Category Archives: The Boy

Liam Bits And Pieces

This just in from the other room: “Can Liam have a piano? As a surprise? As a present, maybe?” He’s probably going to be disappointed when we take him to the book store for his weekly Yay Liam You Passed This Week’s Potty Goal! surprise. I guess I’m back to keeping an eye on the local on-line classifieds for an apartment-size piano.

Things I forgot to include in the monthly post at the beginning of the week:

New food: Pepperoni, which he calls “pupperpony”.

According to Liam, sheep say “Baa-hah-hah-hah!”

Often heard saying: “It’s sew keyoute!”

Best new experience: Escalators. He was unsure about elevators a few months ago, got used to them, then tried an escalator at the book store last week. Best Way To Get To Another Floor Ever! (It took me six to eight years to be comfortable with escalators. Yeesh. This kid has no fear.)

Laughing With Liam

In an effort to put myself in a better mood, I will share two amusing exchanges with Liam.

This morning on the way to daycare, while listening to the Muppet CD we have only just remembered that we own:

LIAM: I like the Muppets!

A: Me too.

LIAM: So do I!

And yesterday afternoon, while I was in my office looking for something:

[OFFSTAGE SOUND F/X: CRASH!]

A: [pokes head out of office to look at LIAM in the living room] Liam, was that you?

LIAM: [earnestly] No! Maybe it was… the cats?

And the funny thing is that I went into the kitchen and sure enough it had been the cats, knocking over the child gate we use to screen off their litter box. He hadn’t been trying to redirect me away from something he’d done that he didn’t want me to know about, despite delivering the exact answer that would arouse suspicion.

Thirty-Two Months Old!

Liam’s handle on language has taken yet another leap. I was sitting next to the boy while we watched a DVD the other week and realized that I was having a full-blown conversation with my son about the Muppets, complete with analysis of humour and use of similes, and we were both taking it for granted. I am just blown away by how communication evolves over the first three years.

The Muppets are very big in our house these days. He loves the opening sequence, dancing and singing along here and there, always joining in for the final line, raising his hands up in the air and saying “SHOOOOOW!” with all the Muppets on-screen. His favourite skit is Pigs In Space, which he calls “Piggies in the Spaceship”. He loves Robin and Miss Piggy, and is quite fond of Kermit. He impressed me the other night when the news anchor Muppet came on and started talking. Liam narrowed his eyes at the screen and said, “That Kermit.” I tried to explain that the person providing the newscaster’s voice was the same person who did Kermit’s voice, but it went right over his head or out into left field or something, and understandably so: Muppets are Muppets. When kids talk to them in person, they talk to the Muppet, not the person standing there holding it. Of course the puppets talk on their own; a Muppeteer is an alien concept. So I rationalized it by saying that the news anchor was Kermit in disguise. Liam looked at me, opened his mouth in a silent “Ah!” as if he had been initiated into a deep adult secret, and was satisfied.

One of the bonus features on the second season DVD set is the Weezer video of “Keep Fishing” that features some of the Muppet cast. I’d heard about the video when it was originally released in 2002 but haven’t seen it until now. Liam stood with his mouth open, his eyes riveted to the screen as the band moved from backstage at the Muppet theatre to play on the stage itself. He extended his hand in my direction, not moving his eyes from the band playing with the Muppets on-screen. “I need my cello,” he said. I got the viola out for him, and as he wouldn’t take his eyes off the action on the television we eased him into a sitting position, set it up in his lap, leaned it against his shoulder, and put the bow in his right hand. He played his cello along with the band for the rest of the video. It was terrific to see.

