“Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” - E.L. Doctorow April 13, 2008
“My name is Spongebob,” said Spongebob.
(more…)
“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” - Tennessee Williams
Ethan has become a big schoolboy fish in a small daycare pond. When we pick Amy up after school, the four-year-olds rush to gather around Ethan, hug him, ask to play tag with him, show him the cool cardboard-box truck they’ve made that day. I caught him being hugged and kissed by two girls the other day in the middle of a game of Duck Duck Goose. One of the girls in lives just down the street from us, and seems to really like Ethan, so I invited her to our house last week (via her mother).
The two of them, and Amy, had a fantastic time playing, riding their scooters, eating ripe figs and grapes and Kit-Kat bars for afternoon tea (the chocolate bars being a gift from our visitor (via her mother)) and playing board games when it got cold outside. After they’d eaten and returned outside, I came out to put a jacket on Amy. Ethan came up to me in the middle of a race with his friend, and leaned to whisper in my ear, “I like her!”
It was adorable. I think he was taken by surprise; he tolerated her at daycare because she was one of his adoring fans, and I don’t think he cared one way or the other that she was coming to play. But then it turned out that she liked scooters and Megablocks and playing BiJingo just like he did! She was actually kind of cool! And so they could be friends. Aw.
…
Also, Ethan has written a book. About Spongebob. I will follow up with photos and translations of his phonemic-style spelling.
Stream-of-consciousness, some weeks later November 30, 2007
Put shoes on?
(Wrong foot, love)
That one? There?
(Yes)
I got shoes on.
I got Ethan’s shoes.
I got a hole.
Got a hole!
Can’t get my shoe off.
Can’t get out.
(What are you doing now?)
I just getting the baby.
Ethan, the baby’s waking up.
Go to bed on the floor! On the couch?
I’m shutting your door.
Don’t get up…
I’m making again.
(Making what?)
I’m helping Ethan make his…make his again, a game.
Baby going in there. (They’ve built a house for a baby doll out of blocks.)
I’m putting my shoes on.
Baby’s sleeping. I shut his door. ‘Cos…baby’s not get out now.
Door’s shut.
Good? (Building a block door around the baby)
Baby door okay? It’s all done!
It’s not finished.
That’s not one, that’s not two, peekaboo. (Pulling blocks away)
(Block house falls over)
Oh no, poor baby.
I’m making again, the same.
I make it up again.
I can’t get up. Aw, poor baby, can’t get out.
Baby’s can’t get out now, ah! Baby’s get out now!
Ah, Amy’s make this again. I making again.
I’m making another, for a-me.
Aw, it’s broke!
Baby, go in there.
Not now, coffee table. Coffee table, coffee table, coffee table, coffee table.
It’s done, it’s done now, it’s all done.
You go in now, cos baby, it’s done again, baby. Lay down, okay?
I shutting your door now. It’s night-time.
Turn light off (she switches off a pretend switch) Bink! (sound effects)
(Has baby gone to bed?)
Yep, cos it’s night time. He’s got a door shut.
Baby’s going a-toilet now. (Taking baby’s clothes off)
Baby, go to toilet. It’s sleep time now. I’m not rocking you, it’s sleep time.
Now you are Two. July 5, 2007
Congratulations Amy! You have reached the grand old age of two without losing any limbs or major organs. You are funny and cheeky, serious and focused, tall and active, cuddly and smoochy. Unfortunately, at the moment you’re also snotty, but that can’t be helped. Somehow we have convinced you that napping at 24 months of age is a great idea, and you have maintained a pattern of near-daily naps that I really hope will go on for much longer.
…
Amy’s talking continues to develop at a rate of knots. On Monday I put bread out for the birds and Amy shouted at the birds through the window, “Eat bread please birdies!” It was her first four-word sentence and I almost phoned Mike at work to tell him. She is stringing together syllables in chains with a distinct pause between each, like each sound takes such emphasis that she needs to build her strength to enunciate it just so. “Nappy bucket” comes out as “Nah-bee-Buh-het”. Sometimes I wonder if she is hearing everything properly, then I remember, oh yeah, she’s two. Just.
She runs; she jumps. She likes to hop on the spot, stiff-legged. She ran onto the frosty deck yesterday and lost her feet, landing on her backside, then refused to take another step. She manoeuvres her way down steps without holding on to anything, while I hover nearby wishing she wouldn’t push my hand away. She’s independent, at least for the first attempt at anything. She has to try it by herself; if she fails, she calls for help.
When Mike gets home from work, every day, no matter what, she’s ecstatic. He is almost always greeted at the door by running footsteps, two excited kids with huge grins calling “Daddy!” Sometimes I tell them to hide and Ethan runs into his room while Amy covers her face with her hands, the corners of her smile poking out around her fingers.
She asks us now to use the toilet. She sits on the potty for what seems (to me) like hours on end, with no result. She loves to feel like she’s as big and clever as Ethan. She imitates his games, his words, his movements, his moods. She runs to tell me, “Ethan’s sad,” or touches his shoulder to say “Sorry, Ethan” if she hurts him. They are affectionate together, they read each other stories or dress up as Supermen. They race cars, ride bikes, play hiding games. Amy wants to sleep in Ethan’s bottom bunk and every night we have to head her off at the pass and divert her to her own room. If we’re too slow we find her, giggling, pretending to be asleep under the covers in Ethan’s room.
When she’s tired or shy or sad or hurt or confused, she sucks on two fingers. She likes it when the two of us curl up on the couch and I pretend to be asleep. She pats my back, strokes my hair, then gets bored with that and starts pointing to me: nose, eyes, glasses, ears, cheek, chin, hair. I nibble her fingers, blow raspberries on her neck, squeeze her thighs, tickle her feet, and she turns into a little hedgehog baby curled into a ball, giggling so much she can’t breathe. I love how her nose wrinkles when she laughs, and now she’s getting a dimple, like Ethan’s, above one corner of her mouth. I just noticed that today.
Amy’s toilet humour June 7, 2007
[Amy is sitting on the floor, lining up her farm animals and singing/babbling to them/about them.]
Me: Hey Amy! What are your animals doing?
Amy: Wees.
Me: Your animals are doing wees?
Amy: [huge cheeky grin] Yeah!
Me: If your animals are doing wees, what are you doing?
Amy: Poos! [falls over laughing]
Things what that Amy kid says May 28, 2007
I’ve been trying to update for a week or two; something weird is going on with Wordpress and the server so I was timing out when I tried to log in. Between that and college being at its busiest right now, updating was sort of low priority.
A couple of weeks ago, Amy and I were drawing pictures, by which I mean Amy would shout a word and I would attempt to draw it so she recognised it. She demanded an apple! I drew a passable apple. She called for a banana! so I drew a banana. Out of habit, I wrote each fruit’s name under it.
“A,” said Amy.
“A?” I said stupidly in reply.
“A.” Amy pointed at the a in apple, then the multiple instances in “banana”. “More A,” she squealed.
I wrote As everywhere. Big A, small a, words with A in them, including Amy’s name. She picked them all out. It was cool.
She also has an obsession with junk food. She often shouts for a “lolly!” or “choklit!” and yesterday at the supermarket Mike bought a bottle of chocolate milk and let her have a sip. All the way home, in the back of the car, Amy chanted, “Choooooocolate miiiiiiiilk!” Tonight after dinner and some strawberry yoghurt, I asked Amy if she wanted a bath next.
“No! Choklit milk! Choooooocolate miiiiiiiiiilk!”
This post is rated Adults Only May 8, 2007
Tonight we made stir-fried vegetables for dinner and I opened a tin of baby corn, you know, the little miniature corn? I love it. It’s tasty.
Anyway, the kids also loved it, which was nice, and when Amy had found every tiny corncob from her bowl and eaten it, she waved her spoon around and shouted, “More baby porn!”
Ethan, gifted in kicking my butt. April 11, 2007
Ethan’s favourite neighbour, Hannah, and her family are leaving tomorrow. They’re going to live in Austin, TX, for two years. We invited them over for one last lunch together today and Ethan helped me make a banana loaf to share and kept me company while I prepared foodage. To give him something to do while I stuffed mushrooms, I asked him if he’d like to write a letter to give to Hannah. I fetched him some of my paper and a pen (he’s just learned the proper pencil grip, something I was mildly paranoid about because I didn’t want him forming bad habits before going to school), and asked him what he wanted to write. He told me, and I spelled it out letter by letter while he wrote industriously.
“Dear Hannah
I hope you have a nice time in America
From Ethan xxxx”
I also showed him how to put his fingertip at the end of a word to mark the space between words, which I remember learning at school when I was five and continuing to do in my usual pedantic manner until I was about eight. I don’t have my camera at the moment so I didn’t take a photo but suffice to say that Ethan’s writing is pretty darn good for someone who just turned four.
To add to my extreme pride in my kids, Ethan and Amy have both had doctor’s visits this week. Amy visited an eye specialist yesterday because, at 21 months, she still has a partially undeveloped tear duct which gunks up whenever she has a cold. Since it hasn’t bothered her much, I put her on the DHB waiting list for a specialist appointment, and it so surprised me that I don’t think I’d go public again. The clinic was a dingy, grubby-looking building with two-year-old magazines (and lovely, lovely nurses who clucked over Amy and offered me coffee) and obviously short on funding. The three waiting areas were packed and even though we were running ten minutes late, we sat for about half an hour — when I called the clinic to say were were late, they told me not to worry because they’re always running behind — and Amy was an utter angel. She smiled and looked around at the other patients. She sat, ankles crossed, in her own chair and flicked through a book, then played quietly on the floor with a toy. She played peekaboo with another baby, then when she’d had enough of all the people she came and snuggled on my knee and we played “name the parts of my face” for ten minutes.
