Books, Baby Powder, and Betrayal

What is it about books and baby powder? They go together like milk and…bologna? Well, that does nothing to hamper Liam’s dedicated association of the two. When he sees a bottle of baby powder, he immediately thinks, “books!” (All this reading I’m doing for school on cognitive processes and word associations has me wondering about the long term effects of this.) You may be wondering how one develops such an odd association. It all started one day when, playing amidst the ruins of one of his famed book towers, he happened upon an open bottle of baby powder. And he discovered that, if you turn the bottle upside down over one of the books, pretty white shapes appear on the cover of the book.

A few days later, he found the powder again and, noticing that there were no books scattered on the floor waiting to be sprinkled, sought one out from the shelf. He placed it on the floor and was pleased to see the fine, white dust float down onto the book’s canvas. I, on the other hand, was alarmed to see the beginnings of another indoor blizzard, so I quickly stepped in and closed the top of the bottle. Liam took little notice and moved on to the next book.

I could see the bafflement spread across his face as he shook the bottle over the book and realized that the dark blue cover of the book remained…well, dark blue. Becoming angry at the book for being so obstinately blue, he flung it to the side and pulled another off of the shelf. Again, to his dismay, the book’s cover remained unchanged beneath the upturned powder bottle. He tried a couple more books before falling into a mad frenzy, wherein he ran across the room, threw himself against the wall and stood sobbing, occasionally throwing his head back in a piteous wail. His antipathy toward the books was evident in the frequent glares with which he greeted them for the rest of the fifteen or so minutes he was in the living room. Never has a child’s faced expressed such an agonizing sense of betrayal. Finally, led by some distraction or another, he made his way into the playroom and lived a more or less peaceful existence for the remainder of the afternoon.

I stayed behind and put the offending books back on the shelf so that they might not awaken any painful memories for the poor boy. And I can only hope that the incident didn’t cause some deep, psychological trauma that will manifest one day when he finds some old, dust-covered volume of  Shakespeare.

(Et tu, Brute?)

Aidan Leith, Romanticist

I was trying to entertain the little ones in the car this morning, so I pulled out my old take on The Lady of Shalott which I fondly call the “Ice Cream and Pie” version. I thought Aidan would appreciate the many references to sugar and sweets. Here is what followed…

April: On either side the coffee lie / Deep bowls of ice cream and of pie / That fill the spoons and meet the tines; / And through the air the scent drifts by / Of black leaf tea with bergamot…

Aidan: Stop. I don’t like that.

April: No? How about this version? On either side the river lie / Long fields of barley and of rye / That clothe the wold and meet the sky; / And through the field the road runs by / To many-towered Camelot…

Aidan: I don’t like that one either… Can you tell me another one?

April: Okay… Music, when soft voices die, / Vibrates in the memory; / Odours, when sweet violets sicken, / Live within the sense they quicken. / Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, / Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed; / And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, / Love itself shall slumber on.

[pause]

April: Or how about this? Tiger, Tiger, burning bright / In the forests of the night, / What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Aidan: I like those two. I want to hear more.

I was as proud as other parents must be when their sons catch their first baseball. ‘At a boy, Aidan!

Balls

Liam’s recent fascination: balls. And this is clearly reflected in his art (I’m not imagining this…he actually points and exclaims, “Baws!” regularly while he’s working the paint and the crayons). Everything even remotely round is deemed to be a ball. As Aidan likes to point out, “When Liam sees a circle, he thinks it’s a ball. That silly baby.” :)

Watercolor:

Crayon:

Dogs Like Bubbles, Too

Halloween Art

A Ghost:

And a Jack-o-Lantern:

Kiera’s Ghost Costume

There has been lots of talk around our house lately about Halloween costumes. The choices did not come easily. Try as I might, I could not get Aidan to settle on a costume for himself. Whenever I would ask him what he wanted to dress up as, he would start spouting off every crazy idea that popped into his head (pizza dough, for instance, comes to mind) without ever providing a serious answer to my question. His indecisiveness about his own costume was matched only by his indecisiveness about what his new cousin, Kiera, should wear. He had lots of ideas for her: a cat, a ghost, a pea, dog poo, a bean, a chocolate chip, a skeleton. It wasn’t until he found the leftover batting from his own costume (which will be a pumpkin, by the way) that he knew what she needed to be.

Kiera would be a ghost.

