Babe

Jack has gotten into the movie "Babe," about a lovable pig who herds sheep. It's one of those films we can enjoy together, even though I suspect he typically has no idea what's going on. He knows that the cats are bad, that's about it. And he recognizes the characters from the movie poster of it that has been on the wall of his room since he was born. Now he stands below the poster in the morning and says, "That's the sheep and that's the horse and that's BABE and that's...."

We drove up to Nana and Baba's for the weekend; my parents, who are just known as Nana and Baba to Jack, because they are also known that way to his Irish cousins. We were sitting at the table eating dinner when Jack noticed one of Nana's refrigerator magnets: "BABE!" he said. Or, "Hey, my movie pig!" or something similar. And we noticed it too, and said, oh yeah, it's a Babe refrigerator magnet....A Babe magnet. And the adults laughed at the joke.

Nana said, "You know Jack, when your Daddy was younger, he was one of those." I smirked. Emily snorted, politely I'm sure.

Jack, confused, said: "A pig?"

Criss Cross Applesauce ... Please.

Something I've learned from Jack recently is that sitting cross-legged, in what I imagine to be the current daycare vernacular, is called "criss cross applesauce." I have no idea how it came about, but Jack not only uses it but conjugates the thing: "Daddy, are you crissing crossing applesaucing?" I look down to see that I am in fact sitting cross-legged, which when I was a kid was called sitting Indian-style -- not anymore, obviously. Anyway, it's always disturbing to hear my three-year-old son using expressions that I'm unfamiliar with.

So today Jack got home and ran over to play with his new stuffed toy, Curious George, and his longtime favorite, a stuffed dog my parents gave us before he was even born, which has a fleecy white coat and he calls it his "sheep." He sat down on the rug and I sat down with him, and sometime during it he decided I could sit more comfortably than I was. "Daddy, will you criss cross applesauce. Please." And so I did.

What followed was a 10-minute conversation between Curious George (voiced by Jack) and his sheep (voiced by me). It went something like this.

Sheep: "Hi, Curious George."
Curious George: "Hi!"
S: "How was your day?"
CG: "Oh. Good."
S: "What did you do?"
CG: "Oh, I just played."
S: "That's a nice shirt you're wearing."
CG: "Oh. Thank you."
S: "It says Curious George on it."
CG: "What does yours say?"
S: "Mine says 'Boston Red Sox - World Champions - see, there's a picture of a 'B' on it."
CG: "Oh, that's nice. OK - let's go to a party."
S: "A party?"
CG: "Yes. Come on. Over there."
Jack walked Curious George across the rug to near his shelves of toys. "See, I have all these toys." I walked the sheep over to the shelves. "I see. Very nice toys, Jac--er, I mean, Curious George."
I know, not the most fascinating stuff. It was funny, though, because it reminded me of being a kid and playing with my brother, with our little "adventure people," who, I dunno, hiked, and rode in jeeps, and fought sharks and whatever else little action people did back in the day. Having conversations while voicing toys/stuffed animals -- I hadn't done it in a long, long time.

Just another thing Jack's teaching me, I guess.

"Are you the Daddy today?"

For most of Jack's life, Daddy has worked from home and Mommy has gone into the office. This has never struck Jack as odd; what is unusual for most families, in this case, is normal for Jack.

The past few weeks, things have changed. Emily's department was eliminated at her employer (while she was on maternity leave, nice), while I've been doing some contract work in an office setting. Jack didn't notice when he was still going to daycare, but it's closed this week so he's been home. And every morning I get showered and haul myself off to work, while Emily sticks around and handles the young'uns. And since in Jack's eyes the "standard" is Daddy being home and Mommy going into an office, it's messing his world up a little bit. The other day he said to Emily, "Are you the Daddy today?"

It's hard to be sure, but the change seems to be troubling Jack a little bit. Emily says he's missed me, which is clear in some ways (yesterday he babbled to me non-stop for about 15 minutes when I got home, all about the monsters in his car and how I was in the car and that we had all the paper in the car and the toys in the car and would I close the car doors please? And watch this Daddy - he jumped on one foot for a minute -- and on and on), and less obvious, but apparent, in others.

1. When I put him to bed the other night, he didn't want to fall asleep or let me leave. This is a routine occurrence on days when he napped, because he's generally wakeful, but unprecedented on days when he didn't nap, like that day.

