Squidbits
Holy shit, I just realized that I wrote this two weeks ago and never posted it. Um, happy heteronormative Hallmark holiday to you all. Have a post about my kid.
(No pictures this month, as our Official Photographer has been out of town for most of it.)
It's a pretty excellent time to be the mother of the Squid. I'm a bit tired; solo parenting and travel and work have tuckered me right out. But even in the chaos I'm still finding room to be amazed at how fast he is developing. You can practically see the gears turning in there as he figures things out, and every new day brings a new level of understanding.
New words since last update: Shoe, Box, Thanks, Ball, Toes, Morning, Bus, Bone, Grandpa, Kitty, Stairs, Banana, Icky, Nose, Milk, Cookie, Apple, Book, Keys, Juice, Cup, Cookie, Dinosaur, Pizza, Rice, Flower, Out, and Hello (as opposed to hi). In just three weeks! Language explosion, though I have to admit to a lingering twinge of jealousy when I hear that friends' children born at the same time are making full sentences on a regular basis. I have to keep reminding myself that all these early benchmarks mean very little as long as they fall somewhere on the normal curve; they don't have a lasting correlation to ability or intelligence.
Word and sound associations are definitely getting much, much clearer; when he was ready to go at Grammy's house, he ran to the door and started yelling, "bye bye!" He hoots like a monkey now when I give him a banana, implying that he understands that monkeys eat bananas; I'm not sure if that is a genuine logic chain or just something he picked up from me calling him a little monkey in that context. I suspect the latter, as he said "monkey," yesterday after being handed a banana. After Grandpa honked his nose, beeped his cheeks, and ding-dinged his earlobes, he was able to associate each body part with the correct sound. He says "hello" when the phone rings.
Sometimes his logic is a bit off; he says "thanks" when he hands us a banana peel to throw away, but I think he says it because that's what we say when he hands us things, not because he is thanking us; perhaps he even thinks that's what a peel is called. He also says something that sounds pathetically like "sorry!" sometimes when being made to do things he doesn't want to do; there's nothing more guilt-inducing than dropping a sobbing child off at daycare who is saying, "soi! soi!" over and over. However, I don't think he's apologizing to me for imagined transgressions; I think I say "sorry" a lot to him when I make him do things he doesn't want to do ( e.g. "I'm sorry, honey, but I have to go to work, so you have to stay here,") and he's made the association between "DO NOT WANT" and "sorry."
The building of correct associations is also leading to an understanding of what an incorrect association might look like. This is the beginning of rudimentary humor; he made his first joke the other day, and I almost died of pride. He was brushing the dog with my hairbrush *pauses to let you all give me a disgusted grimace* and I told him not to brush her face, "just her sides and back, honey." He started to brush her paws, instead, and I said, "No, silly! Those are her toes! We don't brush toes!" and he looked up at me and giggled and lifted up one bare foot and brushed his own toes.
Himself worries that we are going to raise a smartass. I, too, worry about this. But I'm not sure how to avoid it, either. Himself said, "We've got to tone down the sarcasm around him." But I'm not prepared never to talk to my partner again, and I swear to God, if you took all of the sarcasm and snark out of our conversations, ours would be a very silent marriage. It's just how we are. But we both came from nicer families and developed this kind of attitude on our own; what do you get when you start a kid out on a steady diet of it? I'm a little afraid to find out. I think about that sort of thing a lot; I had a good childhood, a great childhood, even, and my parents were and are incredibly good parents. So I've been able to layer my own laxity and vice on top of that strong starting base and still get a fairly decent result; sure, I get a craving for boxed macaroni and cheese now and then, but I can make really tasty healthy foods. Sure, I watch some TV, but I've read more books than 95% of Americans ever will, so whatever. But the Squid is wandering into my life after I've instituted the downgrades; not that I would raise my child exclusively on boxed mac and TV, but he has definitely had more convenience food and more movies already than I think I had had by age ten. Possibly age 15. If he hates to cook or read, I will feel so guilty I may never recover.
Physically, he climbs furniture like a jungle gym, and people like trees; he can get into any chair (and more horrifyingly, onto any table) in the house. He can feed himself cereal with milk or pasta from a bowl, using a spoon; it's messy, but he gets the great majority of it into his mouth. He'll be able to dress himself soon; he understands the general shape of garments and the process, and will put his arms in the right places without being asked, and help me put on his shoes. He can pet animals relatively gently and go up and down shallow stairs upright on his own; he needs to have a hand to hold onto for larger stairs. He catches himself in tumbles that would have resulted in nasty bumps just a month ago. He even sings; his babble is still babble, but when he is singing it is distinctly tuneful. I could have sworn he actually hit the correct notes for "The Wheels on the Bus" last night, but it was probably just coincidence.
He brings me books to read all the time now; I promised myself that I would always drop what I was doing to read to him, so sometimes I'm reading them standing up, holding the book down with one hand and reciting it more or less from memory while I stir the soup with the other. He used to prefer to stand up when being read to, but no more - when we sit down to read now, he pushes me to sit and then turns himself around and lowers his butt squarely into my lap, settling in. He has favorite books, and favorite pages in each; he likes the page with the fire engine and dump truck in his Trucks book, and the junk food page and final spread of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. He particularly enjoys books about food and eating and books about trucks and trains.
Which, hello gendered preferences. It happens. He's out of my circle of influence 9 hours a day during the week, in daycare with a very gender-traditional provider, and I'm sure that Himself and I have gendered behaviors and assumptions that we don't even recognize that we're passing along. We've exposed him to books and movies. it's a gendered world. But it bothers me. I realized the other day that I had defaulted all the non-gendered animals in his toybox and in his books to "he" - I'm now making a conscious effort to refer to some of them as female. The Very Hungry Caterpillar loses absolutely nothing if it's read about a girl caterpillar, and many other children's books can be re-gendered that way as well. (I have also altered the wording in many of them to make them scan properly; I am a metrical snob and I hate it when children's books don't scan.) I want to get him a doll stroller for his second birthday (he loves the one at the neighbor girl's house.) I'm not going to fight the gendered preferences he picks up - though if I have to read that damn truck book one more time I may explode - but I am going to do my level best not to reinforce them through my own behavior.
We have not yet arrived at the glorious free-will-assertion period of "No." Rather, we are in a hilarious period of "Yeah," in which "Yeah" is the default response to anything asked in an interrogative tone of voice. "Do you want cereal or oatmeal?" "Yeah!" "Where do you want me to put this?" "Yeah!" "Are you made of cashews and toothpaste?" "Yeah!" I'm thinking this is a golden opportunity for me to extract binding promises - on camera! - for the years of struggle ahead, ne c'est pas?
(No pictures this month, as our Official Photographer has been out of town for most of it.)
It's a pretty excellent time to be the mother of the Squid. I'm a bit tired; solo parenting and travel and work have tuckered me right out. But even in the chaos I'm still finding room to be amazed at how fast he is developing. You can practically see the gears turning in there as he figures things out, and every new day brings a new level of understanding.
New words since last update: Shoe, Box, Thanks, Ball, Toes, Morning, Bus, Bone, Grandpa, Kitty, Stairs, Banana, Icky, Nose, Milk, Cookie, Apple, Book, Keys, Juice, Cup, Cookie, Dinosaur, Pizza, Rice, Flower, Out, and Hello (as opposed to hi). In just three weeks! Language explosion, though I have to admit to a lingering twinge of jealousy when I hear that friends' children born at the same time are making full sentences on a regular basis. I have to keep reminding myself that all these early benchmarks mean very little as long as they fall somewhere on the normal curve; they don't have a lasting correlation to ability or intelligence.
Word and sound associations are definitely getting much, much clearer; when he was ready to go at Grammy's house, he ran to the door and started yelling, "bye bye!" He hoots like a monkey now when I give him a banana, implying that he understands that monkeys eat bananas; I'm not sure if that is a genuine logic chain or just something he picked up from me calling him a little monkey in that context. I suspect the latter, as he said "monkey," yesterday after being handed a banana. After Grandpa honked his nose, beeped his cheeks, and ding-dinged his earlobes, he was able to associate each body part with the correct sound. He says "hello" when the phone rings.
Sometimes his logic is a bit off; he says "thanks" when he hands us a banana peel to throw away, but I think he says it because that's what we say when he hands us things, not because he is thanking us; perhaps he even thinks that's what a peel is called. He also says something that sounds pathetically like "sorry!" sometimes when being made to do things he doesn't want to do; there's nothing more guilt-inducing than dropping a sobbing child off at daycare who is saying, "soi! soi!" over and over. However, I don't think he's apologizing to me for imagined transgressions; I think I say "sorry" a lot to him when I make him do things he doesn't want to do ( e.g. "I'm sorry, honey, but I have to go to work, so you have to stay here,") and he's made the association between "DO NOT WANT" and "sorry."
The building of correct associations is also leading to an understanding of what an incorrect association might look like. This is the beginning of rudimentary humor; he made his first joke the other day, and I almost died of pride. He was brushing the dog with my hairbrush *pauses to let you all give me a disgusted grimace* and I told him not to brush her face, "just her sides and back, honey." He started to brush her paws, instead, and I said, "No, silly! Those are her toes! We don't brush toes!" and he looked up at me and giggled and lifted up one bare foot and brushed his own toes.
