences themselves are highly malleable. Furthermore, they are mostly statistical artifacts, in the sense that there is more difference among boys and among girls than between the two groups, so you have to massage the data to even produce them. By the time children are two, though, they suggest that we have often produced significant differences in gendered play, likes and dislikes. The class had been reading and watching some un-sourced and highly exaggerated popular media representations of the scientific literature on these slight differences, including how these (supposedly biological) differences are amplified in later childhood. "If you give a girl trucks," says a media figure, commenting on how girls are relational, boys competitive and individualistic, "she'll have Mommy trucks and baby trucks." (Not so much, say the data, but never mind). <br />
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The next morning, I am playing with Little Bug and dragging my feet about going to work. He is baking a cake in his play oven, because, he says, we're going to celebrate his birthday (6 months early, but who cares). He takes a pot stuffed with vegetables out of the oven (it's a carrot cake), and carefully lays out plates. Then he pulls his trucks around in a circle, and we all sing happy birthday.<br />
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If you give a boy trucks, they'll have a party.<br />
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<b>January: Proud, Proud, Proud</b><br />
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On January 12, shortly after 9 pm, in one heart-stopping and unforgettable moment, Little Bug leaned out over the landing between the second and first floors of our house and fell headlong down the stairs. He bounced off his face before Jennifer caught him, stopping his momentum before he broke his legs, which were tangled in the posts under the bannister. He came up bleeding and sobbing. We didn't know it until we got to the ER, but he had knocked out two teeth.<br />
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After we'd been at the hospital about 20 minutes, Bug had stopped crying and we were in a room. Jennifer hadn't put him down since we got there except briefly to have him stand on a scale. A nurse came by and asked, "Are we sure he can walk?" This was a good question, since we knew he'd gotten both legs caught. We asked him if his legs hurt and he said no. Jennifer put him down and we asked him to walk to the bed. His legs wobbled crazily, he staggered. I felt dizzy. He clearly had neurological damage, or maybe something was horribly broken. "Pick him up!" I cried, terribly upset.<br />
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Jennifer put him on the bed. The nurse examined him--head, neck, chest, abdomen. Amazingly, except for the blood all over his face, not a mark on him. She moved his legs, then asked him to press her with them. They were strong as ever.<br />
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"Were you just joking?" asked the nurse.<br />
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And then our boy, looking like a vampire, drooling blood, grinned a face-splitting grin. "I played a trick on you!" he said, laughing out loud.<br />
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When the doctor came, he repeated the performance, which worked almost as well the second time, because his mamas were hysterical. The doc was so floored by the whole thing that he collected residents and nurses and came back. Bug did it again.<br />
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Crazy boy.<br />
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A few days later, as we tried to adjust to his new smile and swollen face (and persuade ourselves that we were not the absolute worst parents on earth), we asked Little Bug how he was feeling about his new look.<br />
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"I can't tell you, I have to sing it," he said. And he grabbed his ukelele, and sang, "Proud, proud, proud, proud."<br />
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I grabbed my camera. And cried.<br />
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<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-11928910478429310122013-05-13T06:00:00.000-07:002013-05-13T06:05:06.146-07:00The Gender Police Strike Again (January 25, 2013)<div>
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By Kieran Slattery (Little Bug's sitter)</div>
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Today, Little Bug and I went to the Holyoke Children's Museum again,
and had a great time. He slid down the slide, built ramps (large and
small), sent boats through the water...</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
At any rate, toward the end of our trip, we wound up in the tot area,
and he began playing with a four-year old girl - they were both jumping
onto mats and doing somersaults, and he was having a blast. He was
miming her actions and just being adorable, per usual.</div>
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At one point, she said, "Oh, can she do a jump like
this?" </div>
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</div>
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And I smiled and said, "I'm not sure, you should ask him. Hey Bug, can you do a jump like that?"</div>
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</div>
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And he responded,
"YEAH!" </div>
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</div>
<div>
So the girl shakes her head and vehemently replies, "Oh, NO.
She's not a boy. She is a she." I politely corrected her, but she
maintained that, indeed, "she" was a "she." She sputtered,
"B-but...she..he...she has long hair!!" I, again, gently explained that
boys could have long hair, too.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Finally, she went straight to the source, and faced
him, demanding, "Are you a boy or a girl?" </div>
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</div>
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Little Bug, caught off guard,
stammered, "I'm a...gir...boy! I'm a boy." </div>
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</div>
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She corrected him, saying,
"No, you're not. You're a GIRL." </div>
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</div>
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Bug said firmly, "No. I'm a boy."
They went back and forth for a few rounds, until our little guy, clearly
exasperated and like, "Why the hell can't we just keep jumping and
somersaulting? Why do we have to harping on this?" affirmed his gender
for the umpteenth time and looked at me for backup. </div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
I said, "You're
right, buddy. You're a boy." Trying to steer the conversation away from Bug, I smiled and teasingly said to her, "Are YOU a boy?" </div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
She looked
at me like I was a moron and grabbed her earlobes, retorting, "No..I'm a
girl...I have earrings, SEE?!" I nodded solemnly and thought it was a
bad time to explain to her who George Michael was. (Oh - and then she
points at us both and goes, "She's a girl, and you're a girl." Poor
thing...I then had to explain that we were both boys. I thought she was
going to explode with frustration). The upshot was that she finally
walked away from us, settled into the rocking chair and surveyed us from
afar, before returning and admitting, "Okay, you're right. I see now.
He's a boy." and then: "Let's keep jumping!" </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm not sure what she "saw" that convinced her to
finally accept Little Bug's gender, but I'd imagine it had something to do
with the fact that she was sick of debating and really just wanted to
keep playing with her new friend ; ) </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When we left, I scooped Bug up, gave him a huge
hug and kiss and asked him if he was feeling okay and if he'd had a good
time. His reply? "YEAH!" and then, "Kee-nan, I'm hungry. What kind of
crackers you have for me?" </div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
I stopped worrying.</div>
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<br /></div>
Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-59273171129249053332013-05-13T05:31:00.001-07:002013-05-13T05:32:18.429-07:00For Sandy Hook (written December 15, 2012)<br />
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<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">Something
really bad happened to Bug last weekend. I let him jump off a diving board in a
friend's arms, and came up choking and crying. He had water up his nose and he
swallowed it, an awful feeling I remember from my own childhood diving board
accidents. It was a parenting mistake of the first order, mine. I held him in
my arms as he cried out the misery of it, and then sat him on the side of the
pool. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">After
less than a minute, he sneezed water all over my head, which made him laugh. As
I marveled at his powers of resilience, I encouraged him to swim toward the end
of the pool where our stuff was, since he wanted to and I thought it might do
him good to have his last memory before we left be swimming, instead of that
awful drowning feeling. He swam some, and paused to barf up the water he had
swallowed. I called it "upchuck," which he thought was absolutely
hilarious. I thanked what gods there be for his good humor and resilience, and
wished, not for the first time, that I was as brave as he is. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">I will
not recover as quickly from the awful tragedy in Connecticut. Two family friends
lost children in Newtown, and a niece remembers the principal of Sandy Hook
elementary from when she was her high school principal in Danbury. This is the
third mass shooting where I have lost people I knew, or been one person removed
from. The first was a 2002 shooting at the University of Arizona, where I was
teaching. An angry student killed three professors before killing himself. Because
his body was not immediately found, however, we all spent hours believing there
was a gunman loose on campus. The second shooting, the one that included Gabriel Giffords</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span><span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">well, everyone in Tucson knew someone.
