Ussins

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)

Mago loves My Neighbor Totoro. I watched it with him. This film is one of my favorites. It cracks me up when Totoro roars, and I’m wowed by the magic he uses to grow forests. The music is also fantastic - listening to it again, I realize it’s actually New Age - but, forgive me, New Age with soul, even the most infamous music styles can have that! - and I don’t mean as in “soul music”, just.. not rambling fluff.. however it can get a bit weird. Mago mistakes the little girl in the film for a boy (I think for wanting to identify).

Mago: “He followed him into the forest. Now the hole where he went is gone. There’s no Totoro now.” .. (whispers, when Totoro and the children are sitting on top of the giant tree playing flutes at night) “I saw Totoro!” .. “Totoro is a bear, and he has a littler bear and a littler, and he has big eyes, and a little tiny mouth.” (puckers his lips small).

These are some other things he said recently -

After I ran up a ladder and down a slide with him many times at his cousins’ house in Arizona:

Me: “I’m pooped.”
Mago: “Are you trained?”

At bed time as Mago built a fort out of pillows and Tia sat on his bed reading to Nem-nem:

Mago: (to Tia) “Say: look, big brother is building a house!”
Tia: “Look, big brother is building a house!”
Mago: “Is that brilliant?”

He talks to Tia’s feet like little friends when she relaxes with them raised. She named one of them footy-foot. Recently when she was relaxing he came to one of her feet.

Mago: (to her left foot, hugging it) “I love you, footy-foot.”
(then to her right foot, hugging it) “I love you, friend.”
(takes both feet and hugs them) “I love you, friends.”
(lets go of both feet) “Did you see that, mama? It was a team hug.”

Yesterday, with me:

Mago: “Say, ‘what is it?’”
Me: “What is it?”
Mago: (flaps his lips)
Me (I laugh)
Mago: “Say, ‘what is it?’”
Me: “What is it?”
Mago: (flaps his lips..)

We decided Nem-nem looks like a little marsupial or possum. A few days after we did her aunt decided the same thing - dubbing her “Meinschen” (sp? Correct word?), little mouse.

Seven days ago Nem-nem rolled over from her tummy onto her back. Now she does this at tummy-time: she doesn’t enjoy being on her tummy, and grunts, lifts her head up high, pushes and wrestles with her arms until she flops over onto her back.

Tia and Nem-nem, just now:

Tia: (sings) If you’re happy and you know it give a gurgle!
Nem-nem: Ggglg!
Tia: If you’re happy and you know it give a gurgle!
Nem-nem: Ggggglg!
Tia: If you’re happy and you know it then your face will surely show it, if you’re happy and you know it give a gurgle!
Nem-nem: Blrgggh!

I don’t believe I just heard this.

Nem-nem talks in her way a lot. And smiles. She smiles and says “Aah!” or (one I more taught her) “Ggg!” Tia reports that the other day Nem-nem said in four ascending tones, like an owl: “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” Also recently we heard her say “Hi!” in her sleep. She has conversations with Tia where they just exchange tones and grins. She often gives a beaming, exuberant grin when you greet her in the morning or after a nap.

A week or so ago Tia reported that Nem-nem was gazing at a photographic portrait on the kitchen wall of her family, all the new step-siblings and everyone’s children. Tia said to her “That’s your family!” and Nem-nem smiled. Tia thought this was coincidence but later when Nem-nem was looking at it again, she repeated to her “That’s your family!” and again Nem-nem smiled.

Last evening Mago went down for bed while playing with a toy drill as an evasion tactic, Tia persuading him that play time was over and he has to put the drill away, which he resisted.

Tia: “Say bye-bye to the drill.”
Mago: (Crying) “Goodbye, drill! I love you!”
Tia: (Laughs) “That’s kinda funny.”
Mago: (Cries harder)

Tia then tickled him with the drill and he laughed and felt better.

The latest thing I’ve found that makes Mago laugh, and which he’s usually been requesting the moment I come home from work, is to murmur in an almost whispering, sort of high nerdy voice in his ear “Ba-duba-da buh? Be-de-bee-da-baa-duh? Is it-a-my-baby? Is it-a-ma-baby?” Or again to murmur in a low growl while approaching his tummy with my head saying: “Wha’d da baby do? .. wha’d da baby doo? ..wha’d da baby doooo? HE GOT TICKLED!” - and burrow my head hard into his tummy.

