Dancing after dinner

After dinner I often do the dishes, while Emily takes the kids into the living room to play. Sometimes we reverse this, but she gets home later, so whatever.

I turn on the radio, looking for music. And more often than not, I'll look up after a minute and there's Kate, standing in the kitchen, doing her little dance. Generally she keeps her feet in place and just kind of rocks back and forth and side to side, bending slightly at the waist and maybe -- maybe -- the knees. With a huge smile spread across her face. Not sure if it's because of the music, or because she's dancing, or because it makes me laugh to see her dance, or all three. Definitely, though, she's playing to a crowd of one, dancing and smiling.

Eventually we're all there, dancing after dinner. Me hand in hand with Kate, Emily with Jack, or vice-versa. Or all four. Jack's dance, when he dances alone, is a little different from Kate's. Currently it's kind of like he's the "M" in "YMCA" -- he stands feet apart, elbows out, hands dangling, with a tight-lipped expression, furrowed brow, like he's concentrating very hard. And then he picks it up and starts moving his hips back and forth, then waving his hands around ... a little like a street mime, actually. Then he breaks into a big smile and shuffles his feet some. Runs in place a bit. It's a very free-form dance.

When Kate takes her dance up to the next level, she jumps in the air. Not too high, or well, but she jumps up and down a little. Big smile. Momentary surprised look when she nearly loses her balance. But doesn't, and then more smiles. Smiles all around.

Sweet Kate

Kate can be a real handful -- dumping her food upside down over and over again. Or her milk, or her water. Getting so angry when you won't let her do something...for example, measure out coffee, or buckle herself into her carseat...that she screams and wails at the unfairness of it all. I can't count the number of times in recent weeks I've just picked her up and carried her somewhere, arms wrapped tight around her so that she can't thrash too much, ignoring her loud, angry protests. I'll admit it, sometimes she's more frustrating than I could have imagined.

All that is why instances like yesterday are so remarkable. I was in the kitchen and I heard a "BONK" and then Jack wailing. I went out to check and Emily was sitting on the couch with Jack in her lap; he'd hit his head on the coffee table or something.

I sat down next to them to help soothe Jack, who continued to cry. Kate walked over. Stood a few inches away from Jack, stooped a little, and tilted her head so she could see his face.

"Otay?" she asked. She put her hand out toward him, maybe she patted him on the knee, and continued to look earnestly into his face. Trying to meet his eyes. Again: "Otay?"

When he'd almost stopped crying, she then decided it was time to make him laugh. She did a little shuffle and made a silly face. Eventually, he stopped. He was Otay.

Author Jack, Determined Kate

Jack made a book at school today. When I picked him up he brought out this construction paper and white paper stapled book, with a dragon on the front -- modeled on a dragon I drew this very morning, it makes me happy to say -- and a dragon, castle, king, and more dragons on every page within. He read it to me when we got home: "One day, there was a castle and a dragon. (Pause.) Page Two. The dragon flew from the castle. (Pause.) Page Three....."

He made more books at home. We cut paper in half and I located a stapler and he made several more books that night, with me and with Emily. One with dogs in it. One with more dragons. One with robots. One with happy people with balloons.

He can draw. It's something to see.

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Kate's favorite phrases these days usually begin with "My." "My turn." "My climb." "My shoes." Basically she doesn't want help. With anything. I try to put her in her seat and she wrestles out of my arms and says, "My climb!" And then climbs up into the seat. I try to buckle her and she bucks in the seat and wails. "My do! My doooooooooooo!"

Jack's sitting in Mommy's lap. Kate watches for two seconds, then, "My turn!" I'm looking forward to the day she insists on changing her own diaper.

Funny today: I picked them up in the CRV, and Kate of course wanted to climb into her seat. It's a bigger car, so although she could climb into the car and stand on the floor, just, she couldn't get up into the seat. Jack, watching with interest, said, "Kate, climb up onto the seat first, then your chair." She looked at him, seemed to consider, then climbed up onto the back seat. Stood there next to her seat, clearly debating whether she could get into her car seat. Put one leg over the edge.

And climbed in. Then beamed at Jack.

random stuff

This will be quick because I'm beat, but there's a whole bunch of stuff to write about....

