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.
I think this is jealousy of the attentions his new little sister is getting? But he’s how old, and saying this? (Two and a half years). And besides in my fatherly opinion this isn’t true, but besides all that, it doesn’t matter.. I hoped this wouldn’t happen. It’s bolstered by so many people he meets (especially old ladies) so emphatically saying in his company “He’s so cute!” There’s a place for it, I’d just hope not to excess. It can become (quite unintended - nobody wishes for this), the token of affection, status. No, you gotta love any kid just because they’re a kid. I’m pretty confident he’s confident enough of himself that having to be cute (to meet that demand) won’t need to be a focus, but.. how do you counter this? A few times since hearing this I’ve tried to tell him - a two-and-a-half year old! - that cuteness doesn’t matter, all that matters is trying to be good, and you are good (but, even though it doesn’t matter, you are cute to me).. it doesn’t seem to get across. Maybe a matter of time.
The affection of old ladies must be a lot more persuasive.
Tonight I went in to say goodnight to him after Tia put him to bed (and I had been watching Nem-nem), and when I walked in he said in tones speaking of a smile I couldn’t see in the dark:
“I need a hug and a hug.”
Okay. I’ll comply. As I did, he looked up in the very dim light to a picture of Jesus on the wall: (this one - link - incidentally, that one affected me more as a kid than any other painting of Jesus)
Mago: And Jesus loves them, and he’s treating them kindly. And he’s here.. and he’s showing them.. a dinosaur museum.
Me: Yes, that sounds like something Jesus would do, doesn’t it? [reader: please don’t think I don’t mean this. I do. Okay, maybe not necessarily like that link..]
Mago: And.. he’s showing them a museum and it has T-Rexes.
Mago loves running through sprinklers on stops to grassy areas during car drives. “Running through” is usually more like timidly approaching the edge where the water stops, getting sprinkled a bit in the face, and running away shouting.
Two evenings ago as it was nearing time for bed, after driving in the car in the heat, Tia asked him if instead of bathing or showering he wanted to be hosed down, which he did. So we stripped him and sprayed him with the hose. He was amused but couldn’t take it for very long, and then I think Tia suggested spraying me. I refused. Mago cried. I couldn’t stand this - he wants to play with water with daddy, why should I refuse? - so I said I’d spray my own face and did (which was refreshing, but it got on my shorts anyway) and it amused him. Afterward Mago said “Did you spray your face, daddy?” I replied “Yes, because I broke your heart, so I decided to.” He said “Yeah. You broke my heart. In my chest.”
Yesterday Tia reports she made him a brownie which was far too big. When she served it to him, he looked down at it, paused for a moment to appreciate it, then looked up at her, paused again, and said “I like you. You’re a pretty mommy.”
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.
(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
[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
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.
”Landslide”, a Fleetwood Mac tune covered here by the Dixie Chicks. I hide that latter fact because it has prejudiced people against it - a prejudice I have rhetorically railed against, wearying family/friends. If you don’t like some of the Dixie Chicks’ stuff (or attitude) it doesn’t mean it must all be distasteful :)
I think this cover of the tune is much better than the original.