The appointment itself, all two minutes of it, was positive. A follow-up in four months.
Today Ethan had to go for his four-year booster shots. We arrived at the doctor’s office five minutes early and the kids played quietly with the toys, read books, talked to other people. The nurse was running behind and we waited for half an hour (annoying since we were the only people there, and Ethan was already nervous) before we went in. Ethan sat next to me and we discovered that he was getting two needles, one in each arm. He snuggled into my side and we asked him to find the bananas in a big poster of fruit and vegetables, and he was so busy looking that he didn’t feel the first needle at all. Woo!
The second time he was more aware because it was the side nearest me and he couldn’t snuggle in, but he didn’t cry at all. He moaned once and tried to pull away but as soon as it was done, he was fine. He was very brave.
Stab stab stab February 17, 2007
We recently acquired a secondhand Windows laptop for Mike to use for coding stuff. This is BAD, because it came with Spider Solitaire installed, and I have always been a sucker for Spider Solitaire since cards were invented the year I got my own account on the university computers.
The good news is I have been stabbed in my mousing finger by my evil arch-nemesis, the rose that lives in the corner of the front garden. Every time I weed that patch I threaten to pull the whole damn rose out and throw it away, and the rose is like, oh yeah? and I’m all, yeah bitch you better reckanise. Today it stabbed me in a futile effort to extend its lifespan.
It is so dead.
I have a thorn embedded in my fingertip and efforts to dig it out with a pin only served to push it in more as well as widen the crater it formed, so when I finally gave in and swiped Savlon cream over it so it won’t fester in my sleep, I may as well have used Polyfilla.
The reason it is good news is that I can still write. So I’m guessing now that it was probably the best thing to happen two days before university starts. No solitaire, mucho writing.
Also, Amy just came in and looked at me like she was expecting, I don’t know, some sort of service? Then she strode purposefully from the room and returned to hand me to following items in order: one clean nappy; one mohair jersey that doesn’t fit her any more; one pair of pink shorts with frilly cuffs; and one polo shirt. Then when I failed to react she all but rolled her eyes and went into the lounge to extract the baby wipes from under the couch.
If she could, she’d just change her own nappy her own damn self. Yo.
A general update for the sake of updating February 8, 2007
It’s funny how, as soon as one little thing is done, everything else just falls perfectly into place.
Yesterday I called the university because my enrolment still hadn’t come through, and classes start in ten days. I was transferred to someone at the college who emailed someone else on my behalf using big words like “What’s going on???” and “Student loans” and the next thing you know I’m enrolled. This is a huge relief, obviously. Today I called Studylink because I have no faith in bureaucracy at all and checked that they hadn’t thrown out my loan application or denied it on the basis of my unacceptable shoe size, and they said yes! Great! Take our money! Have some more! Let us heavily subsidise your daycare! Be in interest-free debt to us! And I laughed at the massiveness that is my debt to the government.
And now I am ready to be a student again.
Ethan is at morning kindergarten. He started yesterday and I got to be the proud mother that everyone hates, because Ethan went straight to the rollbook and wrote his own name in it, then refused to let anyone but himself write his names on things that needed his name. He argued with a teacher who automatically picked up the crayon to label his painting, and I must take a photo of the writing of a child who is barely four. And you can all hate me for my smugness. I know you do.
His lunch wasn’t so successful. The morning kids have lunch at kindy on Wednesday and Friday, so I packed a healthy (if bland) lunchbox covered in Superman stickers and when he came home he’d eaten the apple and the hot cross bun and left the scroggin and cheese-and-relish sandwich (which he calls “pickle rubbish”, oh ho). Fortunately he ate them willingly enough for afternoon tea. Suckah. Today I forgot it’s not a lunch day and packed his lunchbox again, duh. He is loving it thus far, all two days of it, but the novelty will have to wear off soon enough and he will be begging to go to school.
Amy and I paid a visit to the daycare at the college — our second visit and this time there were actually children there. Amy met Julia, who is one week younger and very quiet and speaks little English because her parents are Italian. The teachers greet Julia in Italian, so I am delighted to think that Amy will soon be riding a Vespa and saying, “Ciao!” a lot. I’ll make sure she always answers the phone with “Pronto!” Those Italians are so crazy.
Those are the current main events in our family life. Other, smaller but probably funnier, things have happened but I am never in the vicinity of a computer when they do. Suffice to say that today we have renamed our children Child Prodigy and The Snot Monster.
