brood

“children are so funny” chimed our local bicycle shop owner as we both watch Levi tour the store sort of dancing, sort of talking (especially about the owners cute puppies that he had brought in), and sort of just being goofy. In return, I tried to get us to imagine what it would be like inside the mind of a child (and why not… the mind of a puppy.) For instance, does Levi reflect at the end of the day on what kind of day he had? Does he consider some days better than others. Does the idea of a day occur to him? Or is time sort of a stream, and his view a kind of constant cross-section of that stream. (The impossibility of ever knowing, really knowing, is part of the fun here.) On one hand, this lad seems to have amassed quite a knowledge of the world. It is a kind of encyclopedic knowledge, but within it he often exhibits surprising recall. The other night we went to a restaurant we only go to once every couple of months. As we pulled in, he said “Arr-why (Arden), runneen (Running)” – in fact about 7 weeks before he and his little friend, Arden, spent an hour after dinner running in the very spot he was pointing at.

So, I wonder if Levi knows how much fun Mama and I’ve been having with him these days? I mean, we’ve always had found wonder in our little gem of a boy, as doting parents around the world make a practice of doing, but lately with his new words, and behaviors are wonderfully entertaining.

I have an urge to catalog many of them right now, but I’m way to long-winded (and doting). Hmm, here’s a few:

- Happy? Happy.

This is one of those things that Levi doesn’t do anymore, but it was so rousing and hilarious when he did. ladyjoanna would ask “are you happy?” and this would get him in this little loop of saying “happy? happy.” “happy? happy.” etc. walking around the room asking himself and answering himself. It is almost impossible to describe the hilarity of this, and it very well may fall into that catagory of “you had to be there…” (we do have some audio i’ll post at some point…)

- Words

The vocabulary is too vast to document. The uninitiated might need a translator, but probably just for 1/4 of his expressions – the others are clear or getting clearer. (The current funniest of pronuciations is “Froofratter and Jayhee” for peanut butter and jelly… his favorite snack) The nouns have grown in number rapidly including wonderful coverage of animals, food, and people. But a few verbs are starting to get heavy use, including see, sit, eat, go, run… and other useful words like “too” (”mama/dada sit too”) and “back.”

- Colors

Levi is wild about colors. (Colors also being the word for crayons or pencils.) At the bike store today, he saw this display of water bottle cages in assortment of colors. I quizzed him in front of the owner, and he nailed them all White, Black, Yellow, Blue, Red… He didn’t know silver, but I think he might now. It’s silly, but I felt so proud.

- Organizer

One new activity the wee one has been refining is the organization of objects. He’s gone back to his favorite type of object, the ball. I put together a collection of inexpensive rubber balls and he will spend hours lining them up along the door, or putting them on a ledge, or along the base boards, then he will put them all back into the container they are stored in… over and over. It’s kind of a dream. I can actually get something done.

- Elmo and Ernie and Bert

Equal with Levi’s vocabularly for the animals that he’s seen in photos or in real life, is the vocabularly for the characters of Sesame Street. Ernie, Elmo, Bert are his favorites (perhaps in that order, but depending on the day, elmo is top), with Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Grover, and Telly following up. Limiting the amount of TB, as he calls it, is a tricky business. We keep it under an hour each day for now, but he gets slideshows on the computer too. I hate to do arbitrary stuff like limit tv time, but we also like to expose him to a wider variety of things. Besides if there is a moral undertone to Sesame Street it would be “diversity is good”… i won’t even dare to say something pithy about that. I think it is true.

Okay… long-winded indeed.

pictures soon…