Kitchen renovations are stressful, but they sure do produce a fantastic amount of boxes and packing material.
A curly haired boy takes a moment to enjoy some stickers in his box fort.
*Please forgive crappy cell phone photo. The camera batteries are currently being used in the electric screwdriver.
Our house will never be clean again. At least, that how it feels in the midst of this kitchen renovation.
Curly did very well at the dentist today. The hygienist was chipper and friendly and let him play with her “friends,” “Mr. Slurpee” and “The Water Gun”. Surprisingly, he really liked “Mr Slurpee” the sucker tool and happily closed his mouth on it. I’ve always found it a little unsettling myself. He wasn’t a fan of laying back in the chair, so she kept him mostly upright. The dentist wasn’t as great. Very brusque, not warm, kept calling Curly by the wrong name. And insisted that he lay all the way back, which resulted in some tears. The counting of teeth and fluoride application were over quickly though, and we’ve got a clean bill of health and the news that braces will be in his future for sure (no surprise there). Curly was thrilled to get a goodie bag, until he looked in it and saw there was only 1 sticker and assorted dental care items. And honestly, why do dentists give out lollipops? Especially when the kid has just had a fluoride treatment and can’t eat or drink for 30 minutes!
A lot of random stuff has been going on lately…nothing worthy of its own post, but bullets should do the trick…
Here’s a picture from Sunday during a much happier moment:
A quick thank you for all of the thoughtful comments on the last post. You guys are great 🙂
So last night, as I was waiting for the pasta water to boil before dinner, I listened in on the “conversation” between Nutella and Curly, who were playing on the couch. I decided, what the heck, let me write this down. It all happened in about 3 minutes, and it’s mostly “play” talk by Curly…(Also, this is our understanding of his speech. He doesn’t say the letter S…it comes out as a D or T, etc.)
Scene: Nutella is laying down on the couch and Curly climbs up near her feet.
Hellooo?
I go on your leg.
Lay [Curly] belly.
weeeee weeeee weeee (fake sleep noises)
oh…sit on…
I go get my movie.
I wanna movie on. (No, not right now)
Why?
I have a pillow.
You need pillow here.
On the way…on get hurt…(lays down, starts sucking thumb- Nutella tells him not to)
Thumb is for sleeping?
Weee! Weee!
Hellooo?
I got my pillow!
I got my pillow…my back!
My sock! Here! My sock! (what’s wrong with your sock?)
Sock! Sock! Sock! (oh, are you stuck?)
Yeah.
I go be stuck again.
I want two pillow.
My pillow! My pillow…
Weeee…..weeee…..weee….
Hellooo?
Do find me! Go find me!
(singing nonsense)
There….on your feet!
Boop!
Weeee…..weeee…..
Move back!
Move back all the way over here, ok?
Stay on the couch.
I stay on the couch.
My pillow. Get off! Get off!
I put it on….on this.
There….not….on Elmo.
No…that Elmo balloon mama.
Look, Ima, look!
That! I doing. (what are you doing?)
I don’t know.
I not playing.
Oh! Stuck! Stuck!
I’m going your body.
Nom nom nom! (pretending to bite her)
I going take your pillow.
And then I had to put the pasta in the water. Whew. The mind of a toddler.
Scene: Backyard BBQ on a lovely warm Spring Saturday. People are standing around chatting with snacks and drinks. There is a large bowl of bright orange puffed corn “cheese” snack on the table. Ima is indulging in this bad snack.
Curly, eyeing the bowl curiously: “Ima, what’s that?”
Ima, thinking fast: “They’re worms.”
Curly: “WORMS??”
Ima, crunching and licking the orange powder from her fingers: “Yes, crispy fried worms. Do you want one?”
Curly: “NO, eww.”
I’m betting when he figures out they’re not actually worms, he’s going to be pretty mad. But maybe he’ll still never want to eat them.
As many of you know, I’m a baker and a crafter and this weekend, I got to share both passions with Curly. About a year ago, I bought a little over a yard of a fantastic banana printed cotton remnant. Crafty people will understand what I mean when I say I just couldn’t pass it up. I finally decided to make 2 toddler sized aprons with it (one for Curly and one for a friend). I backed it with some royal blue cotton that I had in my stash.
I had mostly finished the project up on Thursday in anticipation of a trip out of town this past weekend to visit the family of the other little boy. When that trip had to be canceled last minute, I told Curly that we could bake cookies together instead. He kept pointing to the little apron hanging on the back of his chair and saying “You made that?” I gave him my Cookies for Kids Cancer cookbook and told him he could pick out any recipe he wanted. Much to our surprise, he picked out the classic NYC bakery staple, Black and White cookies, which to our knowledge he’s never had before. I guess the picture was compelling.