These tragedies feel cumulative, each one echoing the other down the
corridor of memory. Perhaps that's external, too, as the media and even
the gunmen quote the others.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">After the
hard, horrible day of absorbing the scope of the tragedy in Connecticut (and
making sure Bug didn</span><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span><span style="mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">t hear a word of it; there are
some things I will try to protect him from), we took our little one
to see Christmas lights at a nearby park. And as trite as it all was, including
Santa and Mrs. Claus, there was comfort in its ordinariness, and his awe at the
beauty of it. And so tonight I hold my baby close and mourn for all of us, for
every parent who cannot hold their child, for all these guns we have set loose
on the world, from Egypt to South Africa to Haiti to Guatemala and Mexico, and
no less on ourselves.</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: #0400; mso-bidi-language: X-NONE; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: #0400;"></span></div>
Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-77957946845002821122012-12-02T12:36:00.000-08:002012-12-02T12:41:00.820-08:00What go in compost?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"What go in compost?" Bug asked me last night. On our recent visit to Tucson, there was much discussion of compost, as his Aunt Mimi had just started composting.<br />
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"Scraps from food you would otherwise throw in the trash," I said.<br />
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Little Bug lacks the vocabulary to out and out correct me. "What go in compost?' he asked again.<br />
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"Egg shells, coffee grounds, vegetable peels," I tried.<br />
<br />
"What go in compost?"<br />
<br />
I can't imagine parenting before the age of the instantly accessible YouTube "how-to" video. Bug spent much of the trip studying one on how to make a water fountain in your backyard.<br />
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"Do you want to find a how-to video on compost?" I ask.<br />
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Score. "La!" he says with great enthusiasm.<br />
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Sure enough, I have forgotten the brown stuff, the straw and dead leaves that compose the majority of a good compost. After we watch a while, he nods as they add the food scraps to the leaves. "<i>That</i> the trash," he points out, gently pointing out to me of the inadequacy of my answer.<br />
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It is humbling, this raising of a child. He reminds me, as all children remind their parents, of the insufficiency of what I know, and how quickly his curiosity can outstrip my map of the world.<br />
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We've been listening to <i>The Nutcracker</i>, as we did last year, in the vain hope that familiarity with the music will keep him engaged and in his seat next week when we go see his cousin dance in it. But as music has replaced trucks in his repertoire of obsessions, his interest in it has changed this year.<br />
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"What that?" he asks, pointing to his ear, asking what he is hearing.<br />
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"Those are the violins," I say, feeling mildly virtuous that I know the answer.<br />
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"What that?"<br />
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"Um, clarinets?" I'm on shaky ground. I'm not sure I have the ear for this.<br />
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"That tuba?" he asks. He loves tubas.<br />
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"Hmm, I think trombone? Maybe we should watch an orchestra play it on YouTube?"<br />
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"Laa!" Great enthusiasm. We learn that for some reason, it is mainly Japanese and Korean orchestras in the corner of YouTube that we find. Also that there appear to be no tubas in Tchaikovsky's score. Either that, or not in these particular orchestras. No matter. We begin a wild chase through Internet images of oboes and bassoons.<br />
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"What that?" he challenges Mama Jennifer when she comes over, pointing to a strange drawing we have found.<br />
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"An oboe?"<br />
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"Old Russian bassoon!!" he announces triumphantly. Show off.<br />
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I still know a little more than he does about a few things, which is reassuring. His Aunt Ana and Michi gave him children's hand bells as a gift, and I line them up in a scale. He picks them up one by one. "What that sound called?"<br />
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"It's a C." I can still read better than he can.<br />
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I pick each one up and try to sing the note back. He follows suit. I feel like I'm winning, like I've taught him something, though I'm not sure what.<br />
<br />
I remember surprisingly far back in my own early childhood, to almost his age. I remember something about this hunger for words and knowledge of things. He isn't at the "why" stage yet, but I remember how I loved that questioning of my parents, how satisfying it was that why questions had answers, and the world could be put in order. Later I learned that it couldn't, and that was tremendously disappointing.<br />
<br />
Maybe music questions will keep him busy for a while. He has a lot of instruments, which he loves, so there's a coordination piece and a knowledge piece to keep him occupied. There's also clearly an emotion piece--he walks around singing happy tunes of his own invention, but if we ask him to identify what a piece of music makes him feel, he can say happy or sad or scared. Or maybe soon we'll be on to dinosaurs, and learning all their names. I do admit to being glad we're done with trucks, which were boring me silly, although I tried not to let on as he proudly named every construction vehicle on a site.<br />
<br />
But I love his sturdy self-confidence that he can learn everything important about a subject, and when I'm not slightly annoyed, I am grateful for our access to Internet information streams that let him extend his questions beyond what we know.<br />
<br />
Some things, though, you can't learn on the Web. The other night he was hanging on Jennifer's leg, and announced: "I love Mama Jennifer." He looked over at me, and added sweetly, "I love Mama Laura, too." Then he patted himself on his tummy. "And I love myself." <br />
<br />
Oh Bug, I think, as I try not to let on that I've just teared up. I don't know where you came from, but I am so happy that you have that gift, that right now at least, so many things are working right for you.<br />
<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-60551651218408849712012-11-09T23:47:00.004-08:002012-11-09T23:47:34.903-08:00Another Country<br />
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">Susan Sontag once famously said that illness is another country. So too is childhood, or, better, it is a journey through a different place, populated quite differently than the more mundane dwelling places of ordinary adults. </span></div>
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I have an absorbing an interesting job that I like a lot, but when I see Little Bug, I sometimes feel like I've wandered onto a livelier and certainly funnier planet. Yesterday Jennifer drove me and a colleague home, which put me in the back seat with a Bug who was completely uninterested in the grown-up conversation in the front seat. Soon he started moving his fingers and making funny sounds. </div>
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"Are you playing a pretend trumpet?" I asked.</div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">"Tuba," he explained.</span></div>
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"Like, whomp! Whomp?" I asked</div>
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"Lup. Now, clarinet," he explained stretching out his fingers and making higher pitched sounds.</div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">Then he made a sound that started high and went low, moving one hand down in a slide.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">"That's a trombone!" I cheered. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">He chuckled. </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"Listen, Mama Laura. Trumpet," he added, wriggling his fingers and going high. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He patted his legs rapidly and loudly. "That drums!"</span></div>
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How many adults get to ride home with a whole pretend marching band?</div>
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There's also the work of learning, mapping a whole world and at least one language, which seems to be happening so quickly I marvel that he has time to sleep. I don't know the actual number, but surely they learn three quarters of the words in a language before they ever start school. I've said this before, but early childhood learning puts college students to shame. </div>
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Little Bug loves every word of it, and so we all turn into teachers in his presence (I found myself explaining how plumbing carries clean water into houses and waste water out before breakfast this morning, and Jennifer told him about the important role of hot water heaters if you want a bath. He was rapt.)</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">But the funniest part is how he also notices how the pedagogical role works. "What's this, Mama Laura?" he asked, holding up a picture.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">"That's a lobster," I answered cautiously, suspecting from his tone that something was afoot.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">"Good job, Mama Laura!" He pointed to his mouth. "Eat it. Yum!"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">He got every part of the teacherly encounter in his gentle teasing. Ask the question, evaluate and reward the answer, and then expand on the information. I was in hysterics. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">He did it again last night as he got me to accompany him on his drum with me playing the cymbals. He let me try for a while and then asked for them. "Try like this," he said, showing me how to lower one onto the edge of the other like finger cymbals. They did indeed make a sweeter sound, and he smiled encouragement at my efforts and went back to his drum.</span></div>
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Planet Bug is full of music, for sure, new words, and also other wonders. The full range of construction vehicles, pay loaders, cement mixers, excavators, bulldozers, crane trucks, and his beloved, the backhoe. </div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">It's</span> the source of his really truly awful favorite 2-year old joke. "Bug, do you want soup or a bagel for lunch?" You say. "Backhoe," he says with a smart-ass look. Whoever writes parenting advice books that suggest giving your toddler forced choices to give them the illusion of control has clearly not contended with the fact of who really is in charge. Backhoe.</div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">He's also adopted a sullen teen thing. "What did you do today?" I ask, hoping for something charming or at least interesting. "Nothing," he says, with a look that would be a smirk if he had more irony in him. Today I said, "I want you to wear a hat today. It's cold out." </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">"Whatever," he said back, only a shade less than sarcastic. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">Made me miss "Backhoe."</span></div>
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But mostly his landscape is still bright and funny, as even this mock-sullenness is played for laughs. It's part of becoming his own person, this defiance, as much as having his own personal favorite color (brown) and favorite number, or rather, related pair--"six upside down nine! Nine upside down six!" He doesn't tire of this marvel, even carrying around the floaty six and nine from the bathtub to demonstrate. "Six!" Flips it over. "Nine!"</div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">He has his obsessions, which have moved on from fireworks to water fountains. Like fireworks after the Fourth of July, this is a slightly sad thing to love fiercely in New England with winter approaching. I offered to take him to his favorite park this weekend, but he answered wistfully, "No go Look Park. Little Bug sad water fountains off."</span></div>
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This other country he roams around in, and sometimes lets us visit, is above all is own--about the dinosaurs, the playdoh, the adventures in Mama Jennifer's stories of Bob the Backhoe, Dave the Dump Truck, and their good friend, Rocky Raccoon. Colors have alternate names--red can also be "Elmo," blue, "Cookie Monster," and yellow, you guessed it, "Big Bird." Whatever the educational television content of his imagination, he's made it his. He eats pretend cupcakes--cookie monster color.</div>
