Blurred Snapshots of Moving Targets
Little Guy is rapidly becoming a verbal human being. He seems to specialize in feelings. Before he turned 2, he had pointed to the policeman on one page of Make Way for Ducklings. The policeman, Michael, stands with his hands behind his back, peering down at the ducklings. LG pointed at the policeman and fumbled for words, long pauses between each one as he struggled to reach for and then form them. "Man. Worried. Bout. Duckies." I ventured a guess that Michael wasn't worried, just looking down. "No! Man. Worried. Bout. Duckies!" Okay--that's his story, and he was sticking to it.
Similarly, he's invented a little narrative about the emperor penguin pair in Mama Built a Little Nest. In the drawing, they are both looking down at the egg that the daddy penguin has nestled on top of his feet. LG's account of the picture: "This one [the mother] is sad. Because it wants egg." ["Aeeeg"] I tried to explain that the mama penguin was not unhappy; she was looking at the egg with love and the daddy was taking care of it. At first he wasn't having it at all, but he eventually came around and now adds to his original explanation, with some relief, "This one is sharin'. Gonna take turns."
He also monitors everyone's feelings at home. If Gillian is crying and pauses even slightly for a breath, he begins checking, "You feel better now? You happy now?" Inevitably, she isn't yet. If she's in a particularly contentious mood, she might ask to be left alone. He trots off, commenting with some bemusement, "O-tay. You say so."
Very little bothers him. He's radiantly happy most of the time, cheerfully playing by himself or asking with wonder and delight, "You want to play with me?" Since the fire department open house a couple of weekends ago, one of his favorite activities is to don the helmet he acquired there and then trot over to one of us asking hopefully, "Somebody. Need. Help?" We tell him that one thing or another has been set ablaze, he runs over and holds out an imaginary hose and makes a sizzling sound. "It's out now," he reassures us. Then repeat. And repeat. And repeat. He could spend whole days like this.
He lives a charmed life surrounded by big people who do his bidding all the time. Tonight at bedtime, the girls were "finishing up their bath." In other words, squealing and laughing and splashing until I opened the door and they froze, caught in the act of not bathing, except for an half-tub-long arc of water shooting out of Gillian's mouth like a fountain. Knowing she isn't supposed to drink bath water, she must have thought that expelling it forcefully was the best way not to get caught. Anyway, while this was going on, LG had climbed onto our bed. He rolled around like a puppy and then inserted himself under the blankets, shoulders and head peeking out. He invited me under as well. "You want get covered up?" We lay there listening to the bathroom goings-on. Sam wandered in and I warned him that Oedipus was trying to usurp his spot; he went down to check on the progress in the baths and I wrangled LG into what he slept in tonight, which since we're being totally honest here, was his swimsuit, rash guard, big fleece socks, and Babylegs. He's potty training and absolutely hates wearing a diaper now; to get the diaper on him I'd had to wrestle him and then to keep it on I'd had to put his one-piece PJs on backwards and zip them put the back. He was miserable and frustrated, but then proposed wearing his swimsuit. Deal. (We've learned to choose our battles.)
He misses Gigi when she goes to kindergarten. For the first few days, he shed a few tears of frustration that he couldn't go too. He'd line up with the kindergartners against the wall at drop-off, then sadly wave as they went in. Now he gives her a hug and kiss, then when we drive off, he asks, "Now we go find little school for me?" His desire to go to school himself has made it slightly easier for him to get adjusted to the church nursery once more, as he's gone without Gillian for the last few weeks while she's moved up a class (she used to go with him even though she was in the older kids' nursery; they both loved it. Now she goes to actual Sunday School, which is great for her, but the first Sunday he glimpsed her walk by and realized she wasn't staying with him, he was bereft, with big hiccuppy, shuddery wails, in a way he hadn't been for months and months).
Gillian really likes kindergarten now that the year is in full swing. She's been much more conscious than Allison Clare ever was that it's a new environment and that she has things to learn. The first day AC started at her school (halfway through the year because we'd moved, and then moved her from her private school to the nearby public school), at the end of the day her teacher said to me, "She did great!" and I thought, "Great at what?" It had not even occurred to me to worry about AC adjusting.
Gillian, on the other hand, was initially nervous about kindergarten, though also very excited, about 80% of which excitement had to do with riding the bus home. She's in the PM class, and when I dropped her off and saw her little head bob off in line with the other kids, I did feel a pang. Naturally, my little trooper didn't look back. A few days into the school year, she came home aglow with happiness and reported breathlessly, "Someone asked me to be its friend. [Pause.] And I said yes." Did she know her new friend's name? No, not important. But her little friend sends gifts--a scrawled picture of two stick figures, a bracelet, and once a tiny spangle of star glitter carefully zipped into a plastic bag. Tonight, after enduring many days of imploring and strategizing, I put a note in her backpack for her to give to her little friend (to then give to her mother) inviting her over for a playdate.
Another girl came racing after her one day after school calling, "Gillian, Gillian! It's me, M--! Your best friend from school!" I'm so glad that my shy little girl has such kind schoolmates to draw her out. She is learning a lot about friendship. She told Sam, "I don't think I want to be friends with ___ [a little boy in her class] because he always breaks the rules." Sam said it was very good to choose friends carefully and to think about whether they are people that you can trust to do the right thing and help you be good. She mulled this over and then said, "I definitely don't want to be __'s friend. If he asks me, I will say no. Because I want to follow the rules." I'm not sure that's really the way to seek the highest good, but it seems to me like a kind of rudimentary step. And at the same time, there's a boy in her class who, by the way she speaks of him, sounds as if he has some kind of special needs. She's been trying to figure out why he's different (chiefly, he repeats everything the teacher says, as in "Say good morning, X_" "Say good morning, X__"). At first I'd thought he was just a bit of a clown, and the parental line, upon hearing of each day's misdeeds, had been, "It sounds like he's still learning how to behave!" But then when she described how his desk does not have the red/yellow/green light for behavior that hers does, and that he spends a lot of his day outside of the class, we realized that there might be something different going on and the line has become, "It sounds like he may need a little extra kindness!" In ways that we didn't really think about before, kindergarten is a complex social world.
Allison Clare treats everyone exactly the same. Everyone, whether they like it or not, is dosed with friendly gregariousness. She reported the other day, "My teacher used my name in one of the sample sentences for spelling!" The sentence? Allison Clare has hugged every person in this building. True I'm sure. She's growing much calmer in general--still prone to outbursts of temper, but also much more willing to help out with her brother and sister. She'll frequently fetch things for them, give up desired objects or treats to them, ihelp them with the TV controls, etc. On discovering that her favorite tutu had gotten too short before ballet tonight, she presented it to Gillian, telling her, "It will look really pretty with your pink leotard." She then slipped and fell, hard, on her hip, but while sniffling and receiving a hug, choked out, "Gillian, that looks really great on you." And when Gillian went to a birthday party (for a girl in her class) and AC did not, Allison Clare commented, "Usually I get to go to parties and Gillian doesn't. But this time Gillian is going and I am not. I hope she gets to see how fun it is to go to a party." I am so happy to see that her big heart is overcoming her innate human selfishness; I wish the same for myself.
Similarly, he's invented a little narrative about the emperor penguin pair in Mama Built a Little Nest. In the drawing, they are both looking down at the egg that the daddy penguin has nestled on top of his feet. LG's account of the picture: "This one [the mother] is sad. Because it wants egg." ["Aeeeg"] I tried to explain that the mama penguin was not unhappy; she was looking at the egg with love and the daddy was taking care of it. At first he wasn't having it at all, but he eventually came around and now adds to his original explanation, with some relief, "This one is sharin'. Gonna take turns."
He also monitors everyone's feelings at home. If Gillian is crying and pauses even slightly for a breath, he begins checking, "You feel better now? You happy now?" Inevitably, she isn't yet. If she's in a particularly contentious mood, she might ask to be left alone. He trots off, commenting with some bemusement, "O-tay. You say so."
Very little bothers him. He's radiantly happy most of the time, cheerfully playing by himself or asking with wonder and delight, "You want to play with me?" Since the fire department open house a couple of weekends ago, one of his favorite activities is to don the helmet he acquired there and then trot over to one of us asking hopefully, "Somebody. Need. Help?" We tell him that one thing or another has been set ablaze, he runs over and holds out an imaginary hose and makes a sizzling sound. "It's out now," he reassures us. Then repeat. And repeat. And repeat. He could spend whole days like this.
He lives a charmed life surrounded by big people who do his bidding all the time. Tonight at bedtime, the girls were "finishing up their bath." In other words, squealing and laughing and splashing until I opened the door and they froze, caught in the act of not bathing, except for an half-tub-long arc of water shooting out of Gillian's mouth like a fountain. Knowing she isn't supposed to drink bath water, she must have thought that expelling it forcefully was the best way not to get caught. Anyway, while this was going on, LG had climbed onto our bed. He rolled around like a puppy and then inserted himself under the blankets, shoulders and head peeking out. He invited me under as well. "You want get covered up?" We lay there listening to the bathroom goings-on. Sam wandered in and I warned him that Oedipus was trying to usurp his spot; he went down to check on the progress in the baths and I wrangled LG into what he slept in tonight, which since we're being totally honest here, was his swimsuit, rash guard, big fleece socks, and Babylegs. He's potty training and absolutely hates wearing a diaper now; to get the diaper on him I'd had to wrestle him and then to keep it on I'd had to put his one-piece PJs on backwards and zip them put the back. He was miserable and frustrated, but then proposed wearing his swimsuit. Deal. (We've learned to choose our battles.)