Tia, the other day, talking about Nem-nem:

(alarm) “Whooooooooa! Her eyes are going up and in different directions. .. now she’s smiling. .. now she’s drooling milk.”

Today I was holding her and saying “Aaaaah?” while she did her darndest to imitate it and mostly grunted, smiling between attempts, and at one point she got her lips into the same shape for the sound, and uttered a short “Aaah”. I said “Yeah!” and she appeared pleased. She did the same thing for “Oh”, only never managing the sound.

I discovered a game with Mago recently, where if I make him laugh, I squeeze him hard in a panicked way, and in a desperate voice say “No I’m sorry!” - as if to say “I didn’t mean to make you laugh!” or “I said I’m sorry, please stop laughing!” - that kind of thing - which makes him laugh harder, which is a prompt for me to say it again, which makes him laugh again..

The hilarity lasted several days for him. Seems to have worn off some now, but he still tells me: “Say I’m sorry.”

Still meaning to post video of her at birth, and we’ve taken no new pictures of her because Tia’s camera has been in the shop; they said they’d call by now and haven’t

Tia IM’d me at work today:

[15:02] Tia: [Nem-nem] was in my arms looking around and I talked to her and said “goo!” She smiled really big at me and I laughed - she then seemed to laugh with me!
[15:02] Alex: Oh, darnit I wish I could’ve seen that

There’ll be another time, doubtless..

Traveling to my mother’s house recently Mago reported a back ache and that his throat hurt. Holding him on the back porch, looking into the room as grandma opened the door, I felt something warm on my toes and looked to see that Mago had thrown up all over both of us. Not only wet but gooey, thick, slimy, orange, and starchy - you have to know this of course - all over him and on my shirt and arms. Fortunately not so much on my precious pants, stylish though that would be.

They took my shirt and his clothes and threw them in the wash, lending me a t-shirt from my brother and for Mago a cotton one-piece pajama or underclothes suit: moderately worn, grayed and tattered, inexplicably very cute on him.

I don’t know where he got this notion, but in reference to this new outfit he said “I’m a little orphan!”

He played with his birthday cousin of one year older in the basement, babbling and doing I have no idea what, but they clearly share a world, very cute together. She’d say bye-bye and close the basement door on him, he’d cry as he couldn’t open it from the lower stair and had difficulty from the upper stair, and in a while she’d open it again to happily greet him or hug him. I don’t know whether setting up this greeting again and again was the point, or an innocent exploration of the power that she could open the door and he couldn’t, or both.

While grandma was sitting holding Nem-nem and looking at her (along with several of us), Nem-nem looked up at our faces. When I came to stand and look down and smile at Nem-nem, she looked up at me and returned a clear, beaming smile, looking right into my eyes and face and keeping that smile and contact for a long while. That’s the first that’s happened for me with her. On the floor she also near half-turned over; as I’ve said she’s strong, and she moves very much.

One conversation topic was the different views people have on whether its appropriate to keep a kid happy in a store by opening up something they want before you buy it (I agree that anyone who says you shouldn’t may have never held a bored child hostage to mundane shopping). My oldest brother extended this idea (his?) to a prank; go to the store alone, bring an emptied milk gallon to the checkout, and I suppose say something like “Sorry, I needed all this before I could get to checkout.” My youngest brother suggested bringing an opened package of adult disposable underwear to checkout, adding “..you could take this in all kinds of directions”. Tia’s comment: “No, I think this is only going in one direction.”

This morning Tia said she had a dream: Nem-nem grew teeth, while still just the infant she is, and said (in a little girl voice Tia did which I wish I could describe)

“I’m tired of lying down. I want to walk.”

That’s been my impression, or that she is very eager to explore, and she isn’t happy to just lie still.

Yesterday and today Nem-nem stared with great concentration into my face and eyes, the same look of concentration that charms me in Mago, while we danced to (and I sang her) this.

This is? show

I think this cover of the tune is much better than the original.