Lately he has really gotten into playing Hide and Seek. The only problem is that he gets so excited when he hides that when whoever is seeking him narrates their search, he responds to it. “Are you in the… bedroom?” I will say, and “Noooo!” he will exclaim from the bathroom. HRH was trying to straighten out the problem the other night and had a great time chuckling at the boy when they hid in the bathroom together, Liam bouncing up and down, hands over his mouth to keep himself quiet, and eyes wide, nearly bursting with excitement as I searched. His play has developed into a fascinating display of imagination and storytelling. Trains meet and converse and part, cars encounter difficulties and challenges and work through them. Sometimes he provides all the voices, and other times he narrates what is happening to himself or to other toys. And he’s engaging in very obvious pretending now. “Maggie is the white Totoro!” he will say. “Let’s follow her! Oh no, we can’t see her! Now she under the house!” (Poor Maggie gets cast as a wide variety of things, some of them inanimate, and is really doing a heroic job of keeping up with the exuberance of a two and a half year old who is now coordinated enough to pick her up and lug her around.) One of his current special possessions is a blue velveteen ring box that I found while clearing out a closet. “I can have this?” he said. Later I found it under the chesterfield and was going to throw it out when he grabbed it from me and said, “No, you can’t! That my game!” The implication was clear: If you won’t let me play with your Nintendo DS, I’ll make my own game, thank you very much. So we coloured dots with markers inside for buttons, and he sits on the sofa and presses them, looking at the upper ‘screen’. Over the past month it has also evolved to be his ‘computer’. It sits on his chest of drawers.

His singing of the alphabet song has become very clear, and is evidently making an impact. When he stands at the fridge door and plays with the magnetic letters he moves the A up then says, “And here the letter B!” He knows the B comes after the A. The only problem is he grabs any letter that has a vaguely similar structure such as an E, or a K, or an R. There are also tremendous potty advances being made which I haven’t been talking about for fear of jinxing things. Many are the stickers applied to weekly charts, many are the high fives. And he counted to twenty-one today, clearly and correctly, which is the highest I’ve ever heard him count.

His current favourite books are the Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel. I bought Frog and Toad All Year last week because I saw it in the little local book store and remembered loving it as a child. I was also getting tired of reading the same books over and over at bedtime. It enchanted Liam, who somehow suddenly knew every chapter title and could ask for them out of sequence, so I picked up two more this weekend on our Saturday runabout and gave him one that night, and the other is aside for a rainy day.

As a treat I bought blackberries at the beginning of February, intending to use them in an Imbolc ritual. He ate every single one of them over the course of the day. He was enjoying them so much that I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that he couldn’t have any more, especially when he asked for them so nicely. I figure the obvious joy he felt in eating them was a suitable offering to Brid instead. ‘Lola bars’ are also high on his list of yummy food, and I introduced sunflower seeds to him two days ago as well. He asked me today if they would grow if he planted them, “my seeds, my seeds that I put in my mouth?”

Liam can be such a funny little thing. When HRH wore an old paint-spotted shirt last weekend he got very upset: “Dada, it dirty. We clean it? We clean it for you?” With all the winter storms we’ve been having there has been major snow removal going on (although not anywhere near the frequency at which it ought to be happening), and he’s glued to the front window when the giant snowblowers and dump trucks inch down the street. He renamed his toy excavator ‘the snowblower’ and pushes it around the floor behind the matching dump truck, the scoop angled up over the dump truck like the snowblower does. He watched our next-door neighbour, who uses his big red pick-up truck for snow removal, clear our immediate neighbour’s driveway one day. “See how Pierre uses his truck to plough the snow?” HRH said. “Yes,” said Liam, watching the red truck manoeuvre in and out of the driveway. Then: “I have a truck?” “When you’re older,” said HRH, somehow keeping a straight face.

Something HRH and I started ages ago was the family hug, where Liam would nestle with one parent and the other parent would hug both. Two weeks ago HRH was saying goodnight as Liam and I were settling down for a bedtime story when Liam bounced up and said, “Family hug!” Tenderly he put one arm around my neck and the other arm around HRH’s, and we put our arms around one another and him as well, and our hearts nearly burst. We’re doing okay with this kid. He’s a good one. And we can’t wait to see how he discovers other wonderful things in the coming months and years.

Friday Morning

HRH took the car today and dropped the boy at the caregiver’s for the stroke of eight, then drove to work. He’ll reverse the process tonight and pick Sparky up around the time I usually do. This is a test to see if I can get more done in a day, as my most productive time is between three and five-thirtyish. It also conserves my energy, allowing me to pour more into work instead of expending a lot of it getting the boy ready to go, doing the car thing, and coming back again. When you have a limited amount of energy before fatigue knocks you flat, toddler-wrangling and the drive takes a lot out of you. It may sound easy on paper, but living it is different. I also get into the proper headspace to write a lot faster when HRH takes the boy to his grandma’s every second Friday, so we theorized that it ought to work this way too. The main concern at the moment is how long it takes HRH to drive to work and home again afterwards. It’s against traffic both ways, but one never knows. It means an hour longer at daycare for the boy, though. We may do this two days a week and I’ll handle the other two.