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.0078125);">This is the wisdom I think of stories like Alice in Wonderland and songs like Puff the Magic Dragon. We wander around in this marvelous country for quite some time, until we are lured out by the foolish ambitious to become a grown up. When we try to go back, we find ourselves without the keys any longer. But this is what they don't tell you about parenthood: if you're lucky, you'll find a guide who will let you back in.</span></div>
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Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-4992363624317046562012-10-18T19:13:00.002-07:002012-10-18T19:13:51.833-07:00Little Bug Talking!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AtO26MRBMnw/UICPsBqjP2I/AAAAAAAABBE/eZPLyHCHoMs/s1600/stuffedanimals.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AtO26MRBMnw/UICPsBqjP2I/AAAAAAAABBE/eZPLyHCHoMs/s320/stuffedanimals.JPG" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Little Bug and some friends.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A friend who remembers Little Bug's first two weeks of life in NICU said recently, as we were talking about Bug's articulation disorder: he's just a bulldozer. He doesn't let anything stop him.<br />
Bug would undoubtedly like the metaphor; bulldozers follow closely behind backhoes as his favorite things on earth.<br />
But I was thinking about that as I finally got to read his 24-month language assessment from the speech therapist: she rated his language skills as above average for his age. It's hard to remember that he was hardly talking at all at 20 months, 4 words and a lot of animal sounds. And hundreds of signs.<br />
But I realized today how much he was listening all those months. I was reading a book to him, and he correctly identified all sorts of things I didn't know he had words for.<br />
"That sailboat."<br />
"Motorboat."<br />
"Rowboat."<br />
I turned the page. He did it again. "Oars, propeller, lighthouse."<br />
"Wow, little guy, you sure know a lot of words."<br />
"Little Bug talking!" he said, all proud.<br />
He wasn't just talking. He had a meta-narrative about this whole process, a name for this as a developmental stage in contrast with a previous one. <i>Talking</i>. And, I suspect, he'd also been listening all those months when he wasn't to the conversations about him not talking. I guess this was his announcement that we are done with all that.<br />
Then he added, "Little bug sitting on ottoman."<br />
Show off.Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-57053541917939849822012-10-07T20:20:00.001-07:002012-10-07T20:24:08.761-07:00Happy boy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V0fba1sKmP4/UHIIVDpXXnI/AAAAAAAABAw/gHqx7XYbjGI/s1600/IMG_1142.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V0fba1sKmP4/UHIIVDpXXnI/AAAAAAAABAw/gHqx7XYbjGI/s320/IMG_1142.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
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You could make the case that these are just hard, cruel times, and by extension, that we are just a species riddled with meanness. <span style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">Aggression, intimidation, and </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/opinion/sunday/dowd-two-presidents-smoking-and-scheming.html?hp" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">dishonesty </a><span style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">are called "presidential-ness." Some businesses have turned to a "profit above all else" ethic--an employee at Bank of America recently told someone I know to lie about her income so she could stay on food stamps and pay the bank with her food money. While the </span><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/11/business/la-fi-family-worth-20120612">average family lost 40%</a> of their net income in the years 2007-10, some people turned a profit. The number of millionaires in the U.S.<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/16/news/economy/millionaires/index.htm"> grew by 8%</a> in the same period.<br />
But watching Little Bug reminds me that there is hope for us. Many things give him joy. The other day he spotted a VW bug, really looked at one for the first time, and laughed out loud, which reminded me that this was effectively the point of them, or was until they became some expensive retro status symbol. But they still are hilarious-looking cars.<br />
He loves his friends. He likes holding hands, hugging, kissing. This goes for human friends, dogs, and stuffed animals, too.<br />
Falling leaves make him jump up and down with excitement, and (as in the picture above) running with the last gone-to-seed dandelions of the season, found unexpectedly at a park near here, is unbelievably fun, especially if you are going down hill, get over your feet, and tumble into a giggling heap at the bottom.<br />
But the thing that most made me notice recently that humans are an astonishingly generous and kind species, too, was when I was lying on the bed with my ankle on a pillow, quite down in the mouth about a sprain. Bug grabbed his Raffi-Taffy stuffed dog, a Yorkie with a pink felt-lined zebra-striped jacket, and started gently walking him across my head. "Raffi-Taffy jump on Mama Laura!" he said, in the exact same trying-to-coax a smile voice you would use with a sick kid. "Oh! Fall off!" He laughed. He stroked my arm gently.<br />
I was struck by how different this was than his usual play. He's rarely a real pain, but often if I or we are trying to read or otherwise preoccupied, as I was then with my ankle, he'll try to entertain himself by exploring, eventually getting into something he shouldn't; he'll try to get our attention by messing with something or trying to get us to read to him or play a game. This wasn't any of that. He was trying to make me laugh.<br />
"Mickey jump with Jackson!" he said, wrapping his arms around the oversized Mickey Mouse doll his cousins had brought back from Disneyland the year before. He jumped on the bed, launching himself in the air and falling down. He was trying so hard I had to laugh. As I laughed, he did. Pretty soon he got down on the floor, throwing Mickey into the air and himself on the floor so he disappeared from my sight line on the bed. We had discovered Vaudeville's slipping on a bannana peel joke, right there in the bedroom. I laughed until I choked up. Here was this little guy, so full of empathy at two that he was incredibly invested in amusing me, a point that came home to me every time he got up, ruefully rubbing whatever part of his body he had landed on.<br />
I think this is a lot of the appeal of being around children, and why those of us who have them find them addictively interesting. Some exceptions notwithstanding, they almost all laugh. They make you laugh. They dance. They are the best cure for pessimism I have found.<br />
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Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-53929428123032958542012-08-26T20:15:00.000-07:002012-08-26T20:27:49.007-07:00Lup<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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At two, Little Bug is getting to be recognizably human at a dizzying pace. He brushes his teeth at the sink. He's considering using a potty (although after one humiliating episode in which he peed on the floor, neat-boy is reconsidering this. He looked up at me with soulful eyes under the masses of hair he's sprouted and said, very solemnly, "Whoops."). He's sleeping in the big-guy bed at nap time. He's building ridiculously huge sets of train tracks all over the living room--albeit with lots of help from Mama Jennifer.<br />
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But mostly--at last--he's talking! A lot of it is hilarious, and, sturdy and self-confident character that Bug is, he doesn't mind if we laugh. He laughs with us. Tonight at dinner it was "abamoof." And when we couldn't get it, he just got louder, like all good English-speakers, he assumed that if he just yelled everyone could understand him. He put his water glass down.<br />
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ABAMOOF! ABAMOOF! ABAMOOF!<br />
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As his volume increased, so did his speed, ABAMOOFABAMOOFABAMOOFABAMOOF!<br />
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We guessed a few things, but finally were reduced to hysterics by his insistence and complete incomprehensibility. Finally he pointed at the window. Inspired, or desperate, I said, "Are you saying, 'Half a moon?'"<br />
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"Yes! Half a moof!" He said it with great patience, as if he was trying to be good-natured with the idiots he was saddled with for parents. Somewhere in there the f's were interfering with each other, but that wasn't <i>his </i>problem.<br />
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My absolute favorite, gone for a few weeks now sadly, was his word for bulldozer for a while: "Bordello." Clear as a bell. Also "L'amour" for his beloved toy, the lawnmower.<br />
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He's adding A's to the ends of lots of words, too. If he wants to scare you, he jumps out and says, "Boo-a!" The number after one is "two-a" and if you look at his foot you will see a "toe-a." Cracks me up. <br />
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The characters from Thomas the Tank Engine are taking up a lot of his imaginative energy, but he lacks a certain linguistic precision with their names. Gordon is Gorna, Percy is Pusu, and Duncan is Duncna. As his babysitter said, you sort of imagine Gordon and Gorna sneaking out on dates. <br />
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He's also taken to announcing to the strangers who ask (including Dora the Explorer) that his name is Jack. While I've taken pains to not use his name in this public blog, it's not Jack. He has his own private life going on, apparently, under the name of Jack.<br />
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That's not his only invention. Tonight he announced that he was a backhoe. Named Jackhoe. Oh, the tabloid Michael Jackson jokes that ran horribly through my mind. <br />
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He's also got a problem with terminal O's. They just go on and on. Cheerioo-o-o-o-s. Risotto is Ris-to-o-o-o-o. <br />
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And one I fear he'll never lose, because we've all taken it up, is "la" for yes. It was one of his first words, but he's not fixed it. Instead, he's adding to it. Recently, he's picked up an ever-so-casual "yup." Except he says it "lup." Now we all walk around saying "lup."<br />
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Context is still everything with understanding him, as with little kids generally I think. When he did his speech evaluation last week, one of the things he had to do was respond to a whole lot of language prompts in a book. It was kind of mean--drop a curious guy in the middle of a room with toys everywhere, mostly at eye-level, and then ask him to sit at a table in a chair and look at cartoonish drawings of kids doing boring things. As we kept trying to redirect him to the book, I thought, exasperated, about the parents who feel like school-teachers unfairly identify their kids as ADHD. Really, I wanted to argue with the speech therapist, he's two. Let him play with your trucks and doll house.<br />
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Finally, he got some of his attention directed at the exam instrument. "This boy is hungry! What should he do!" asked the therapist, Bev.<br />
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Bug wanted to help her. He's a good guy, and she seemed so excited. "Eat," he said. <br />
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"This girl is cold! What should she do!"<br />
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Wound up by all the exclamation points in her tone, he tried to match her. "Backhoe shirt!" he shouted.<br />
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Mamas cracked up, while Bev looked completely puzzled. "He's got a long-sleeved shirt with a backhoe on it," we said, when we could stop laughing. "It's what he wears when it gets cold." <br />
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"This boy is tired! What should he do!"<br />
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"Na-Na!" (nurse--so he can fall asleep.)<br />
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I have no idea how she coded that one. <br />
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One thing I'm sure of is that he failed all the prompts for a gerund, an -ing word. We weren't surprised. We hadn't heard one.<br />
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One minute after we got home, he repeated something I had said months ago were the important rules:<br />
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"No fighting, no biting, no hitting, no spitting."<br />
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Seriously, dude, you couldn't have said that five minutes earlier? You don't know that your mamas are achievers and that was a test? He spent the rest of the day riffing with gerunds. He stuck his head in the office--"Mama working!" He'd announce, "Running!" as he went off to do some. "Barking" of the dog. It was torture.<br />