2. Last night, he woke me up several times, moaning. This was a change from how he normally wakes me up, by coming into the room and (if I don't immediately wake up) shaking me. Tough to ignore when the moans steadily build in intensity and I'd like to either go back to sleep or keep him from waking Kate up, neither of which happened last night. I went in to figure out what was bugging him, but could never get a straight answer, either because he was half asleep or didn't really have a reason -- odds are he just wanted me to come in.

This morning, I asked him why he was moaning last night. "Well....." That was pretty much his initial answer. When I kept pressing, suggesting he had a bad dream, that sounded like a pretty good answer to him, whether it was true or not. "Yeah....I had a bad dream." "About?" "Um....polar bears." "Polar bears?" "Yeah. Polar bears. And my puppies woke me up."

3. He wanted me to get into bed with him this morning before we went downstairs. So, we did that.

4. Finally, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and then near-groggy from getting back into bed with him for 10 minutes, we made it to the door of his room, about to go downstairs. At which point he did something he hadn't done for, oh, about a year or two.

He turned to me and lifted his arms up in the air. "Carry?"

Live, or Memorex?

At the dinner table the other night, Jack made Kate laugh. Really laugh, the bust-a-gut, peals of laughter exploding out 0f her little face kind of laugh. I don't remember what it was; I think he was probably just babbling away about something, remembering something funny in The Jungle Book, or maybe reacting to something Emily or I said. Anyway, he reacted, and Kate cracked up. And he noticed, and responded, and she laughed even more. And he kept taking it up a notch, and her laughter did the same.

I was sitting there watching this and wondering if I should run to get the video camera in the next room. If I had the camera, I could record it, show it to our family and friends, immortalize it to watch for years to come. Then again, if I ran to get it, the moment might end while I was locating it, opening the lens, turning it on, adjusting the light and distance, and starting the tape. I'd get the recorder running and I'd suddenly be immortalizing two kids staring at me wondering what the hell I was doing.

Before I'd definitely decided one way or the other, the moment ended the laughter had dissolved into Jack asking for dessert and Kate's eyes drifting toward some vague spot on the ceiling. Immortal only in my memory. I hope.

Jack and Kate

Our kids are named Jack and Kate, but it's not because we're huge fans of the show "Lost." (Although putting Jack, Kate, and Lost in the same sentence like that will probably have this blog turning up in more online searches. I'm Sawyer, er, sorry about that.) We decided on "Jack" before the show even aired. I think our decision on "Kate" came down to just wanting to have a strong female name that went well (but not too well, so no "Jane" or "Jill") with Jack. And there you go.

One of our major early worries was Jack's treatment of Kate. While we were doting over her, how would he react? Would he be terribly resentful? Jealous? Play too rough with her, intentionally or accidentally? The first few weeks, when all she did was sleep while we passed her around like a little burrito from relative to relative, he wanted to be in the mix, always wanting to hold her. We went along with that by making him wash his hands, positioning him on the couch with huge pillows (or one of us) on either side of him, then placing her gently into his arms like she was made of glass. Jack was funny (probably feeding off our exaggerated caution and nervousness) -- he went stiff as a board, with legs and arms outstretched as she lay, blinking, in his arms. After about 10 seconds, Jack said "I all done...." And we gratefully plucked her out of his arms and reassured him about how well he did. In retrospect, we went a bit overboard.

The thrill of holding Kate gradually wore off, at which point Jack's interaction with Kate primarily involved singing to her. When he was younger, his cousins sang "Bay-bee Jack, Bay-bee Jack, Bay-bee Jack, we love you." Jack remembered that well enough that when Kate was crying or upset, he'd sing "Bay-bee Kate....Bay-BEE Kate....Baby Kate....How much is today." Or something similar which was part lullaby and part gibberish. Other times he'd speak to her, try to engage her, say, "What's the MATTER, baby?" Sometimes it would soothe her, and sometimes she'd cry even harder. Jack generally responded to that by singing louder, shouting "BABY KATE! How much is to DAY!" Good times on a long car ride.