He misses Gigi when she goes to kindergarten. For the first few days, he shed a few tears of frustration that he couldn't go too. He'd line up with the kindergartners against the wall at drop-off, then sadly wave as they went in. Now he gives her a hug and kiss, then when we drive off, he asks, "Now we go find little school for me?" His desire to go to school himself has made it slightly easier for him to get adjusted to the church nursery once more, as he's gone without Gillian for the last few weeks while she's moved up a class (she used to go with him even though she was in the older kids' nursery; they both loved it. Now she goes to actual Sunday School, which is great for her, but the first Sunday he glimpsed her walk by and realized she wasn't staying with him, he was bereft, with big hiccuppy, shuddery wails, in a way he hadn't been for months and months).
Gillian really likes kindergarten now that the year is in full swing. She's been much more conscious than Allison Clare ever was that it's a new environment and that she has things to learn. The first day AC started at her school (halfway through the year because we'd moved, and then moved her from her private school to the nearby public school), at the end of the day her teacher said to me, "She did great!" and I thought, "Great at what?" It had not even occurred to me to worry about AC adjusting.
Gillian, on the other hand, was initially nervous about kindergarten, though also very excited, about 80% of which excitement had to do with riding the bus home. She's in the PM class, and when I dropped her off and saw her little head bob off in line with the other kids, I did feel a pang. Naturally, my little trooper didn't look back. A few days into the school year, she came home aglow with happiness and reported breathlessly, "Someone asked me to be its friend. [Pause.] And I said yes." Did she know her new friend's name? No, not important. But her little friend sends gifts--a scrawled picture of two stick figures, a bracelet, and once a tiny spangle of star glitter carefully zipped into a plastic bag. Tonight, after enduring many days of imploring and strategizing, I put a note in her backpack for her to give to her little friend (to then give to her mother) inviting her over for a playdate.
Another girl came racing after her one day after school calling, "Gillian, Gillian! It's me, M--! Your best friend from school!" I'm so glad that my shy little girl has such kind schoolmates to draw her out. She is learning a lot about friendship. She told Sam, "I don't think I want to be friends with ___ [a little boy in her class] because he always breaks the rules." Sam said it was very good to choose friends carefully and to think about whether they are people that you can trust to do the right thing and help you be good. She mulled this over and then said, "I definitely don't want to be __'s friend. If he asks me, I will say no. Because I want to follow the rules." I'm not sure that's really the way to seek the highest good, but it seems to me like a kind of rudimentary step. And at the same time, there's a boy in her class who, by the way she speaks of him, sounds as if he has some kind of special needs. She's been trying to figure out why he's different (chiefly, he repeats everything the teacher says, as in "Say good morning, X_" "Say good morning, X__"). At first I'd thought he was just a bit of a clown, and the parental line, upon hearing of each day's misdeeds, had been, "It sounds like he's still learning how to behave!" But then when she described how his desk does not have the red/yellow/green light for behavior that hers does, and that he spends a lot of his day outside of the class, we realized that there might be something different going on and the line has become, "It sounds like he may need a little extra kindness!" In ways that we didn't really think about before, kindergarten is a complex social world.
Allison Clare treats everyone exactly the same. Everyone, whether they like it or not, is dosed with friendly gregariousness. She reported the other day, "My teacher used my name in one of the sample sentences for spelling!" The sentence? Allison Clare has hugged every person in this building. True I'm sure. She's growing much calmer in general--still prone to outbursts of temper, but also much more willing to help out with her brother and sister. She'll frequently fetch things for them, give up desired objects or treats to them, ihelp them with the TV controls, etc. On discovering that her favorite tutu had gotten too short before ballet tonight, she presented it to Gillian, telling her, "It will look really pretty with your pink leotard." She then slipped and fell, hard, on her hip, but while sniffling and receiving a hug, choked out, "Gillian, that looks really great on you." And when Gillian went to a birthday party (for a girl in her class) and AC did not, Allison Clare commented, "Usually I get to go to parties and Gillian doesn't. But this time Gillian is going and I am not. I hope she gets to see how fun it is to go to a party." I am so happy to see that her big heart is overcoming her innate human selfishness; I wish the same for myself.
posted by Tara | 11:04 PM
1 Comments:
These little snapshots are so beautiful and will be such a treasure to you as you move forward. I can't believe Little Guy is already 2, and I love hearing these stories about G and AC. Such lovely children!
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