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But the good news in all this mangled English is that it's where he should be, or close enough. The speech therapist wants to see us back in six months, but no speech therapy, no need to worry about an articulation disorder, at least not at the moment. And that is good news indeed. Lup. Sure is.Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-38686132954745407462012-07-16T05:18:00.001-07:002012-07-16T05:18:52.331-07:00Summer fun<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The last month has certainly been eventful, in that way that summer almost always is for children and then rarely is again. It began with him really figuring out the names of letters, and one day just leaving this piece of art for us in the living room while we were busy making breakfast--matching the refrigerator magnet letter to the squishy tile puzzle letter in the living room.</div>
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Sometimes, it's the things that happen when you're not looking that blow you away the most.</div>
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There was a wonderful visit from Adele from back in Arizona, in which we learned that the factor limiting how high a tower he could build was just his height--this one made it to 19 blocks before it fell! </div>
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Then there was perfecting his party-boy skills, dancing in a restaurant with a friend. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And learning how to use the camera himself</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Building really big ramps on the beach with his cousins, where he tried to direct the work while they built to his specifications, and especially<br />
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seeing his beloved grandparents.<br />
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But perhaps most remarkable has been the explosion of his language, from a handful of words to more than I can count. He's almost stopped signing, which I kind of miss--he was a lot more comprehensible as a signer, and the most heartbreaking thing is when we can't understand his words, and he'll try and try, and then finally just put his head in his hands and weep. We'll see if this is just regular toddler incomprehensibility, or something associated with the articulation disorder. Besides, he was such a poet with his handful of signs, of necessity. When he first saw fireworks, he kept signing "the light broke," as we watched the single flare go up and burst into a thousand colors. "Stars," he signed. "The light broke into stars."<br />
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But there are other times when his new-found language is just pure pleasure. The other night we were out doing errands, which turned into going out for pizza, then a family soccer game in a nearby park, and then darkness was falling and somehow it was 9 pm.<br />
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We piled into the car, and in the dark Jennifer made a wrong turn onto a four lane limited access highway. As soon as she got onto the entrance ramp, she said, "Crap!"<br />
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"Cwap!" added a small voice in the back seat.<br />
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We knew, of course, that we couldn't react. If he knew this was a super-charged word, especially out of the mouths of babes, he'd never stop saying it. We held our breath for a millisecond, and burst out laughing. Little Bug was delighted. "Cwap!" he said again.<br />
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But under the hilarity, we were also going the wrong way in a rapidly moving car.<br />
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"I think it's a long way to an exit," said Jennifer.<br />
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"Cwap!" said Bug. Of course we laughed.<br />
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"There are no streetlights on this road."<br />
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"Cwap!"<br />
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"This is the kind of road I hate driving, disappearing into woods and nowhere."<br />
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"Cwap."<br />
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"I still don't see a place to turn around."<br />
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"Cwap."<br />
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Every time he said "cwap," we laughed harder, and his comic timing was precise. Maybe he was just imitating a sound he heard, but he sure used it well.<br />
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Eventually we got ourselves turned around and going in the right direction, and headed to try to do one last errand that had to be finished that night. We got almost home, and turned into the grocery store parking lot. A small wail came from the back seat, as Little Bug realized he still wasn't going to get to bed. Tired and a whiny, he said the only thing that could fully convey his unhappiness:<br />
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"Cwaaaap!"<br />
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<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-23011489187715944512012-06-18T14:03:00.002-07:002012-06-18T14:03:48.915-07:00Ramps and cars<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If you ask, Little Bug will tell you that his favorite thing to play is "ramps and cars." As you might imagine, this involves using his blocks to make a ramp for his cars. </div>
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I have a clear idea of how this should be done. When he asks me to play with him, I always build the same one. It looks like the one below:</div>
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Bug does not think much of this ramp. He'll usually let me run a car or two down it just to be nice, but he'll quickly begin to offer other suggestions. This is impressive given the limits of his words. He will, for example, stand up and step away and jump in the air to suggest it should have a jump. </div>
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He thinks my ramps are boring. </div>
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So I asked what he would build instead. This is what he made:</div>
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I though this exhibited a poor understanding of ramps and engineering, so I asked what would happen if a car fell of the top of the tower. He drew curlicues in the air to demonstrate how the car would somersault, then smashed his hands together and said, "boom!" It would crash. That was the point.<br /> "Do drivers like to crash?" I asked, trying not to pre-worry the fact that he could get his license a mere 14 years from now. He sighed. Grown-ups are hard to explain things to.<br />
So then he built me this one:<br />
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I admired how it went in multiple directions, had a jump, and a wall you could crash into. He relaxed a bit. Perhaps I could see the good parts of ramps and cars. He invited me to get down to his level and work with him by patting the floor beside him. I said I wanted to see what he built. He patted more insistently. I came and sat down.<br />
Little Bug had a plan. He started showing me how my ramp could be fixed. All these months I thought he didn't know how to build a gently sloping ramp that you could let go your car at the top of, but I was wrong. He started building my ramp. On steroids. With jumps.<br />
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I made suggestions and showed him some tricks, which he sometimes accepted. We ran cars down it and problem-solved together why the cars didn't make it. I'd suggest a two-block jump. He said three (three fingers, carefully held up after counting off with the other hand). He persuaded me that he's actually right: three blocks lets a car complete a somersault, where it just crashes from a height of two. This is a carefully calibrated art.<br />
He talks like a comic book. "Bam! Pow!"when there were crashes. "Zippo!" is what he shouts when it makes it.<br />
We worked on it from before dinner until bedtime. I got more and more excited. Finally, this is what he built:<br />
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I took pictures. We called Mama Jennifer. I showed her how a car would go all the way down, negotiate that top (3-block) jump, that final one-block jump, and shoot through the double arch. "Zippo!" I shouted, pumping my arms.</div>
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There's a great, middle-ground ramp that he's learned to build, I thought, keeping his sense of adventure but creating something that works better. </div>
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Still, I was a little wistful for his crazy architectural features, thinking sadly that I'd inculcated my little guy into the boring world of stereotypical but functional figures. I shouldn't have worried. This morning, he got up and built this ramp:</div>
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Zippo. Boom.</div>
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<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-65612301416811828132012-05-28T10:45:00.007-07:002012-05-28T10:45:51.102-07:00Numbers and words<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I thought I had seen some persistence and hard work in 15 years of teaching college students, but now that I have a toddler, it's becoming clear to me that I didn't know anything about the subject before. Little Bug wants to learn numbers, and he's not going to quit--or release any of his nearby teachers--until he's succeeded.<br />
It started a couple of weeks ago, when we broke out a number puzzle our friend Cathleen had given him for Christmas. I felt a little foolish--at 1 year nine months, there's no urgency about him learning numbers, and I'm not even sure if it's developmentally appropriate yet. I wondered if I was like some striving parent trying to get their toddler ready for Harvard through relentless drilling in facts and skills--you know, the kind that advocates of free play think kills creativity and destroys the joy of childhood. But these same folks say let your toddler lead--and Bug proceeded to keep me sitting at the table for two hours, well past bedtime, as I demonstrated counting and he fit the numbers into the puzzles with little fingers barely coordinated enough for the task. We finally quit because I was exhausted--he would've kept going.<br />
Since then, it's been all about the numbers. Finding the numbers on the squishy play tiles in the living room. Trying to learn how to hold the other fingers down so he can hold up two and three fingers. His favorite song is "Numbers Rumba," where he can jump up and down and hold up the number of fingers in the verse (I can't imagine how sick the neighbors must be of that song, since he asks for it every morning). More number puzzles, including a clock one, and refrigerator magnets. Most recently, he's become obsessed with Charles Blow's editorial in the <i>New York Times</i> last Friday, which recaps the numbers (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/opinion/blow-plantations-prisons-and-profits.html">in a large column to the side</a>) from a recent <i>Times-Picayune</i> series about how many people are incarcerated in Louisiana's obscene for-profit prison system--1,619 per 100,000 residents, more than double the rate for the U.S. as a whole (730). For each of the past four mornings, Little Bug has poured over that column of numbers, asking me to ask him to find the 1s, the 2s, and so on. Talk about a gut-rippingly poignant moment in contemporary childhood.<br />
But the other thing that makes it poignant is that he still can't say the numbers. A month ago, he got diagnosed with an articulation disorder--a speech problem that has to do with his awareness of and coordination in his mouth and tongue. There was plenty of good news in the assessment of the early childhood development specialists. He's not a late talker because of a cognitive or neurological problem--in fact, he tested out as very bright and super-coordinated. This has nothing to do with his difficult start in life, being intubated for his first 11 days, or not getting oxygen around his birth. It will get better, probably before he's three, but not on its own. He can start speech therapy at two, and in the meantime, we can teach him names of parts of his mouth, practice blowing bubbles and any instrument you can blow, and ask for more speech. It's working--he can follow directions like, "put your tongue on the roof of your mouth behind your teeth to say 't'." He's gotten good with train whistles and harmonicas and a recorder. His first tries at words are often astonishingly bad, "Sa!" for yes--but he's adding words by rote, learning the parts one by one. "Llama" and "no no" have gotten really good, while "dog" and "bubbles" and a host of others are coming along. That first night he kept me up with number puzzles he astonished me with a sentence--as he signed for the ten millionth time that he heard a car on the street outside the window, and I obligingly verbalized--slightly numb from the repetition--"did you hear a car go by?" He popped out with "go by!" Startled, I said, "did you say, go by?" and he replied, "Car go by!" grinning from ear to ear.<br />
