Ussins

Yesterday Tia reported that, while listening to a kid’s tape (recorded by and featuring my brother-in-law Marvin) dramatizing principles etc. from the Book of Mormon, Mago asked her about Nephi and what the name of the bad guys was again. Laman and Lemuel, she repeated to him. Referring to a thick foam fencing sword he got for Christmas (which he had begged for some time before Christmas to have), he said:

“When they come to our house, I’m going to whack them with my sword!”

As Tia explained last night to Mago that Nephi didn’t kill Laman and Lemeul (and Mago raised the sad point that these mean men were Nephi’s brothers), but Nephi did kill Laban by cutting off his head (and Mago understood the reasons offered for all of this) , Mago then said of Laban, speaking as pretending (he knows these people aren’t around), he said -

“And I’ll whack off his head!”

I believe the Lord placed these stories at the front of the Book of Mormon because they make for the most dramatic and interesting family discussions (let alone entertaining).

On a recent morning Mago came into the bedroom where Tia and Nem-nem had just awakened for the morning, and Mago climbed into the bed to greet Nemmy. In chorus, at the very same time, Mago and Nemmy gave each other friendly greetings:

“Hiiiiiiiii.”

A week or so ago I picked up Nem-nem from the bed where, with Tia, she was asleep, to put Nem-nem in her crib. I cradled and rocked her in my arms while she slept, and lingered a long while - it is very rare that I get to hold her while she sleeps, because she is much harder to soothe than Mago was (and Tia has more of a gift for soothing Nemmy - I had more of a gift for soothing Mago). I looked at this little girl and thought of my family, these ties that are the Kingdom. I thought of my slacking in tending to my family - though I have improved a lot since Mago was a baby - and heartbroken for the wants of this little one I began praying for the charity to tend more to them. As soon as I had begun this prayer, she momentarily gave a great smile in her sleep. My prayer was in her dream, I knew it, and in an instant I was back to just a brief year ago holding Mago in his sleep, praying for charity, and in the moment I prayed for this he laughed, my prayer in his dream.

And he shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers. - D&C 2:2

Tia says that Nem-nem just cried her own name.  She thinks she said it because she felt sorry for herself, being alone on the floor and hungry and tired.  Nem-nem broke into a crawl yesterday - she’s been scooting increasingly for a few weeks.

This morning I was at our main computer transferring stuff to set up my new writer’s validation toy, and I hear from behind me and to the left -

“Hiiiiii.”

- in a small but confident voice so mild and sweet it is disarming, and doubly so because as I turn to see the source of the sound, there is Nem-nem, sitting up on the bed with Tia’s assistance, smiling affectionately at me.

She will slay the young men when she is a young woman.

Mago did the same thing as an infant. He also did her greeting yell of sorts. I wish I remembered the sound now, but I’m glad I wrote down that he made it - at that entry he was a month and a half old. He was about 4 months old when I wrote down he’d said “Hiiii.” I’m still in denial of the little tiny baby not being around, and maybe I always will be, but how I enjoy his company now, and I’m sure that will continue. Nem-nem a.k.a. Nemmy a.k.a. Milkbarf a.k.a. McCuddles is about 5 months now. I also wrote down Mago saying “Hiiii” to mama and dada by their proper names at 1 year.

Mago woke up twice early in the morning to go to the bathroom and I put him back to bed both times, informing him it was still “sleepy time”. Shortly after Nem-nem’s greeting this morning, we heard Mago in his room through our monitor, revising one of these encounters:

“No, it’s night time.”
“No it isn’t, it’s morning time.”
“Oh, okay.”

Gotta have the happy ending.

Mago has this word he’s come up with, which he will use as an exclamation meaning nothing other than that “I am exclaiming this word.” He seems to have transformed it into a noun though, or we just never knew it was. .. seems like it might be used as a verb too, though I’m foggy on that.

This word is “Paamp!”

I was teaching him to pray at bed time one night, kneeling with him at the head of his bed:

Me: What do you want to say thank you for?
Mago: Thank you far PAamp.. .. and thank you for kaank.
Me: .. Thank you for silly words?
Mago: And thank you for baamp.

Now probably many weeks ago I took him for a morning walk, carrying him wrapped up in blankets (I don’t believe it was yet very cold - just starting to get cold). I told him some story I made up and don’t remember, and asked him if he wanted to tell me a story. He did, and at each turn of it I prompted him with “Then what?” -

Mago: Once there was a little Paamp. And there was a big lion. And the lion ate the little Paamp. And the Paamp died. And the lion hung him up on a tree. And the lion hung him up on a hanger.

I’d forgotten all about this for a week or so until at bed time one evening he spontaneously relayed exactly the same story, without variation, to Tia. This called for a line from this Love and Logic audiobook series that I’ve learned.

