Ussins

At a family Halloween party Mago got a little bag of various Haloween-themed toys, which we were playing with the other day. One of them was a blank notepad with a skull on it, which I turned the pages of, prompting Mago to pretend to write a story in it.

Me: What is the story about?
Mago: A little boy.
Me: What did the little boy do?
Mago: He was playing with a toy.
Me: Then what happened?
Mago: His daddy came and took it away.
Me: Then what happened?
Mago: He cried.
Me: The little boy cried?
Mago: Yeah.
Me: Then what happened?
Mago: His daddy gave it back. And they lived happy ever.

Tia sent me an Instant Message with this one from Mago - the monitor he mentions rests on a counter above a hard floor:

Mom, I could hear you through the monitor. And I kept turning it on and off. But then the kitchen floor turned it off… so I couldn’t hear you anymore.

Judgment Day. I am before the pleading bar of the Almighty to state my cause for entering the Kingdom. Jesus asks the countless throng of God’s children:

“Is there anyone who has ought against this man, or reason he should not enter my Kingdom?”

A man comes forward, youthful, bright, with a sparkle in his eye, holding a cane for what reason I don’t know for all his vigor, covered with so many stamped coin souvenirs from his travels. Approaching, he looks at me, barks “Get something to eat!” and winks. He steps back down with nothing more to say. Neither does my Savior have any more to say.

They set me down for the feast of entrance. There in the abundance are the grapes, even the grapes of the winepress of the wrath of Almighty God, restored to the vine, never to be trampled again.

And I eat.

I’ve discovered yet another way to tickle Mago and/or make him laugh - at bed time I get close to his face and whisper in a low, I suppose strangely officious voice:

“Is it time for shleepy-shleepy-shleep?”

- And slowly try to nuzzle against his ear to whisper this over and over; I think the “sh” and “p” and breath tickle his ear. He becomes very amused, dodging his head back and forth, pushing my head back while I slowly try to advance on his ear, still repeating this. I’ll finally succeed at getting at his ear, he’ll laugh uncontrollably and finally push my head away as I give up, to which he then says:

“Do it again!”

I had forgotten this game after discovering it several days ago and at a recent bed time he requested:

“Say: shleepy-shleepy-shleep.”

He plays a game usually in the morning with Tia which he has dubbed (we don’t know why) “Bed-bed-bed”. Tia tells me now he would play it all day if he could. If she would let him.

The game is to have Tia (or me) sit in a chair with your legs straddled over air and the edge of his bed, with a gap between your legs which you hang a blanket on to make a sort of hammock; holding various stuffed animals in your lap which he requests you to make them talk. Mago crawls onto the hammock and “melts” so that he falls down between your legs with the blanket wrapping around him; he then has you put the blanket back over your legs and continue all of this over and over.

I don’t know how I haven’t written that - he’s been playing that game for many months.

Sometimes in the car (when Tia is driving) I reach my hands back from the front passenger seat to the rear and make them talk and sniff at Mago (another way to tickle), and bark and play like dogs (it entertains him very much).

Playing in his room this morning before dawn I asked him if I could play fort on his bed, putting blankets over us, which he rejected - he wants to play “Bed-bed-bed.” I said “Pleeease?” and put a blanket back over him. While he lay there I put my hands under the blanket to tickle his belly. He giggled in anticipation.

Wha.. how did the doggies get under here?

Here are some things from the past while, that I’ve been writing down.

Tia: (to Nem-Nem, while they play peek-a-boo) You’re going to be Superwoman in just three years. You’ll be flying around doing mathematics.

Tia made a red cape and eye mask costume for Mago (just for play, she says, not Halloween). He stood on our bed one morning to show it off.

Mago: I’m a bad guy! .. wait, I have to put down my sipee cup.

..

(Attempting over and over to place a star shape in a wooden puzzle, *sighs*) Too work.

..

(At random during the day) This is my treasure-hunting thumb.

Tia says he made that last up partly from a Blue’s Clues episode.

He calls very thickly frosted [me: disgusting!] cookies “Cookies on each tuver” (Cookies on each other) because it looks to him like two stacked cookies.

Tia has introduced me to Love and Logic (this sentence may be taken out of context), an audio program delineating so much wisdom on child rearing. Incidentally, what I have tried of it is positive and works and I’ll be listening to the whole thing. She checks these out from the Parent Education Resource Center at the Orem Library. The cover of the set for early childhood has a cartoon of an exhausted, bedraggled woman with two infants in tow. The library case for it opened and spilled the CD case out one day, and Mago looked at it.

Mago: Mama, is that ‘care for me’?,

A few days ago:

Mago: Daddy?
Me: Yes.
Mago: Feed to me.
Me: Feed to you? Do you mean read to you?
Mago: Read to me. .. (smiles) Feed and read!

Nem-nem beams at us and at people all the time. When she first sees me in the morning or coming home from work and I smile at her broadly (as I can only help myself to do with a baby who is my daughter), she beams and coyly tucks her head down and her arms up to her chest. Things she says:

Ppphhhhbt! Pppbbbbhht! Heh-pubbbbbppt!

Gggh!

Hoo!

(Laughing) Heh.

Hii.

Eeh!

Eeeyoo!

Nem-nem is also frequently rolling from her back to her side and tummy, less often from her tummy to her back, and sometimes does a swimming motion on her tummy, trying to start to crawl.