He is stunningly not-fazed by his struggles to talk. He is an exuberant and confident communicator, certain that if he is just inventive enough we'll understand him. Last night he wanted us to hand him some of the bark that was providing soft material underneath the play structure at the park so he could throw it and watch it go down the slide. He signed "barf" (he made that one up, but we knew it). We were confused and asked if he felt sick. He barked like a dog. We guessed it and laughed. Jennifer took him over to a tree and showed him where bark came from, and explained that it was a different word from barf. He climbed to the top of the slide again, and signed "tree" and "barf." He wanted some tree barf. Perfectly clear.<br />
As his thoughts get more complicated, though, we're increasingly frustrated, even if he's not. We're approaching the horizon of our baby sign and ASL skills. Our apps and signing videos have 100-150 signs, but he needs more words, and the grammar and syntax are beyond us. We feel incredibly lucky that we started down the baby sign path--the first thing speech therapists often do with articulation-disorder kids when they are two is to start teaching them sign, because by then toddlers have sometimes developed pervasive communication disorders, have poor receptive language, little ability to communicate with others, and are sometimes tantrum-ing, frustrated kids who go on to develop reading problems, too. We don't (knock on wood) seem to have any of that.<br />
It just seems increasingly like we are always playing charades with Little Bug. For example: Bug was looking at a picture of naked newborn in a <i>Times</i> article about home births (yes, he spends too much time reading the newspaper. We're not advocating it to him--it's just that it's there at the breakfast table, so he looks at it). He signed "poop." I squinted at the picture. I said, "that baby isn't pooping!" He shook his head no. I haven't understood. He pointed at his diaper. I squinted at him. I said, "that baby isn't wearing a diaper, either." He signed "poop." "Oh," I say, "do you mean, that baby should be wearing a diaper, in case he poops?" Little bug squeals in delight and claps. One point for Mama Laura's team in toddler charades. He points at the picture and frowns. Our stern little sanitarian does not approve of naked-bottomed babies.<br />
Once he learns how to make the sounds, the speech specialist assured us, Little Bug will get from 50 words to 350 in no time. <br />
In the meantime, we'll keep trying words by rote. Today's word? Two, of course.<br />
<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-55051141599801279682012-03-31T22:16:00.000-07:002012-03-31T22:17:56.164-07:00Little bug of spring<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Little Bug is in love with the moon this spring. And stars. Also robins, squirrels, flowers and sometimes sparrows. He's maybe a little fickle about the sparrows.<br />
<br />
The moon thing started gradually, but then one warm, early spring night we were out walking and the moon was nearly full, and when Bug saw it, he shrieked with delight. This was heartwarming and completely adorable the first six or seven times, but by the fortieth, Jennifer was imploring me to put the carrier on my back so she could be a few feet further away from our shrieking little lunatic.<br />
<br />
I remembered why we taught him to sign. Because we needed an alternative to him shouting at us. <br />
<br />
It took a couple of days to teach him the sign for moon and stars--moon is hard, involving cupping your fingers in a crescent shape, holding it by your eye and then extending your hand into the sky. Stars are easy, a lot like socks only directed up instead of down. Once we gave him signs, the shrieking stopped, but the excitement didn't. I found him standing on a radiator, peering out the window at the moon. We were walking down a city street, and he was so thrilled by the moon and the stars that he couldn't hold hands. In fact, he couldn't walk. He just stood there, completely enrapt, signing moon-stars-moon-stars-moon-stars. I thought he was going to bruise his head he was hitting his "moon" signs so hard and fast.<br />
<br />
He sees moons and stars everywhere, now. In a book his sister gave him, he turns eagerly to the moon and star pages (there are a surprising number of these in board books, since most little-kid books are written with bedtime in mind). We found a baby shower present we had put away until he got older, a turtle that projects stars and moons, and he looks forward to night-time so he can turn it on. He notices stars and moons on awnings, clothing, billboards. He shouted when we drove by Macy's, with its star logo. His eyes are constantly scanning the skies.<br />
<br />
I remember when my friend Adela told me about how when they were little her girls loved the moon. I thought that was sweet, but I think I know a little better what she meant, now. This is no mild crush. This is completely, head-over-heels, can't get enough moons and stars.<br />
<br />
He loves all the new life of spring in the same way, shouting with pleasure at the new birds that haven't been here since fall, fat robins on the lawn, red-tailed hawks in the sky, flashes of red cardinals. He notices every new flower coming up. I told him that when the Spring Peepers sing, you know the snow won't come again, and the sound of their song means goodbye winter, hello to spring. The next day we wandered again into some boggy spot and were greeted by a chorus of peepers, and he shouted, full of delight, "Bye-bye!" <br />
<br />
The funny thing is, I find his seriousness as moving as his
delight. He was helping me in the kitchen today, gravely putting big
bags of onions in the cabinet, then vacuuming with great seriousness
with the hand vacuum, asking advice about the bigger pieces of popcorn
on the floor. He carefully smelled the herbs for the soup, and chopped
the onion in the cuisinart with brows furrowed in concentration (that's
not as dangerous as it sounds. Cuisinart, in their effort to produce an
idiot-proof design that adults couldn't lose a finger in, actually
created something safe even for toddlers.) Not that he can't laugh--he
joked around, pretended that the smell of the onions was so strong that
it knocked him backward. But I am moved by this very droll little
person, taking ever-so-seriously this work for our family with which he has been entrusted, hard-working and proud of what he can do.<br />
<br />
I watch something in him reach out to the life bursting out all around him, in this, his first New England spring. I had forgotten how my heart could thrill to robins and peepers, but Bug reminds me. The world is so full of marvelous things for him, unacquainted as he is with cynicism, irony, bitterness.<br />
<br />
He's not broken yet. Maybe he won't be for at least a few more springs.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-28769394065457671072012-02-22T13:48:00.000-08:002012-02-22T13:48:53.363-08:00Sentences<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So, true confessions: when we went to Little Bug's pediatrician appointment for his 18-month old well-baby checkup, we asked her if she thought his language was ok. We talked about how he only had 19 words (he added "ta-da" in the last couple of weeks--as in, yay, I did that, look at me!), and she said she thought he was fine. We talked about whether we wanted him evaluated anyway, because given his rough start in life, we feel we're entitled to be neurotic; we weren't sure. She pointed to 50 (!) discrete signs as good evidence that there was nothing wrong with his language, and was interested in his innovation with them, like how after we showed him how to make his hands move around each other for the "Wheels on the Bus" song, he used the same motion as a sign for "roll."<br />
The visit went on for a while after that, discussing all the usual toddler things--a rash, vaccines, throwing toys, considering daycare, brushing teeth, whether he gets enough Vitamin D. Jackson enduring this--standing around in his diaper while we talked--bravely, looking at books and throwing a ball around, but then he got bored. He took his straw cup and rolled it at me, and said "Mama! Wawa!" and signed "roll."<br />
Our pediatrician laughed at us. There's nothing wrong with Bug's language, she said. He's acquiring language like a baby in a bilingual household. He just put together a three word sentence, which is advanced language development for his age.<br />
He's got sentences. I totally somehow didn't hear them. Now I hear them all the time. Leaving for work? I get a whole family geography: <i> Mama. Raura. bye-bye vroom-vroom. Mumma nana.</i> (Mama Laura goes bye-bye in the car; Mama Jennifer [stays home and] nurses me.) Packing bags to go to grandparents? <i>Raura Mumma [sign for baby] bye-bye</i> (Mama Laura, Mama Jennifer, and Little Bug are going away). Hands by his side with palms up, <i>Mumma?</i> Where is Mama Jennifer?<br />
I used to feel totally superior to the parents who said that their little ones had words that they didn't identify as words until later (not only am I paying close attention to words, I can even work out his <i>signs</i>.)<br />
I just missed his <i>sentences</i>.<br />
<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-89646802567523341592012-01-30T14:10:00.000-08:002012-01-30T14:10:30.686-08:00Talking<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Little Bug is coming up on his 18 month birthday, and his Mama Laura has been driving him crazy about whether he shouldn't be saying more words. This weekend, when I started my "What's your word for...?" game, he put a block in his mouth and looked at me, somewhere between cross and amused. He may not be able to say, "Can you please chill out about that," in words, but he can sure convey it clearly.<br />
<br />
And I know better. One of my favorite things that I've read about toddler's language acquisition is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Baby-Talk-Sentences-Development/dp/0761526471/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327959205&sr=8-1">Kenn Apel and Julie Masterson's <i>Beyond Baby Talk</i></a>, where Apel confesses to having the following conversation with his son Nick when Nick was about Bug's age.<br />
<br />
Nick, like Little Bug, was what language specialists call a "noun-leaver," a baby who emphasizes actions over things. So when Bug, for example, sees my coat--even when it's hanging up--he says "bye bye," because when you put on your coat, you leave. Similarly, in the following passage, Nick is using <i>dada</i> to mean <i>juice</i>, to refer to the action of carrying the juice over to him. <br />
<br />
"Nick used the word <i>dada</i> to say <i>juice</i>, regardless of who happened to have juice or where the juice was. In other words, it was true word, even though it did not seem to be close at all to the actual adult pronunciation.<br />
Nick (pointing at juice): "Dada."<br />
Dad: "Juice? Say Juice."<br />
Nick: "Dada."<br />
Dad: (emphasizing the pronunciation more): Juuuuice."<br />
Nick: "Dada."<br />
Dad: (becoming a little impatient and forceful): Juuuuiiccee!"<br />
Nick: "Daaaa daaaa!"<br />
<br />
When I read it, this story left me howling with laughter. It is perfect. It reminds me of two things. First, toddlers are not imitating. Babies imitate; toddlers are learning language. And they are putting it together with their own incredible intelligence and logic. Nick is not interested in his Dad's word for juice; he has his own. The second is that what the development people mean when they say that a little one should have 20 words by 18 months is loose; bye-bye can count for coat, da-da for juice. Those outside your immediate circle might understand about 25% of what you say.<br />
<br />
So being the slightly insane parent that I am, I set out to count Bug's words (and signs, just for fun: 37 reliable signs with clear meanings. But this is a post about words; signs don't count for the 18 month race for 20 words). So listening carefully to Apel, I am letting him have his own words for things.<br />
<br />
Me: Do you have a word for <i>sheep</i>?<br />
Bug: <i>Baa</i>.<br />
Me: Do you have a word for <i>go</i>?<br />
Bug: <i>Gogogo!</i><br />
Me: Do you have a word for <i>something fell on the floor</i>?<br />
Bug: <i>Uh-oh</i>.<br />
<br />
and so on. Through 10 or 15 words. So I'm relating all this to Jennifer, with my pen and list in hand, and Bug is standing beside me. Zoe the cat jumps up on the radiator. "Oh!" I say. "I forgot cat! He says <i>meow</i> for cat," and I go to write it on my intense-mama list.<br />
<br />
A little hand pats my thigh. I look down. <i>'Mona</i>, he says, '<i>Mona.</i><br />
<br />
I've forgotten that he switched from saying <i>meow</i> to (Ra)<i>mona</i> for the kitties, and he reminds me.<br />
<br />
Did I mention that my sweet little guy doesn't miss anything? And that whether my list gets from 18 to 20 words in the next two weeks, when he turns 18 months, he is doing just fine.<br />
<br />
It's his mama we need to worry about.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-18103078924382840032011-12-02T19:57:00.001-08:002011-12-02T20:15:37.445-08:00Boys and girls<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
While the eloquent 19-year old who assures Iowans that he hasn't been harmed by his lesbian parents has gone viral on Facebook, we have more prosaic concerns: Little Bug is currently denying the actual existence of girls.<br />
<br />
We noticed that he was signing "baby" for every kid under 12, and we thought he needed more signs. So we tried to teach him signs for "boy" and "girl." He learned to do them on the plane back from Tucson, as I pointed out a girl and a boy and he repeated my signs back to me. They seem dated an ancient: "boy" involves drawing an imaginary cap above your forehead, and "girl" is signed by drawing a bonnet string along your chin.<br />