Me: I noticed you like to tell stories.

This audiobook said that kids will light up when you notice they like doing something, because it brings awareness to themselves that in fact they do like something, and gives them a place to consciously choose whether to pursue that. Mago did light up - his eyes grew wide and his face almost frantic with eagerness. He quickly retold and elaborated on the story, listing everything he could see in the closet in his room.

Mago: Once there was a little Paamp. And there was a big lion. And the lion ate the little Paamp. And the Paamp died. And the lion hung him up on a tree. And the lion hung him up on a hanger. And the lion hung him up on a clothes. And the lion hung him up on a shelf. And the lion hung him up on a box..

I don’t remember everywhere he went with it.

A few weeks ago he climbed up on the table while I was getting him dinner alone (Tia was probably getting Nem-nem to sleep). I asked him to get down; he ignored me. I headed into the room to take him off the table and set him on a chair for time out, and let him know it’s sad - don’t warn, just set the limit once and then take action, this audiobook says (I want to emphasize, if this isn’t obvious by now, that I find the advice of this audiobook very useful - I think it is a must read and can save so many headaches and needless pain for parents and kids - I’m only starting to learn it.) He knew when he saw me coming that I wasn’t going to let him push this limit (he’s not always so compliant - I’m still figuring out how to lovingly enforce limits), so he hastily got down. I let off - he’s going to comply - and I went back into the kitchen to keep fixing his meal. I think he asked me if he was in time out, and I think I replied no, but maybe I should put him in time out for not listening when I first asked him to get off the table. He came in to the room with a very conscious, deliberate scowl, looking up at me.

Mago: But you can’t put me in time out. Because I’m angry.

At this I just laughed - what else can I do? This is hilarious. I told him maybe he needs a time out anyway if he’s angry at me, but by this time he was laughing too, and very deliberately scowling at me even though he no longer felt any trace of the only trace of anger he had been mostly mocking up anyway (though I think some of it was genuine) - so I figured he didn’t need any time out at all.

Here are four recordings of Nem-nem, talking with us in her way, and laughing. If you listen only to one listen to the last - it is a scream in every sense.

Nem-nem and mommy, Oct 2007 (1:19, 792K, download mp3)

Nem-nem and Mago, Nov 2007 (1:53, 1.1MB, download mp3)

Nem-nem and daddy, Nov 2007 (1:38, 1MB, download mp3)

Nem-nem and mommy, Nov 2007 (3:17, 1.9MB, download mp3)

One day I thought I’d see what would happen if I brought her to hover over Mago, then pulled her away at a distance, than abruptly brought her close to hover again, etc. - while she is looking at him - a sort of form of “boo!” I guess. What happened was that she started emitting these greeting screams and squeals at him, to his entertainment, and this is going on in the second recording. She does it for other people too sometimes.

Recordings Copyright 2007 Richard Alexander Hall or Alex Hall, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States (see). Attribute the recording to me in any public use.

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.

This morning, sitting on the front porch after he asked if the sun was hiding behind the mountain and I answered him no and showed him where it was hiding behind a tree, he asked:

Mago: “Daddy?”
Me: “Yes.”
Mago: “Are we in the sun’s garden?”
Me: (I don’t know where he got this, or maybe he made it up, but I think it’s a great idea, so I expanded on it) “Yes, the whole world is the sun’s garden. You’re in the sun’s garden, and I am, and mommy is, and sister is, and our neighbors are, and our family is.”

(It’s the Son’s garden, too).

At a cousin’s house Mago was playing with a wooden toy snake - the fairly large kind with a lot of interconnecting spine pieces or hinges, which make it slither back and forth when you bend it up or down - and Nem-nem was on her back on the floor, wiggling and cooing. None of us watched exactly what Mago did, but he was near Nem-nem when she gave out a howl and cry of alarm, so Tia went over and comforted her. As we speculated what might have happened, referring to Mago as we spoke, he approached a couch where several talking about this were sitting, and removing the wooden snake’s head where he had put it in his mouth, exclaimed:

“But I like a snake in my mouth!”

(So why doesn’t she? It’s a perfectly fun thing to do - what’s wrong with it?)

After we had taken him to the Chuck-E-Cheeze kid’s restaurant one evening (replete with a singing animal robot band on stage), the next morning I asked Mago how his time at Chuck-E-Cheeze was, and what he did. In his answers, he talked about the “butcher” on the stage - holding up his hands in the way a drummer would, working the drums.. er.. knives.

(Tia later clarified to me that he has a baker toy he often mistakes for a butcher - and I learned his birthday cousin does the same thing sometimes - so he probably thought the robot that was baking a pizza was a “butcher”. If so, I still think my mistake of his mistake is a very funny image)