Now Kate's 5 months old, and over the past month their relationship has changed yet again. She's fascinated by him. Unless Kate's starving, it's useless for Emily to try and nurse her with Jack in the room. She cranes her neck around to see where he is and what he's doing, even if we're only doing a puzzle or pushing one of his cars around. Jack, for his part, now recognizes this, and has started playing to the audience. He comes up close to her and talks to her, chattering away in a goofy voice, and singing. And at last, Kate reacts, bubbling over with laughter and fixing her eyes on him as he dances back and forth. Jack gradually loses interest (as he does with everything, gradually; he's 3) and wanders off, and her eyes follow him across the room. I'm probably only imagining her being disappointed, and hoping he turns around and comes back.

The other day we went to the Stepping Stones Museum in Norwalk, where little kids can run and play with various science-themed gadgets and devices. For Jack, this meant picking plastic balls out of one pool of water and putting them into another one, where they'd be swept into a whirlpool and carried down into another one -- at which point Jack would grab them and the process would start all over again. I think he did this for approximately 2 hours, give or take. Kate, meanwhile, spent most of the morning in the Baby Bjorn on my chest, watching Jack, smiling, momentarily concentrating, reaching out toward him, reacting to him.

Really, not so much different than us.

The Weekend

Weekends are a mixed bag. Great because we get to spend a lot of time with Jack, tough because entertaining a 3-year-old can sometimes be tougher than you might think.

We get up, and the first problem is that Jack is raring to go and I (to quote Charlie Brown) feel like I've been stepped on by an elephant. Once this would have been because I went to bed too late or drank too much or something, but now it's because I got woken up 3-4 times during the night, often by Jack. (See previous blogs.) Take last night, when Jack came in three times, and twice I had a hard time getting back to sleep. Once he had to go pee. That was fine. Once I don't really know why he got up. I failed to ask him and he failed to mention it. He just turned and headed back to his room. That was when I had a hard time getting back to sleep afterward. The best was when I asked him: Why? Jack: "My puppy said 'no' to me." (He sleeps with several stuffed animals, dogs of late.) I'm sure there's a clever way to respond to "My puppy said 'no' to me," but one didn't occur to me at 3 a.m. So I just said, "Jack. Don't get out of bed again." Until he shook me awake a little before 7, he didn't.

Anyway, Jack is raring to go, but one of the things he most likes to do these days is watch the DVD of The Jungle Book. It's not really The Jungle Book's fault, mind you; before that there was Backyardigans, or Maisy, or Charlie Brown Christmas or something. We don't let him watch TV from Monday through Thursday. I'm sure this will change at some point, but for now it's a case of there not being much time; he wakes up (ideally) around 6:30 and goes to school at 8, then gets home at 5:15 or so, with the evening being filled by a small amount of playing, then dinner, bath, stories, and bed. Just not much time in there to watch a half hour show (let alone The Jungle Book). The upshot (which I'm wondering if it might not be a problem in itself) is that he doesn't watch TV most of the week, so he craves it on the weekends. Or something.

Now, the best way to get him away from watching TV is by scheduling activities. This is hard when it's bitterly cold or rainy out, as it's been for much of the past couple of months, or when he's got a cold and/or cough (things which tend to go hand in hand with the bitterly cold and rainy thing). As I write this I realize it's kind of a lousy excuse, and granted, we do plan trips to the Aquarium (two weeks ago) and were going to hit the Stepping Stones museum this weekend (but he had a cold and cough), but then again, I'm not going to call up the neighbors to see if their child can play with Jack when Jack's not well -- I wouldn't want Jack catching anything from him, either, and I imagine they feel similarly.

So without a major activity, it's pretty hard to fill three days. A lesson for the future: make sure you've got at least two decent activities in a three-day weekend. Next weekend, Stepping Stones Museum one day, something else another. Weekend after that, Vermont. OK, we're making progress.

Lacking those, we have lots of minor activities. We went to the supermarket to recycle bottles on Friday. ("Wanna go smash bottles?" I say. "Yeah!" says Jack.) Jack also went to the grocery store with Mommy. And there's, you know, about 90 minutes out of the day. We do puzzles. Lots and lots of puzzles, over and over again. Read books. Do some coloring, which he enjoys for about 10 minutes. Build things with his blocks and legos and play with trains. These are all, also, 10-15 minute activities. Now, there have been days, and maybe there will be again, when he can play with his blocks for a good hour, happily. But then again, I can't remember the last day like that. I'll be down there gamely moving trains around the tracks, and within 10 minutes he'll lose interest and suddenly the lure of King Louie singing to Mowgli "I wanna be like You-ooooo-oooo" has taken him away.