He took the batting into the bedroom, along with a couple of hand-mixer attachments (?), and set to work fashioning a costume. Ten minutes later, I heard a commotion and watched as Liam came running out of the bedroom dragging along two yards of tattered batting followed by Aidan, who was frantic and screaming at his brother to give back his costume. I thought quickly and shouted, “Oh! I think Liam really likes that costume! Maybe you should let him try it on to see how it looks.” Aidan stopped to consider my suggestion, and Liam – realizing that he was no longer being chased – stopped as well. And here is what followed:

Once we were able to pry the costume away from Liam, we put it in a closet to keep it out of harm’s way. We’ll deliver it this coming week. I’m anxious to see what everyone thinks…wonder if they’ll be as taken with it as Liam was. ;)

Pumpkin Pie for Grandmother

And I say “grandmother” because Aidan has been calling her that for a couple of weeks now. (Following this trend, he’s been calling me “mother,” which sounds ridiculously proper and sweet being carried by such a little voice.) Aidan and Liam worked together to bake their grandmum a pie.

Two boys, two mixing spoons, a little bit of countertop artwork, and voi-la! I think grandmother was pleased. :)

Hand “Tracing”

It appears that the little man has trouble keeping the crayons (or markers, as it were…good lord what was I thinking?) on the paper. In this particular instance, he had been watching me trace Aidan’s hand and wanted to try it out for himself – but instead of tracing around his hand, he ended up coloring the top of his hand and, well, the rest followed.

Dangerous Paper

Aidan obsessively catalogues things. Imaginary things. He will go on for what seems like hours listing all the things he wants to grow in his garden, and when he runs out of fruits and vegetables – which takes much longer than you would expect from a four-year-old – he starts naming all the things he will have in his house…you know, one day when he has his own house (and I won’t hesitate to say that it kind of bothers me that he’s already so preoccupied with this thought). Tonight, he was going through the list of things he plans to house in what is sure to be the most immense domicile ever conceptualized when, amidst rooms full of hay bales and cinnamon-bun-making machines, in-home Halloween junk food aisles and costume stations, there appeared an art room – a room with paint and crayons and markers and…dangerous paper.

“Dangerous paper?” I interjected. “What is dangerous paper?”

Aidan coolly explained that dangerous paper is paper that will be for him and only him. In other words, paper that he won’t have to share with Liam.

You see, we spend a lot of time drawing. The boys love it. We typically settle down at the small table in the play room with our paper spread out, the corners and edges overlapping. It’s not uncommon for Liam to stray off of his paper and contribute some rather interesting designs to my plain little drawings. Occasionally he strays as far as Aidan’s paper at the opposite end of the table (and sometimes continues on to the walls, and the closet doors, and the hallway…but that’s another post). No one makes much of a fuss; we generally lead him back to his own paper and do what we can to incorporate his additions into our art without otherwise giving it much notice. Of course, it seems that the little guy’s half-chewed crayons have been leaving heavier marks on his brother’s work than I had realized.

Still, the word “dangerous” was confusing to me. I had to turn the word over in my head for a few minutes before it occurred to me that I use that description for things that I can have but Aidan cannot. If he gets too close to a knife when I’m chopping vegetables, I remind him to stay back because the knife is sharp. It’s dangerous. He isn’t allowed to operate the computer plug because it’s too dangerous. The front seat of the car is much too dangerous a place for a young boy to ride. It never occurred to me that he was interpreting these warnings as anything other than an attempt to protect him from something potentially harmful. Yet, it seems that he has been taking away an understanding quite different than anything I ever intended. When I tell him, “The knife is dangerous,” he hears, “The knife is for me to use (me and only me, without sharing with you).” “Dangerous” implies gratuitously exclusive  rights.

It was a good reminder that, as grown up as he sometimes seems, he’s still so young. Even if he can name 10+ different varieties of tomatoes and identify most common garden plants by their foliage alone, he still has so much to learn about language and experience. And I have to be understanding of that, even when I don’t really understand at all. My Aidan-boy is still feeling out other people’s meanings and trying to understand things that simply don’t make sense to a four year old boy. And there are some things about my boy that make perfect sense – although they do seem, to me, completely random and ungrounded. It’s a blessing of parenthood that we’re able to bond so thoroughly with our children despite those barriers. There must be something much deeper there than language and actions. Love, perhaps? :)

Liam’s Vocabularly at 18 Months

He’s adding to it daily…

Aidan – “ah-mmm”

bird – “baahd”

ball – “baaa..”

bum – “bummm”

balloon – “boommm”

cookie – “keekee”

eye – “ahhh”

ear – “eeee”

poo – “puh”

yeah – “yaaah”

nurse – [points at mom's chest] “dat”

drop it (when playing fetch with Chloe) – [squats down and points at floor] “dop”

sit (when giving Chloe treats) – “a-zhah…a-zhah…a-zhah…” [with accompanying hand gestures]

good girl – “guh gah”

flower – “wahwah”

book – “book”

bite (as in food) – “bite”

pumpkin – “pum pum”

fish – “wiih” (like “with” but without the “th”)

bye – “bah-baaaah” [opens and closes hand, palm up]