So here I am, a batch of bread rising, at the computer already. This is good on my end, so far.

I did end up bowing out of rehearsal Wednesday night; I was just too exhausted. My body still hasn’t completely adjusted to the medication, so on top of the bad fibro day I was knocked out by eight o’clock. Unfortunately I woke up at midnight because Nixie was trying to dig her way out of my office, the door of which gets closed at night, and she’d accidentally been shut inside. I lay awake for two hours trying to get back to sleep, which was not good, and slept too lightly the rest of the night. I was low-key in Thursday as a result, but as Curtana and Arthur came to play it was a good relaxed morning that didn’t require too much of me. I made excellent scones (whole-wheat and honey!), the boys had a rip-roaring time together, and Curtana and I even got to talk about not-mom-things things before Liam hit his must-lunch-and-nap-now-or-never time. I slept badly last night, too. So far, the medication has given me five awesome days followed by one ungood day and a neutral day, and those last two days were mainly a result of being woken up out of the blessedly deeper sleep the medication grants me (which in turn helps alleviate some of the fibro problems). I’d say that’s a decent scorecard.

Right. To work!

My Morning, By Me

Today’s excitement: having my car key snap off in the trunk lock as I prepared to load the car with a shopping trip’s worth of stuff.

Yes! So exciting! Liam and I called friends who used to have an extra copy of our car key, but they were not home. We called HRH to apprise him of the necessity of picking the car up on his way home from work, and then my phone died a messy death (it can’t hold a charge worth beans, but I am not complaining because it was second-hand, inexpensive, and has served me well for almost a whole year). Then we liberated the emergency umbrella stroller that languishes in the back of the car, covered the major purchases with the car blanket, made sure the immediate necessities and little things were in pockets or bags, locked up the car, and took the bus home.

Naturally, the freezing rain began halfway across the parking lot.

Luckily, Liam thought the whole thing a grand adventure, partially fuelled by my animated “Want to do something really cool? Let’s take the bus home!” pitch. And then we stopped in at a gas station on our fifteen-minute trek to a bus stop to buy a granola bar as a treat, and he was thrilled about that too. (It was an excuse to break the five dollar bill in my wallet to have sufficient change for the bus). He had been very well-behaved during our department store experience, walking next to me and holding my hand; I was very impressed. He’s on the verge of being too big for the seats in shopping carts, so learning how to walk while we shop is a good thing. His good mood made things easier to handle. So did the not-crowded bus. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a bus that empty on that route.

There is irony involved in all this, too. We went out to buy a new microwave, as the one we have been using by the grace of Tal for the past two years mysteriously ceased functioning last night. (Don’t worry, Tal, if/when you require a microwave oven again, we will replace it for you.) I was punching in a time when the lights went out and that was that — no crackles or sparks or warnings of slow death. I am mystified. It is currently in the garage while it thinks about the error of its ways (let’s call it a time out for appliances). We don’t use the microwave for anything other than reheating tea, warming up milk or leftovers, or defrosting meat that’s being stubborn, so the one we got is tiny and only 700 watts. And the irony of having gone out to buy the new microwave is that we cannot use it, as it’s sitting covered by the blanket in the back of the locked car of a parking lot at the other end of town. I discovered this when I went to warm up Liam’s pasta and veggies for lunch.

I also need a new car key, and HRH will need to get the snapped-cleanly-level-with-the-lock key out. Issues for tomorrow.

But the day is not a wreck (not that it was in any danger of being one, it wasn’t as huge a disaster as it could have been… I could have accidentally locked the passenger side car doors after buckling Liam in and then snapped the key), because the copy of the Druid Plant Oracle that I ordered from the UK arrived while Liam was eating lunch. It will not be available in North America until August. I win.

Also, when Liam watches the opening credits to the Muppet Show, he sings the final “SHOOOOOOOOW!” along with the cast, hilariously off-key.

That is all.

For Kino Kid

Caution: cuteness ahead.

When Liam watches the opening of My Neighbour Totoro, he stands up and does a measured bounce from side to side, bending his knees in time to the music. Then he opens his mouth while doing it…. all mirroring the actions of the little white Chibi-Totoros that form the word ‘Totoro’ on screen.