<br />
Tonight we were at a tree-lighting in Amherst, complete with the UMass marching band playing religious Christmas carols--a tad strange--and he was "signing" away and otherwise communicating nonverbally in a carrier on my back. Clapping for the band, signing "more" every time they stopped, making "woof" noises for the dogs. And signing "boy" every time he saw a kid older than two. Some of them were clearly girls, and Jennifer would laugh and sign "girl" and say "no, that's a girl." Gendered sign language was not working well for him. He'd make his mock-frowning face and grunt in disagreement (for a kid with few words, he gets his important thoughts across with surprising clarity). Then he would sign "boy" again. "Girl" Jennifer would say and sign. "Boy" he would sign in reply. Then he'd point to himself and sign "boy."<br />
<br />And the anti-gay parenting folks were afraid he'd grow up confused about his gender. Nope. Just other people's.<br />
<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-37843369128187204972011-11-03T20:38:00.000-07:002011-11-03T20:38:47.049-07:00Moo, Baa<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
Little Bug is a la-la-la kind of guy.<br />
<br />
There's a book by Sandra Boynton, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Moo-Baa-Sandra-Boynton/dp/067144901X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320370081&sr=8-1"><i>Moo, Baa, La La La</i></a>, that is hugely popular with the toddler set. I've read it to lots of little kids, and it has something for everyone--animal sounds, silly drawings, and opportunities for personal creativity. By far the most popular line in my experience--which was extensive when I was a daycare teacher--is "No, no, you say, that isn't right!" This generally makes toddlers shriek with joy. "No" is pretty much the most fun word you can think of.<br />
<br />
But not Bug. In the picture above, he is responding to his second favorite line: "Rhinoceroses snort and snuff." He pouts his lips out and snuffles, which generally makes his mamas laugh out loud. He sort of stares into the middle distance when you get to the "no no" part. He likes to make the cow sound, and the sheep sound, but then when you say, "Three singing pigs say la la la!" that's when he shrieks. "La la la la la la!" he says, "la la la!" until he falls over giggling.<br />
<br />
That seems to be how he makes his way through life.<br />
<br />
Earlier this week, when the power was out and and the house got to be down to 55 degrees, Mama Jennifer and I were starting to get kind of stressed. Little Bug thought the whole thing was a riot. Snow falling on his face made him tilt his head back, stretch out both his arms, open his mouth, and laugh and laugh. Lights out...well, that seemed kind of weird--he kept pointing to the light switches and reaching up, like, if were just taller I could help you out with this. You really should think about putting the lights on. Flashlights got a big grin, especially when he could hold it, and everyone curled up under lots of covers in the bed was just about as good as it could get. The only thing he really minded were diaper changes, never his favorite, and having his butt naked in the cold didn't improve his feelings about them. But all and all the whole thing didn't trouble him much, despite the fact that he didn't even own a warm coat. Friends had their baby tucked up in a sort of tailored blanket thing, like Bug is wearing above. We badly wanted one. Now that the heat's been on at our house for days (although we still have relatives and friends without heat, now 5 days after the storm), the snow is melting, and the roads are becoming passable again, we have a winter coat, a snow suit, and two warm blanket things. Now we are prepared for the last disaster, and almost certainly not the next one.<br />
<br />
But Bug isn't trying to protect himself from an unpredictable future. We went to the mall and looked high and low for boots that were warm and fit. Finally, just as we were getting ready to give up, we found a guy in a scary Halloween costume--looking all hangman-ish, in black with a long lanky haired wig--to fit him for boots. They looked warm, they fit, they weren't funny looking...so we put them on him while he sat in my lap. When I set him down and asked him to walk, he didn't. He answered his own question instead: he started to dance. Funny boy just wanted to know if he could dance in those big boots.<br />
<br />
That's my la la la guy.<br />
<br />
<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-24884240380899969912011-10-16T17:23:00.001-07:002011-10-16T17:23:48.220-07:00Communicating<br />
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<br />
Learning to communicate with Little Bug as a toddler has its ups and downs.<br />
<br />
A
few nights ago, I was trying to get him to clean up his room. We put on
the clean up songs, and I went to work, but everything I put on top of
his toy bin he knocked off as soon as it got there. I picked up 26
alphabet blocks and put them in their tray, and down they came. I
organized stacking rings on their posts, and off they went. The more I
cleaned, the more mess we had.<br />
<br />
I stopped and tried to
figure out what was going on. I did consider the entirely reasonable
question of whether he wanted his room clean--but I think he did, since
that always comes before the bath, which is the high point of his day. I
turned to him, and asked with some exasperation what was wrong, looking
across the disturbing clear top of the toy bin, and the wreckage all
around us--beads on wire toy, stacking cups, great piles of overturned
blocks. What do you want? I asked. By now we had gotten to the up-tempo
salsa "Hora de limpiar" song, and my son was vibrating with the beat. He
picked his way to the bin and launched in an amazing drum riff, head
down, hands dancing.<br />
<br />
Ah, I thought. I see toy storage, he sees a really big, beautiful drum. Of course cleaning up means clearing it off.<br />
<br />
It's hard to get on the same page when you are reading from different books.<br />
<br />
<br />
I saw the 5-year old version of this in a conversation on a crowded path near the beach in Maine.<br />
<br />
"Look, mama, dog poop," said a little girl.<br />
<br />
<br />
"We need to walk quickly," said her mom, unwilling to acknowledge the dog poop but noticing the people piling up behind them.<br />
<br />
<br />
"Poop, mama!" said her immoble daughter.<br />
<br />
"Come on now, we need to keep going."<br />
<br />
<br />
"POOOP!" she shrieked.<br />
<br />
<br />
By this time, only the knowledge that I never want my parenting
critiqued in public kept me from telling the mom that she was going to
have to talk about poop if she wanted her daughter to move from the spot
where she was fixed.<br />
<br />
<br />
This tells me that impossible communication with a youngster with
a different, essentially unrelated agenda should not be considered an
isolated event. This is going to go on for years.<br />
<br />
Sometimes, though, the toddler brain is not just on a different wavelength. It is completely incomprehensible.<br />
<br />
For
example, Bug hates getting pants on. There is no reason for this that I
can discern; he's happier once they are on, warmer and better protected
from scrapes. But getting them on is a major wrestling match. Once we
were in a parking lot with a messy diaper, and it took two of us to get
new pants on him--one to hold his flailing, hollering body up in the
air, the other to position the pants so he could be dropped into them. <a href="http://www.nields.com/">The Neilds </a>have a song about this--one that only the parent of a toddler could understand. <i>The enemy called pants, pants, pants</i>, the lyrics go. <i>If
you put those pants on me, I will cease to be so sweet...if you pull
those to my waist, I will make a nasty face. The enemy called pants,
pants, pants.</i><br />
<br />
This tells me that the problem is not limited to our toddler. It's from someplace we could call planet toddler.<br />
<i> </i><br />
<br />
Another planet toddler moment: he has started to whine. He points
to something, then engages in a high-pitched, super-annoying whine to
tell me that this is what he wants. I was trying to talk him out of it.<br />
<br />
"Little
Bug," I said brightly, "what could you say instead?" I understand this
is not totally fair. The kid has I think 5 words and about a dozen
signs. If he could say, "I want to flip on the light switch," he
probably would have. But the whine is going to make me start banging my
head against a wall.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
He considered my question gravely for a couple of seconds. He pointed at the light switch, and then blew in my face twice. I almost fell over laughing. I carried him to the light switch.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
But then there are these moments of communication so perfect it breaks your heart.<br />
<br />
<br />
Yesterday, his Mama Jennifer called to him that it was time for
his nap. He got up from a book on making paella that he had been sitting
and contemplating, and ran over to the stairs. Then he saw me and ran
back to give me a hug good-bye. Then he very seriously and carefully
crawled up the stairs, and got back on his feet at the top. Then he ran
down the hall, waving his arms in the air and shouting "Na-na, na-na,
na-na" (nurse) and got into the bed.<br />
<br />
It turns out, though,
that the maternal brain has moments as incomprehensible as the toddler
brain. I missed my recalcitrant Bug. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
As I watched him organize and plan all these different steps to get to his nap, all I could think was, <i>who is this big guy, and where did my baby go</i>?<br />Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-19851421739175648472011-10-02T20:12:00.000-07:002011-10-02T20:12:14.752-07:00Toddler<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IwlFBXlB_Ck/Tokm2MFWpeI/AAAAAAAAA58/7zHoGg1UyZQ/s1600/photo-6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jJa3Hr-XExY/TokngF3JX-I/AAAAAAAAA6A/nAav2QZA7P0/s1600/photo-6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jJa3Hr-XExY/TokngF3JX-I/AAAAAAAAA6A/nAav2QZA7P0/s320/photo-6.jpg" width="304" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Little
Bug said, or signed, his first sentence today. Jennifer and I were planning to
take a long walk with the dog, and debating stroller vs. baby carrier. Bug
piped up and said, "Na na" (nurse) and then signed "eat" (and
then go to) "sleep."<br />
<br />
It's bad when your toddler is nagging you for more naps. <br />
<br />
He also has instituted nightly baths, which I felt he could go one or two
nights without. But how do you answer someone who is 13 months old and signing
"bath" and “more”?<br />
<br />
It is of course possible that this baby signing thing is over-rated, that it
just makes them bossier sooner. For instance, the baby books all say that
sometime between 12 and 18 months they can start to follow two step commands
(pick up that block and put it in the bin), which he can. But nobody
says--because most folks sensibly don't give their toddlers strategies to talk
at that age, when their mouths still can't do it--that they can begin to GIVE
two-step commands at this age. But I got up today into the greyness of a rainy
morning, and Little Bug paddled over to his room in his feet-y pajamas (because
he was sleeping in our bed, natch), looked at me and signed (turn on the)
"light" (then the) "music."<br />
<br />
Ridiculous. (Dancing boy made up his own sign for put on the music: pumping his
little hands back and forth by his ears. Gotta dance, mama, gotta dance.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
He has the most astonishing desires for the very things toddlers are supposed
to hate. This morning he rejected pancakes for breakfast in favor of black
beans, soy milk, and gorgonzola cheese. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It's now becoming clear what direction
his terrible twos will take. He will be throwing temper tantrums at the co-op
for more vegetables. Stomping angrily down the hall demanding to go to bed
earlier. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">All of this is not to say he is incapable
of real mischief. He is ever ready to throw a shelf full of books on the floor,
and he approaches getting into the car seat with a great grin, prepared to
drive mamas to distraction with his ability to resist every effort to strap him
in. He has faked me out in a store, engaging in misdirection and then darting
through strangers’ legs to take off running, shrieking with laughter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He also seems to have suddenly noticed
the existence of other, mostly younger babies. He is riveted by them, staring
and signing “baby” so enthusiastically that the swinging of his arms threatens
to knock him down. He carries dolls around, handing them to me for a cuddle and
signing “baby” at me. Did you know, he seems to be saying, that there are other
babies in the world—little babies—and it’s not actually all about me? And I’m
not really all that little any more?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But he is still pure sunshine, that
boy, even as he is making astonishing leaps into toddlerhood. He certainly is
more often a pain than he was when he was still at the potted plant stage. But
he is also ever more himself, achingly wholesome and square one minute, so
charmingly trouble the next that it’s almost impossible to keep from laughing.
