Gametes In Love

This story fits as part of the “20 questions” chronicles really.

G: Ok, Mommy, I have a REALLY good one for you!
Me: Ok — is it bigger than a car?
G: Yes!
Me: Is it alive?
G: Yes!
Me: Does it have 2 legs?
G: No!
Me: Does it have 4 legs?
G: Yes!
Me: Does it have fir?
G: Yes!(this is where we go “Waaa!”)
G: Do you give up yet?
Me: No! I have more questions left.
G: (giggles)
Me: Does it live on a farm?
G: No!
Me: Does it live in the desert?
G: No!
Me: Does it have a long neck?
G: No!
Me: Does it live in a zoo?
G: No!
(S and I stumble for awhile until we decide that G gave us one of the answers wrong)
Me: Fine I give up!
G: It’s Clifford! The Big Red Dog

I totally claim cheat-sies. How would anyone guess that? I guess I have to start including “Is it real?” in my line of questioning too.

A chat with G at bed-time today:

G: Mommy, Dad and I did Ma-ma-ma-Math today[he’s been trying to sound out the first letter of things more these days]
G: If I have 15 things, and I gave away 11, how many will you have?
Me: Me? How many will I have? I don’t know. Did you gave ME your 11 things?
G: Huh?
Me: Well, If you had 15 things, and you gave away 11, and you gave them to me, then I’ll have 11. Or are you asking, if you had 15 things, and you gave away 11 how many YOU would be left with?
G: (silence)

Yeah — I ruined the moment there, didn’t I? Semantics: hard to keep out of the way 🙂

I was looking through our last year’s holiday cards and noticed that just last May I had written that S2 said his first phrase: “Al-da!” (all done). Today he was entertaining a young lady in her 20’s with a long tale of what he likes and what he doesn’t. He was babbling ON and ON (a little bit like the dude that doesn’t get the hint she’s not that into you), and I stood there watching amazed at how far he’s come. Amazed that the human body, in just a year’s time, makes a baby become such a little person. It’s mind-blowing, really.

I read about this place years ago in an airplane magazine. I’d been gearing to go since. But you know how things go: life gets in the way, and then I was pregnant, and then with a baby and all that… so being on a couple hour jeep tour wasn’t really going to happen. While S was transitioning between jobs we made a plan to go. We took G out of school for the day (Yeah, sorry S2, buddy! You’re not patient enough for this ride) and went up to Sonoma. It was fun! It was educational. G asked questions of his own. I was pretty darn impressed!

G and S2 each got a little chickie-egg looking thing for Easter from Ms. A’s parents. They wind up and waddle… or at least they used to. S2’s is long lost, but G came across his earlier this week. The winding mechanism had been over-turned and it was just stuck, not going anywhere. He asked me to fix it. Not wanting to dissect it, I told him, it was no going back and it was broken. The end.

Today it works. Why? G fixed it! How? He threw it against a wall. Yep — the solution to fixing it was I guess identical to breaking it.

We’ve urged him not to “fix” his other toys similarly.

I also urge you to not encourage him to “fix” any of your broken stuff either 🙂

Can it be? Two nights in a row G has fallen asleep on his own. “On his own” meaning, one of us was not in the room with him as he did.

The approach I started last week went something like this:

1. Read a book
2. Tell him I need to go get my jammies on and that I would be back in 5 mins.
3. He can read to himself in his room, but NOT leave his bed
4. Be back in 5 mins and cuddle until he fell asleep

Progressively those 5 minutes became 15. Luckily for me, he falls asleep fast, so for the last two nights within 15 min he’s out.

At first he wanted his main overhead light on, but these last couple of nights, he was content with ALL the nightlights in his room being on and his radio on (thanx, local Jazz radio station!).

We promised him a Bruder dump truck if he fell asleep on his on for 5 nights. We made that promise eons ago, and the kid still remembers! At this rate, we’ll be buying a truck by the end of the week-end, and I couldn’t be happier.

It’s liberating not to be jailed in a kid room until sleep comes!!! It’s also considerably more productive: too many nights those twin beds have sucked all energy out of me, and I have fallen asleep before my assigned child. I wake up only, to waddle myself back to my room, leaving all “todo” tasks for another day.

Aaaah! Please let this be for real!

This was certainly going to happen. I was biding my time, really, but we appear to be at the thresh-hold and I’m not ready to cross over.

G’s friends like/talk about super-heroes. They talk/like/watch Star Wars.

You wanna know what’s in rotation at our house?

– Peppa Pig
– Dinosaur Train
– Oscar (the lizzard)
– Busytown Mysteries
– …the occasional video on monster trucks and helli copters

Our Sprout line-up kinda doesn’t pair with Spider Man, Batman or Return of the Jedi.

Sure, the boys have “Superman” shirts. But we can talk about those abstracts at the same level as the obscure Iguana that happened to be on the Khol’s shirt I got last season. But now they get books, and play pretend at school, and G can tell me a summary of the Avengers movie without ever having seen it. It makes me go “blink! blink!”

When CAN/SHOULD these movies be introduced to him? I was thinking 7? Maybe 8? While we watched along side him. I’m not forgetting that we’re talking about the kid that thought Madagascar 3 was too scary less than a year ago, and asked to leave the movie theater. He doesn’t like the shark part of “Finding Nemo” because it scared him. Is he really ready for light-sabers, mechanical robots and evil villains (that look scarier than a cartooned up French motorcycle animal-control cop with an over-exaggeratedly big rear)? My gut says “No!”, but how do I know unless I try?

And I’m just not ready to give up on KQED, damn it!

I took G to “the bumps” for some portraits for his 5th year slideshow. He was pretty cooperative (at last!), and I got these goodies: