What they are up to

Simon and Noah are an amazing joy and overflow my heart with love. Simon is now 20 months. At our last doctor's appointment, he was about 20 percentile for height for age (though the appointment was a bit late). The doctor was quite amazed as she listened to him count from 1 to 7 as she waded through newly introduced electronic medical records. Her comment was, "wow, he knows them, even if he can't even pronounce them very well yet" I'm sure she would have been even more impressed had she seen him in the tubby any night of the week counting to 12! His interest and amazement with letters and numbers is something that is truly mindboggling -- I mean, I don't have a lot of experience raising small children, but his tendency to point out letters and numbers, and state what they are (or their sounds) is something I didn't even know was possible. It is true, his pronunciation is still developing. For example, balloon sounds more like, "munuh," Noah is "Wowah," and sometimes he insistently says something I can't understand, but he is so amazingly talkative and not at all shy with words or sounds. When we go over a bump in the car, he says, "woah!" When we listen to music in the car, he sings along. Sometimes, Noah is an even better translator than I am. The other day, I gave Simon a car, and he said, "mah cah." I didn't quite get it until Noah said, "Simon wants more cars."

Simon is also a sweetie. He loves his blankie, and loves to cuddle. He is having a hard time with separation these days. If I so much as leave the room for more than a minute, he calls out, "mama?" and comes to find me if he can. It pains my heart to leave him in the mornings, not because he is crying (most of the time he is not) but because I will miss spending the next 6 hours with him and all of his cuteness.

Noah, meanwhile, has an astounding sense of his self, his (high) capabilities, and moral fortitude. He has been complaining that at school, Ruby and Grace do not help clean up, and then they get to sit next to the teacher. He doesn't think that is fair. He was so upset about it that he did not want to go to school yesterday. We talked him about what we could do, like maybe we could talk to the teacher about it, or maybe he could tell them himself. Then, he said, "I know, I can tell them that if they do not clean up, they can't sit next to Mrs. Griffen!" We told him that sounded like a great idea. I accompanied him to talk to the teacher about this, and told her his idea (as he asked me to). She explained that he always wants to follow the rules, and gets very upset when other children do not do so.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed how Simon liked to pull objects, and mentioned we should get a large dinosaur that was in the garage at the top of the ladder so he could play with it. That morning, I went to take a shower while Nano watched the kids, and as I was finishing up, I heard Noah climbing up the stairs. He said to me,

"we should go to the garage to get the dinosaur. Because it's really high up there."

I said, "yes, we can do that when I get home later."

He said, "Yes, because I can't reach it."

"That's right," I said, "you need an adult to help you."

"Yes," he said, because I couldn't get it down, it's right at the edge."

At that moment, I realized he had apparently just gone outside to the garage, undetected, by himself, climbed the ladder, by himself, and attempted to lift the heavy wooden dinosaur and carry it down the ladder, by himself. This is not a friendly ladder we're talking about, it's one with very small steps, and goes up high to the top of the garage, where we have a little loft storage spot. I was a bit mortified.

"Noah, you can't go up there by yourself because it is dangerous. You could fall. Why didn't you ask Papa?"

"Well, Papa won't let me go on the ladder." 

"Yes, because it is very dangerous. But if you really need to do something, you need an adult to help you."

I restrained myself against scolding him; I think he must have learned part of that lesson by actually trying. I also think I have to accept that he is indeed an independent creature, and I can only do my best to teach him what is okay and what is not, but ultimately he will make his own judgements when I am not around.

Noah's play has been evolving substantially. He is now able to spend large blocks of time entertaining himself by building things with legos and his train set. He has elaborate train configurations all over the floor, and uses large towers of legos to build supports for bridges, etc. It is really fascinating to see all the creativity and ingenuity developing already.