On Saturday afternoon when he woke up from his nap, I was all set up for baking on the dining room table. He was SO fascinated and helpful. I measured, then let him pour. I even got out my rarely used 1/8 cup measure so that I’d need 5 scoops to make up the amount needed for an ingredient. Then together, we counted. I even let him taste the dough, which has always been part of the process of baking for me, although I think he’s a few years away from full on licking the beater clean.
It was a very nice “full circle” motherhood moment for me. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t helping my mother in the kitchen. Those childhood memories are warm and sweet. They smell of chocolate and vanilla and cinnamon and are full of love. I want those memories for Curly. And I look forward to many more sweet hours of him wearing the banana print apron as we whip up tasty treats to share.
Oh, and the cookies were just ok in my opinion, although Strawberry loves them. Curly enjoyed one but they didn’t seem to stick in his memory and he hasn’t asked for another.
Yesterday morning, Curly was playing with Legos and we were still enjoying our breakfast and newspaper at the table. It was fairly quiet until I heard Curly ask, “You play Legos with me?” and I turned to look at him and saw he was talking to our dog, Hazel. He asked her again, “You play Legos with me, Hadel?” (that’s how he says her name, z’s are hard). Nutella and I shared a look with each other, like, omg how adorable is that? and then said “[Curly], Hazel can’t play Legos since she doesn’t have hands, but she seems very interested in what you’re building!” Sure enough, Hazel was sitting near him and watching what he was doing closely. I grabbed the camera and ham that he is, Curly started gently petting her for the picture (evidence below).
Today, he was sitting down when Hazel walked up to him to sniff at him. He smiled and said “Hadel makes me happy.” A boy and his dog.
yes, yes, very aware he needs a haircut 😉
I didn’t mention in the last post that when we went on our weekend getaway, we were able to meet up with other blog friends. They don’t blog anymore, but perhaps some of you will recognize the cherubic round face and silky blonde hair of their son, O, in these pictures. He’s 6 months younger than Curly and the two made very good playmates…
Chasing each other through a store
Sweetly holding hands
Seeing the boys holding hands was adorable, and they did so for a good few minutes. I don’t know when boys learn it’s no longer “cool” to do that, but it does sadden me to know that one day, society will teach Curly and his friends that it’s not socially acceptable to be affectionate with each other, regardless of what we tell him.
This morning, Nutella was wearing a headband and he asked “What’s that?” She told him, and without prompting he said, “For girls?” Already he is learning that it’s girls who wear accessories in their hair, not boys. And although we tell him boys can wear them, too (and Nutella did get one for him to wear), it’s going to be more than obvious to him soon what is ‘expected’ of his sex.
*Coincidentally, the boys were both wearing blue that day! 😛
F@cebo.ok seems to be making it a lot harder to post here these days. It’s very easy to share pictures, tidbits about our days and the things that Curly does or says that it doesn’t seem we have much left to divulge here. But we don’t want to give up blogging, so here we are.
This past weekend we went on a little getaway about 2 hours north. We were hoping for some snow, but alas. Winter has been strangely absent. We did visit a ski resort, and have never seen so little snow at one before. Our plan was to drop Curly off at their “playcare” and go snow tubing. And we did drop him off, but the line for adult snow tubing was so long, people were asking for their money back. So we picked Curly up after a half hour (and playcare was so great, as opposed to what it was like on the cruise ship, that he was just as happy as could be), and then took him to the kiddie snow tubing hill. Curly is a fairly timid boy, not like some of the rough-and-tumble kids I’ve seen. We had originally thought he would be frightened of snow tubing, but the hill was pretty small and other little kids were enjoying it, so we gave it a go. And what do you know, he LOVED it. He giggled like a madman the whole way down. Sometimes he slid down with a mom, sometimes he did it all on his own. So yay…snow tubing success!
It is noticeably easier to travel with him these days, although we still have to employ the many tricks we have in our bag to distract him sometimes. I remember a lot more crying and inconvenience when he was younger though, and it seems to get better every time. This make us very much look forward to future travel adventures further from home, which seem to be getting closer and closer each day that passes. Probably nothing too major until he’s closer to 5, but considering he’s almost 3 (!), that doesn’t seem far off (most days).
We also took him to the zoo on our getaway, and he was really interested in all the animals, making the sounds they make or asking us what they were. He is absorbing so much and it’s really cute to witness. Funny little conversation with him in the car on the way to the zoo. We were asking him what animals he thought we were going to see. When he ran out of ideas, we said “Snakes?” He replied “I don’t like snakes.” We asked, “Why not?” “They’re icky..ewww.” We tried to reason with him that we liked snakes and maybe he didn’t because he heard one of his friends or teachers say they didn’t like them. Nutella then asked “Well, have you ever pet a snake?” And he answered, “No, only giraffes.” News to us!
And he’s off!
I think he liked it, no?
1 In Vermillion 