But above it all, able to concentrate more joy in every minute than I would’ve
thought humanly possible.</span></div>
Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-12691329899508020272011-09-05T04:35:00.000-07:002011-09-05T04:38:39.930-07:00If I can't dance....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dcNC7bofROQ/Tlo-HktMFTI/AAAAAAAAA54/Jay26IILqRU/s1600/IMG_0334.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dcNC7bofROQ/Tlo-HktMFTI/AAAAAAAAA54/Jay26IILqRU/s320/IMG_0334.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">If we leave Little Bug alone with the music playing, he dances.</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><style>
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</style> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">He’s always liked to listen to music, and recently he’s started lifting up his arms and moving his whole body in response to us. But this dancing alone thing, not so much social as personal, is new and fascinating.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">We discovered it when we left him in his room and put up the gate, and Jennifer was checking on him every couple of minutes. She was peeking in, and then waved me over silently but urgently, smiling broadly. She pointed, and there he was, lifting his feet and pumping his arms. We stayed and spied, trying not to laugh out loud and disrupt him. His face was full of joy.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">We took him to a concert the other night, local bands in a park doing covers. He kept us laughing from Bohemian Rhapsody to Purple Rain to Heartbreak Hotel, throwing himself into a whirlwind of turning and shaking his head back and forth and shifting really fast from one foot to another. Always his hands were high in the air. Sometimes he sang when they were finished, la la la la, just so the music wouldn’t stop. He’s still so little he would lose his footing in the sharp slope of the amphitheater, but he never stopped smiling.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">He’s as sensuous as a cat, and will arch his neck if you stroke it. Rhythms and music seem to be the same sort of thing, something he feels in his body that make him move. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">It’s tempting to think of his enjoyment of music as something about the species, since he’s so young and seems to have always had it. But I think that’s wrong; he’s steeped in an environment full of us and others. “Isn’t it amazing,” said Jennifer tongue-in-cheek, “he has the exact same interests we do!” He listens to the same music we and the people we know do; he has dance moves he’s seen. But certainly there is something about music and dancing that is close to the bone of how humans build a world; having such a rich and very long tradition of loving it as we do.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">But it’s rewarding to watch him interact with texts and music, especially because I teach college students to do something like that, at least the texts part. When something bad happens to Little Bug—he tumbles and does a face-plant—he acts it out again and again, telling us the story over and over until he feels better, making it narrative, assimilating what happened and moving on. He uses bedtime stories to build ways to use words and thoughts. In <i>What’s Wrong Little Pookie?</i>, Mommy asks Pookie if he needs a drink. Pookie didn’t, but Little Bug did the other night; he picked his head up when he heard it and started urgently signing “more.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">We make meaning in our world through stories and music. I knew that about adults, and how critical that is. Someone in my new office has posted the words women sang in the Lawrence “bread and roses” strike in 1912: “hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread but give us roses.” At almost-13 months, Little Bug has found already that music fills his heart. Maybe it’s nurturing that contagious joy that is so much a part of him.</span></div>Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-34355812943663189342011-08-24T18:36:00.000-07:002011-08-24T19:00:09.372-07:00No matter how small<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_zJ_ICmPmzM/TlPBOpPAZAI/AAAAAAAAA50/3ieBOkZtmDw/s1600/IMG_0331.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_zJ_ICmPmzM/TlPBOpPAZAI/AAAAAAAAA50/3ieBOkZtmDw/s320/IMG_0331.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>I don't think when we look back over Little Bug's childhood that we will recall the last week as among the best.<br />
<br />
Moving's been hard on him, full of missed naps, fussing, and not enough time with moms. It's hard to play with the baby or hold him when you need to spend every waking hour packing and then unpacking boxes and organizing the furniture. Fortunately friends and family have been amazing--friends drove the car out from Tucson to Northampton and then stayed to help; grandparents have entertained him and unpacked us. When there was no safe place to put him in the house, folks put him in the stroller and took him on walks everywhere; he's seen more of Northampton than we have, and met half the population. As my mom said, "He has such lovely manners. He greets everybody with a big smile, and does something to make them feel special."<br />
<br />
Even so, I confess that for the first time in his life, I've found myself annoyed by him and his endless needs, his crying, his very presence. I had no empathy, no ability to distinguish between his legitimate complaints and what might be "extra" fussiness from all the upheaval. Not that the days have been without magic, laughing, or smiles over how delightful he is, but only that there have also been lows where the best we could do was make sure he was safe and fed, not necessarily appreciated or nurtured.<br />
<br />
But Monday night, our sixth in the house, I suddenly realized we were going to be alright. Friends from here had brought us dinner, and we took a real break to share it with them and enjoy their company. Most of the random and sharp stuff was gone from the first floor, and even though there wasn't yet a safety gate on the stairs (tricky space, requires special gate--of course), after they left we set him down and let him run around for the first time.<br />
<br />
Bug found a box where I'd been collecting a few things to take down to the cellar and gravely carried it into the living room. Then he unpacked the things in it and took them all to the kitchen. Then he went to work in the play space, carefully taking down all the big pillows against the wall and making a pile of them in the middle of the squishy letter tiles. Then, as we watched all this with growing amusement, he slowly backed up to survey his work, in such a perfect imitation of Jennifer checking out her organizational work that we were shouting with laughter.<br />
<br />
All that time he was stuck in his play pen he was watching us. And there he was to help, if only we were open-hearted enough to appreciate his work. Somehow, I'd forgotten that he wasn't just a baby, full of needs and a bundle of work. He's a person, no matter how small (as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horton_Hears_a_Who%21">Horton</a> said), generous, funny, loving, trying at times, but fully a human in his own right.Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-84695620565939578122011-07-12T23:31:00.000-07:002011-07-12T23:31:02.728-07:00Signs and Wonders<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cRymHUrFXiM/ThzhWoJtdBI/AAAAAAAAAxc/Tx-AaJs0FdA/s1600/signing.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cRymHUrFXiM/ThzhWoJtdBI/AAAAAAAAAxc/Tx-AaJs0FdA/s320/signing.JPG" width="239" /></a></div>Little Bug was discharged by the cardiologist today--the hole in his heart has closed completely. Thank God.<br />
<br />
The hole in his heart was the last trace in his body of the complete mess that was his breathing and circulation when he was born--he had PPHN, or Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension of the Newborn. When he was born, his heart and lungs didn't make the switch from fetal circulation to baby circulation; he remained a hybrid, an amphibian, not quite ready for life as a land mammal, ready to dip back into amniotic fluid and resume life as a fetus.<br />
<br />
If it hadn't been completely terrifying, there might have been something fascinating about the coming into the world of our liminal boy, the way he walked between the worlds--of life and death, of fetus and baby. It also made me realize what an astonishing series of events take place inside a neonate's body, just as much as inside the mother's body, the switching over of heart and lungs, digestion...everything.<br />
<br />
But then babies are always in between, in some astonishing process of becoming. They grow at a rate their first year that is scarcely human, more plant-like than mammalian, except that all mammal babies do it. Little bug's leg is about as long as his whole body was eleven months ago. The first year is a fast-forward blur of milestones, rolling over and grabbing stuff, focusing the eyes and attending to social interaction, then suddenly sitting, standing, walking, running.<br />
<br />
The most startling to me is the leap into language. When I worked in daycare, we would watch the inevitable process by which they would start to communicate with words around 12-18 months. As the director said, it was as if your cat suddenly started to speak. Here are these little beings who go through being a jumble of incomprehensible smiles and cries to older babies who have begun to make sense of their own needs and desires and can communicate them pretty well to you. And then, suddenly, they talk; they are so much more than hungry or tired or in need of a diaper change. They are little people; unformed to say the least, in-process, but unmistakably human.<br />
<br />
Bug has started calling me "Raura," or 'Mama Raura," or just some version of "Mom." The "Raura" startles me, because it's so nearly what everyone else calls me, a casual, friendly name. I got him up to go to the doctor this morning, woke him before he was ready, and he wailed, "Roooora!" to complain, a plaintive sound, so eerily like what any adult I know might have said in the same situation.<br />
<br />
Aside from a few words--names for us and a word for nursing, "na-na" which he says with such deep pleasure he can't help but smile--he has some signs. Like a lot of parents of our social location, we've been teaching him a little bit of American Sign Language, because it turns out that the major obstacle to speech is what you have to do with your mouth and tongue, not what you have to do with your mind. It's still mostly the sign for "more"--more food, more tickling, more kitty, more game, more singing...always, give me more of life!--but he's added a few here and there: change my diaper, pick me up, fan. Like most babies, he loves ceiling fans; the first thing he does when we go somewhere new is scan the ceilings for fans.<br />
<br />
They say that you need language before you can form memories, because language abstracts and symbolizes things, and you need that to store them in memory. <br />
<br />
I also notice that these bare beginnings of language make Little Bug more self-conscious, more aware of himself as different from other people. It's a concept he's been wrestling with. I see it flash behind his eyes when I tell him to stop and he gets a wicked smile and takes off in a different direction. "See!" he seems to say. "I am my own person. I have different desires than you do!"<br />
<br />
Recently, he saw Jennifer start to cry and he cried too. "It's okay, Bug," I said. "You're a different person than Mama Jennifer." Something about that clicked for him, and he suddenly stopped.<br />
<br />
Language requires self-consciousness. Not only do I have different desires from you, but I understand that what I am thinking is opaque to you, and I will communicate it to you. You live in a different consciousness. Even little babies must have some understanding of our separateness, because they are so social, always trying to bridge the gap between us. But Bug at 11 months, more and more, is aware of himself.<br />
<br />
He took this to a new level a couple of days ago. I said to Jennifer, with him sitting a few feet away, "You should get a picture of him signing 'fan'." She picked up her camera, and he posed, apparently having understood exactly what I had just said. He put his hand in the air in his sign for fan, and got a super-fake smile on his face. Jennifer snapped it, and when we saw it--the picture above--we laughed and laughed, unable to believe the evidence of our eyes, that he had the ability to pose, to act, to be false, to project an image of himself for others. He leaned in, grabbed the camera, looked at himself, and joined our laughter. He found a digital image of himself pretending to sign "fan" hilarious.<br />
<br />
Liminal boy crossed another threshold, imagining seeing himself from outside himself. With each day, he's a little more of a person. And it happens so fast it makes my head spin.Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-89907533563640873942011-07-09T22:59:00.000-07:002011-07-09T23:00:54.461-07:00Tool Using Bug<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bF3guRa2NJg/Thk_kgske1I/AAAAAAAAAxU/_czQPS-H0OQ/s1600/IMG_0242.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bF3guRa2NJg/Thk_kgske1I/AAAAAAAAAxU/_czQPS-H0OQ/s320/IMG_0242.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3hR79ztAW3s/Thk_DGxCl5I/AAAAAAAAAxQ/-EyZp4ga7wc/s1600/IMG_0154.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></div><br />
Last night Little Bug discovered how to really make use of the telephone.<br />
<br />
It was after midnight when he woke up wanting to nurse. He started to fuss, but quieted when I woke up and called for Jennifer, whom I assumed was in the study. When she didn't answer, he frowned and looked like he might really holler, but I said, "Come on, let's look for her," and reached for him. He understood me better than I expected, and crawled over to be picked up. We went to Jennifer's desk, and I realized she must have gone out to copy one of the billions of documents that constitute our move, which can only be worked on in the middle of the night, when Bug is asleep. Poor Jennifer was at Kinko's, and I tried to think what I was going to do with what was soon to be one very unhappy Bug. I got him a cup of water and took him back to bed. <br />
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That's when he realized that I had failed. He screwed up his face and let loose with a heart-rending cry.<br />
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"Wait, Bug," I said, with only a slight edge of desperation in my voice. "We can call Mama Jennifer." And so I did, as he once again held his wailing in hopes I could do something useful for him. I put Jennifer on speaker phone, and we talked for a minute: she had to send a couple of faxes but would be right home after that. "Bug," I said, "do you want to talk to Mama Jennifer?"<br />
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"Hello little love,"she said.<br />
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Then Bug had his say. He let lose with the saddest, most wrenching cry ever, all the grief in the entire world compressed into one single piece of communication with his Mama J.<br />
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"I'll be <i>right</i> home," she told him.<br />
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Bug had mastered the use of the phone.Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2795064715438856588.post-57682216034840193242011-06-01T00:09:00.000-07:002011-06-02T16:35:06.085-07:00Not worrying<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EjsICr3TvRc/TegddEgSkOI/AAAAAAAAAww/R1BulXX_3FA/s1600/P5300488.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EjsICr3TvRc/TegddEgSkOI/AAAAAAAAAww/R1BulXX_3FA/s320/P5300488.JPG" width="301" /></a></div> I'm not particularly worried about Little Bug.<br />
This, I think, makes me strange. Strange to other parents and even to myself. When my daughter was younger, I worried non-stop about her. I still worry about her at 23, despite all my efforts to let go and let be. She seemed perpetually to demand worrying about, to the point where worrying seems intimately entwined with loving her.<br />
At almost-ten-months, Little Bug and his age-mates are starting to do more things: stand up, clap hands, babble, wave, maybe use some signs (for the sign-language inclined parents) or take steps. Among the folks I know, there's a constant checking, a look of worry when their child seems slower than another on these markers. I read a lot about the competitiveness that drives parents of young children (over the edge, the <i>New York Times</i> always seems to say, like in this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/fashion/with-kumon-fast-tracking-to-kindergarten.html?ref=educationpreschool">article</a>.) But mostly what I hear is worry--is this little one I adore going to be okay? Am I doing something wrong that is going to make him or her not be okay?<br />
Worrying about your children, a lot, from developmental milestones to car seats to bike helmets has become part of the American odyssey of parenting. This is relatively new, from I think about the 1980s, when we first passed laws mandated the latter two things. Sometimes I forget this and think Little Bug's grandparents must know how to operate a car seat, but they don't, or have only learned from their grandchildren. Jennifer and I grew up in an era more relaxed about accidents and injuries--for better and for worse--with more space to find our own adventures, less supervision, and more opportunities to try things and make mistakes.<br />
Writers as different as Michael Chabon and David Brooks have argued that children lose something in all this worrying. Chabon writes about the closing down of what he calls "<a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jul/16/manhood-for-amateurs-the-wilderness-of-childhood/?page=1">the wilderness of childhood</a>," kid-controlled spaces and time, and asks what happens to imagination and adventure when children are chauffeured from one adult-organized event to the next. David Brooks calls this year's graduating class part of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31brooks.html">"the most supervised generation in American history,"</a> and suggests they are not prepared for the wide-open spaces of adult possibility.<br />
So if it is normal for the parents I know, normal for my generation, and normal even for me, why don't I feel that familiar space of worry about Little Bug? I keep turning it over in my mind, feeling for what is absent, the way the tongue finds the space of a missing tooth. One of my theories is that it is just experience. He's my second, and I experienced first-hand the futility of all that worrying the first time around. It took all my time but didn't accomplish much. Alternately, and relatedly: I'm just too old. I can put aside parental worrying and enjoy Little Bug because he is the surprising, unlooked for child of my late forties (all right, I'm a lesbian, he's not exactly an accident. But if you'd asked me 10 or even 5 years ago, I wouldn't have predicted his presence). Somehow, this just makes him a pure gift; whatever he is, is perfect.<br />
On the other hand, I didn't start here. His birth was difficult, and he spent his first 11 days on a respirator, hovering between life and death. We heard a great deal about the possible consequences of the time around birth when he didn't get enough oxygen. I would look at his bright, alert eyes and think someone was definitely home, but especially those first few months, it was hard to tell how much that was true. Each new sign--the ability to hold something, to focus, to nurse, to tune in to us--was reassuring, but never quite enough. Or rather, it reassured me that he could develop that far--but how much further remained an open space of worry.<br />
But somewhere along the line, it feels like it was Bug himself who taught me how to hold the future more lightly. He laughs easily and often, finding joy in everything. This week, the new thing that cracks him up is something akin to conversation--he does something and we reply, or imitate him, and he dissolves into helpless giggles. Last night I was trying to amuse him with "Uh-oh" and the reply of my childhood: "Spaghetti-O." (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/arts/music/gil-scott-heron-voice-of-black-culture-dies-at-62.html?ref=obituaries">Yes, Gil, the revolution will not be televised</a> and I get how crassly commercial that is. But it stirred up from the depths of my unconscious and I was trying to entertain a baby in a play yard while I did the dishes, and I wasn't feeling desperately creative.) Little Bug got it right away, and while he can't say "uh-oh" he could say "uh" and I'd say "spaghetti-o" and he would laugh his head off. Or he'd make a sudden loud noise and I'd pretend to jump. Over and over and over, but each time brought peals of laughter.<br />
So he was quick to sit and on the early side for pulling himself up and now cruising around a room. I felt like it was part of his program of reassurance, his effort to calm neurotic fears. Just laugh, mama. I looked away from him in the shopping cart this morning to find something on the shelf and felt someone tickling my belly. Look at me! that gesture meant, but what a gentle way to say it. The more I love him, the more drawn I am into his world. He lives effortlessly in the present, having, we presume, little ability to conceptualize past or future. If my oldest is perenially anxious, a child who feels most loved when there is worry for her, Bug doesn't seem to have a lot of space or use for it. I'm not much worried about him, I think, because he doesn't really allow it.<br />
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Laura and Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12927249438159544773noreply@blogger.com0