Himself worries that we are going to raise a smartass. I, too, worry about this. But I'm not sure how to avoid it, either. Himself said, "We've got to tone down the sarcasm around him." But I'm not prepared never to talk to my partner again, and I swear to God, if you took all of the sarcasm and snark out of our conversations, ours would be a very silent marriage. It's just how we are. But we both came from nicer families and developed this kind of attitude on our own; what do you get when you start a kid out on a steady diet of it? I'm a little afraid to find out. I think about that sort of thing a lot; I had a good childhood, a great childhood, even, and my parents were and are incredibly good parents. So I've been able to layer my own laxity and vice on top of that strong starting base and still get a fairly decent result; sure, I get a craving for boxed macaroni and cheese now and then, but I can make really tasty healthy foods. Sure, I watch some TV, but I've read more books than 95% of Americans ever will, so whatever. But the Squid is wandering into my life after I've instituted the downgrades; not that I would raise my child exclusively on boxed mac and TV, but he has definitely had more convenience food and more movies already than I think I had had by age ten. Possibly age 15. If he hates to cook or read, I will feel so guilty I may never recover.
Physically, he climbs furniture like a jungle gym, and people like trees; he can get into any chair (and more horrifyingly, onto any table) in the house. He can feed himself cereal with milk or pasta from a bowl, using a spoon; it's messy, but he gets the great majority of it into his mouth. He'll be able to dress himself soon; he understands the general shape of garments and the process, and will put his arms in the right places without being asked, and help me put on his shoes. He can pet animals relatively gently and go up and down shallow stairs upright on his own; he needs to have a hand to hold onto for larger stairs. He catches himself in tumbles that would have resulted in nasty bumps just a month ago. He even sings; his babble is still babble, but when he is singing it is distinctly tuneful. I could have sworn he actually hit the correct notes for "The Wheels on the Bus" last night, but it was probably just coincidence.
He brings me books to read all the time now; I promised myself that I would always drop what I was doing to read to him, so sometimes I'm reading them standing up, holding the book down with one hand and reciting it more or less from memory while I stir the soup with the other. He used to prefer to stand up when being read to, but no more - when we sit down to read now, he pushes me to sit and then turns himself around and lowers his butt squarely into my lap, settling in. He has favorite books, and favorite pages in each; he likes the page with the fire engine and dump truck in his Trucks book, and the junk food page and final spread of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. He particularly enjoys books about food and eating and books about trucks and trains.
Which, hello gendered preferences. It happens. He's out of my circle of influence 9 hours a day during the week, in daycare with a very gender-traditional provider, and I'm sure that Himself and I have gendered behaviors and assumptions that we don't even recognize that we're passing along. We've exposed him to books and movies. it's a gendered world. But it bothers me. I realized the other day that I had defaulted all the non-gendered animals in his toybox and in his books to "he" - I'm now making a conscious effort to refer to some of them as female. The Very Hungry Caterpillar loses absolutely nothing if it's read about a girl caterpillar, and many other children's books can be re-gendered that way as well. (I have also altered the wording in many of them to make them scan properly; I am a metrical snob and I hate it when children's books don't scan.) I want to get him a doll stroller for his second birthday (he loves the one at the neighbor girl's house.) I'm not going to fight the gendered preferences he picks up - though if I have to read that damn truck book one more time I may explode - but I am going to do my level best not to reinforce them through my own behavior.
We have not yet arrived at the glorious free-will-assertion period of "No." Rather, we are in a hilarious period of "Yeah," in which "Yeah" is the default response to anything asked in an interrogative tone of voice. "Do you want cereal or oatmeal?" "Yeah!" "Where do you want me to put this?" "Yeah!" "Are you made of cashews and toothpaste?" "Yeah!" I'm thinking this is a golden opportunity for me to extract binding promises - on camera! - for the years of struggle ahead, ne c'est pas?
posted by The Stute Fish at 22:16
2 Comments:
Cars are feminine in Russian, buildings are male, home is female. After working w/ Russian so long, I find myself sometimes giving genders inappropriately in English.
My mom tried to raise my brother and I to understand we were not limited by our gender in what we could do. So what happened, I can cook, fix a car, wash laundry, have a tool box and can fix stuff with it, sew and look out for my mom and brother. My brother can make foods that are boiled or microwaved. And wash his own clothes.
On a side note, I used to call his GI Joe dolls to his endless disgust.
--Anon
Hi! Daichi and I like your bottle mobil in the picture!
The Very Hungry Caterpillar is very famous also in Japan and I used to read for him almost everyday!
Hisako
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