I think we do OK. I know -- know -- he watches a lot less TV than most other kids his age. A woman I know has a son close to Jack's age and she reels off her son's "favorite" shows, which sounds like the entire morning lineup on Nickelodeon. That's a little scary.

Today was Grampa's birthday, and we all went out for brunch to Norwalk (A midday activity! Yes!), then came back and Jack and his cousins ran around the house. Suddenly, he enjoyed playing with his toys, for a good two hours straight. And I realized that the problem isn't necessarily his toys, but that -- much as I might like to think otherwise sometimes -- I'm not a kid anymore. I'm definitely not a 5-year-old girl. (Which is a good thing.) And however hard I try and silly I act, Jack's not going to have the goofy fun running around the house with me that he can with his crazy cousins. Which is also a good thing. Aside from the time we put him in a timeout for whacking Stacey with a plastic hammer, he had a lot of fun. And didn't ask or likely even think about watching TV.

So 1) activities and 2) activities with kids his age are the important lessons we've learned in recent weeks. And who knows? Maybe he'll be so wiped out that he'll stay in bed all night tonight. You never know.

Early to Rise

Jack's been getting out of bed really early - 5:30, 5:15, and 4:57 this morning. The way things are going I'll run into him getting up as I'm on my way to bed. This seems to happen in phases -- there's a month or so when he sleeps past 6 and is great, and then stretches like this one, which hopefully passes soon.

Anyway, I used to put him back into bed without saying anything. That's the advice, just put him back into bed without really interacting. Sometimes that helps, and sometimes he'd just show up again 10-15 minutes later. Then I'd ask what was wrong, why he was up. Sometimes he'd have an answer ("I have a booger," or "I can't find Baby Dragon"), and sometimes he'd have an excuse ("Um.....Will you put the blanket over me?" "The blanket that was on you until you got up?" "Yeah."), and sometimes he wouldn't know ("Um....I don't know).

Sometimes I'd try reasoning with him. "You need sleep," or "It's not morning yet." Not surprisingly, that doesn't resonate with a 3-year-old; the idea that he'll be more tired later if he gets up too early. Sometimes putting him back into bed was met with resistance -- wailing, crying, "Don't WANNA go back to bed!" so on and so forth. Great fun.

Recently it's been excuses/explanations, sometimes valid, sometimes not. "I have to go pee." Now, Jack still sleeps in a diaper, but I'm not going to chastise him for wanting to go in the potty, even at 5 a.m. However, when he comes out of his room again 10 minutes later and says, "I have to go poop," and then doesn't go, I tend to get a little suspicious. And when this continues every 15 minutes between 5 and 6, not only do I get exhausted and frustrated, but I'm starting to think there has to be a better way.

The other day I told Jack, after discussing it with Emily, that we'd get him some puzzles to keep in his room, so if he wakes up really early and can't sleep, he can quietly do puzzles. This seemed like a good idea at the time, although there are flaws. For one thing, he needs his sleep, especially nursing a cold and cough at present. He doesn't need to be sitting up doing puzzles at 5:15 in the morning. For another, saying it to him without actually putting puzzles in his room was pretty dumb. The next morning when I put him back in his bed at 5 a.m., he wailed for 10 minutes straight, a tantrum I'd like to believe is fairly unique in the world of 3-year-olds having tantrums:

"I WANT TO DO A PUZZLE!!!!"
"I WANT TO DO A PUZZLE!!!!"
"I .... WANT ... TO ... DO ..... A ....PUZZLLLLLLLLLE!!!!!!"

This morning, perhaps because I was tired, I tried a new tactic. "Remember Santa Claus? He's watching, and he knows if you're asleep or awake. He wants you to sleep until morning." Jack said "Okay." I put him back to bed. Around 10-15 minutes later, Jack went into the bathroom on his own. I heard him fumbling around, maybe going pee, maybe not, and then a few minutes later he was in our doorway, pajamas around his ankles. "Daddy, can you help me put my diaper back on?" I crawled out of bed and went to the bathroom to get his diaper back on. Once we'd done that, Jack said,

"Did Santa bring me presents?"