- Kate's favorite book right now is "Are You My Mother?" She brought it to me insistently before bed last night. On the page where the baby bird meets the kitten, she says the cutest little "meow," and looks up at me and smiles. On the page with the dog, she does an emphatic, "Woof! Woof!" These animals appear on later pages, too, so she continues with the sound effects. I was telling Emily and Jack this and Jack said, "Does she moo when she sees the cow?" Oddly, she doesn't. I think she's still thinking about the dog and cat.

- Jack can be very sweet with Kate, like when he shows her how to play with something. "Here, Kate, you can be this car." "Oh-tay!" says Kate. "No, Kate, play with it like this." "Oh-Tay!" He also shows her how best to jump on the bed, which she delights in. The other day he got a running jump to leap up onto it. So Kate then backed all the way up to the closet, ran up to the edge of the bed, then walked around and climbed up as she normally does via the trunk. Funny.

- He also takes her hand when I pick them up at school.

- We went to the beach yesterday. Kate is a little scared of the water, so when I go alone with her and Jack, we end up not going in very often. Emily was there, so I managed to get Jack to go out in the water with me. He was brave, walking out up to his armpits, it was good to see, because again, we don't get to go in as much as I'd like. At one point I picked him up and held him like he was floating on top of the water, then spun around. He laughed and laughed.

At night I asked him what his three favorite parts of the day were. "Um...when you spun me around in the water at the beach.....and when we found shells on the beach....and when we found rocks on the beach."

- Today was a work day for me, so the kids and Emily (and Aunt Cathy) went out on a nature trip to the Audubon Center. Saw frogs and birds and the like. They came back, and Jack came up to say hello. Then, before they went out for ice cream, he came in to ask if I wanted anything. I'd already told Emily no, but he seemed so hopeful and thoughtful, I said, OK, a small black raspberry. He left, then was back some 20 minutes later, with my ice cream and his ice cream. Thanks, Jack. He said, I will eat mine here with you.

So we sat down on the floor and ate ice cream.

My Weekend with Jack

Emily and Kate were around this weekend, too, but because Kate naps during the day, I had a couple of trips out with just Jack.

- On Saturday we went to PlayLand; I'd never been there. It's best known, I guess, for its rides and stuff, but Jack wanted to play mini-golf. So we did. It was perhaps the worst mini-golf I've ever played (later, somebody who'd been to PlayLand said to me, "They have mini-golf there?"), but it was Jack's second, and he probably didn't really remember the first, so he enjoyed it. It took him a while to figure out how to hold the club, but I finally got him to let me help him and we managed it. He even had a hole in one! I'd have had a few if he didn't like to stand in front of the hole while I was putting to catch my ball as it came out of the tunnel or whatever. Anyway, the course was lame because there were no real obstacles, just slopes and such (not even a windmill, for crying out loud), but he had fun and that's what's most important. At one point we skipped two holes to get ahead of a slow group and Jack said, "Yeah, I don't want to wait." And sounded a little too much like me.

We then went into PlayLand to check out the games and rides. Didn't actually do any rides because Jack said in advance he didn't want to, and I kind of wanted to see them beforehand anyway, but there were some rides that would have been OK and we could have done them together. Instead, I won him a stuffed Spider-Man (only spent $14 winning probably a $3 toy) by throwing baseballs at clowns, and then he had a blast at this game where you stood on a platform and squirted a hose at a burning apartment complex. He thought it was funny when he squirted the old lady, which I kind of did too. I'm sorry.

- Today we went to the grocery store. Not much to report, but he laughed and laughed when I put him in the cart and pushed it really fast, and then swerved around, and stopped short, and went fast again. His peals of giggling just bubble up out of him, it's pretty funny. Lots of people looked at us. Everyone smiled.

Jack and Kate at play

Jack and Kate are playing together more often, which is fun. For one thing it's beautiful to watch, of course, but it's also nice because it gives us a chance to get something else done. They play with trains in Jack's room, or Play-dough downstairs, or various other toys.

Of course, they don't always play the same as each other -- Kate's playing sometimes involves more breaking or throwing things -- and there are times when they both want a certain toy. Those sometimes get ugly, with us having to threaten to take the toy away entirely if they can't work it out.

Anyway, the other day one of those instances rose up, when Jack wanted a toy that Kate had. He tried to explain the concept of sharing to her, in these words:

"Kate," he said. "Sharing means you give something you really want to have to someone else."