Isabel cannot resist the Force

Isabel, attached to Mama like Superglue, has been detached and placed into a cushy red chair, whereupon she angrily protests all attempts to be distracted from the horror that is Being Separated from Mama. Cracker? Fling! Stuffed animal? Fling! Book? Isabel, about to fling, looks again, out of the corner of her eyes. It's "Where's Baby's Pumpkin?", a Karen Katz Halloween book. She makes a tense "eeee" sound, with all her teeth showing. Her hand attempts to fling, her wrist moves, but she is unable to follow through. Her arm draws the book inexorably towards her, and she sighs. She flips the pages, wiggles around in her chair, and looks at the pictures. Books--Fox kryptonite.

Elmo seems familiar

Isabel, James, and I were playing with Elmo today. It all started rather innocuously--we gave Elmo some milk in a bottle to drink, and some juice, while Elmo wore his bib. James showed Isabel how to give Cookie Monster some milk, too. Then James tore off Elmo's bib. He signed "hurt". I asked Elmo where he was hurt. "Where? Where? Your nose?" James pointed to his nose and smiled. I gathered up Elmo and said, "Oh, Elmo, that's too bad. Oh, poor Elmo--his nose hurts." Then I banged his nose on the floor. "Oh, no, Elmo hurt his nose! Oh, I'm sorry, Elmo." Well, Elmo got mad.

James put his hand in Elmo's mouth, with a fiendish grin, wrestling him around. "Elmo, no! No biting. That hurts James. Say you're sorry, please." After Elmo says he's sorry, he bites James again. "No, Elmo!" Then James bites Elmo. "No, James! No biting. That hurts Elmo. Say you're sorry, James." James signs that he's sorry. Then Elmo sits in the camping chair. I put some mismatched shoes on him. James takes them off, and puts them on again. He puts Curious George next to Elmo. They sit together companionably. James signs, "sleep". He sweeps up Elmo and looks for a suitable bed. He heads off to Mama's, and gets Elmo comfortable, reaching high up to get Elmo's head on the pillow. He gives him a good night kiss. Then James makes Elmo cry, and signs "milk", and takes him out of bed and hands him over. Ah ha. Elmo has just gotten some milk when Daddy comes home.

It's fun to see how what Elmo does corresponds to what James does, and what, maybe, he wishes he could do. I liked how the biting came right after I hurt Elmo's nose, and I thought it was interesting that Elmo wanted milk before bed. James doesn't usually get milk before bed, these days, and when he asks for Mama, Daddy explains that she's sleeping and she'll come in the morning.

I'm still a little shocked that I hurt Elmo's nose on purpose, but I'd been reading about pretend play and how it's a safe place to explore scary emotions. It's better to be able to experiment with these in this setting, and though I was thinking, like one of the mothers talked about in the book, but why model behavior you don't want to see emulated, I could see that, even without a model, James was perfectly capable of scratching my face, biting my shoulder, etc., and that NOT modeling it hadn't prevented it so far. Maybe if he was able to distance himself from the emotion a little bit, displace it, I guess, it would be easier to see different ways of responding to it, and easier to accept them. It always seems easier to me take advice on a subject before, or when it is not currently, the problem. Even if not, he seemed relieved to be led into a somewhat aggressive, a little bit whiny storyline, and it didn't prevent him from bringing in things to make Elmo feel better, like his friend Curious George, and the milk, and hugs and kisses from Mama and James. Of course, Elmo thinks this is all a pretty dumb justification for a totally unprovoked attack on his nose. Sorry, Elmo. Sorry.

The best 20 minutes I ever had at the park

Yesterday something wonderful happened. James was, as usual, walking and climbing up the slide, and a little boy about his age was trying to come down. He said, nicely, "excuse me", but James didn't move--just stood smiling at him. Now, the hundreds of times this has happened before, the other child's mom has come over, telling her child to go back up, or to be careful because he's little, or has given me meaningful looks as she explains the classic preschool rule, "slides are for going down, not up" (this always makes me want to produce James' physical therapist, a la Woody Allen, who will explain all the wonderful things slides are for). This time, though, nothing happened. I looked surreptitiously at the parents, and they weren't going to interfere.

The other boy inched down the slide. James stood his ground, leaning forward a little bit, smiling. The boy bumped his feet against James', and giggled. James laughed. Then James "fell" forward, his hands on the little boy's tummy. The little boy burst out laughing, backed up, and they repeated this routine again, and again. Then the boy went to a platform about three feet off the ground and made a flying leap off of it. James looked. I stood up. Uh oh. James looked down. Then he backed up, raised his hands up high, and slapped them on the ground. It's his way of jumping. Good choice, James, I mumbled to myself, and I sat down again. The boy, delighted with his audience, jumped over and over, James' ground slaps coinciding with his landings, everybody laughing. James had never met this boy before, and rarely plays with other children besides Isabel, but not until yesterday had I realized to what degree this has been due to the interference of adults, who are trying to keep everybody safe, and everyone doing the standard activities, without any kind of conflict. I wish everyone could, as Marco puts it, "trust the baby".

Oh yes, and meanwhile, Isabel and the little boy's little brother were busy exchanging a yellow leaf that she had proffered him. They would each inspect it, very seriously, and then hand it over to the other with the utmost gravity. Then they sat down in the wet tanbark and let it run through their fingers. I wish I had had the guts to ask the mom to send me the movie it looked like she was taking with her phone.

James signs and Isabel talks. Or is it the other way around?

James used to sign for Isabel when she was little, and crying, and he was sure he knew what she wanted. He'd sign "mama" on her chin, or "milk" right above her face. Sometimes he'd sign "sad" or "cry", and sometimes he'd just cry along with her. This morning I looked down from my dining room chair to see Isabel patting her leg as she looked at dogs in her picture book. Milk, dog. That's two signs she can use, now.



We're not supposed to worry about her speech--she's naturally more interested in how James communicates. How does he? James signs, patiently, stories about donkeys and chickens until I've got the sequence right, but still little idea what he's talking about. He puts the elephant in the round blue block, signs "potty" and laughs. I hear him murmuring "mama, mama" over and over in the morning, as Marco convinces him that Mama is sleeping at six o'clock in the morning and wouldn't he like to watch a little Elmo? But James, also, said "ee" last night, when I told him it was time to eat. Marco's head and mine whipped around. "Did you say 'eat'?" we asked. James grinned. I think that's the first time he's made that vowel in two and a half years. We wonder if he caught the sound from Isabel--it's her constant companion. She says it emphatically, giving it extra oomph at the beginning, alternating furrowed-brow expressions with maniacally delighted ones as it ekes its way to the end.



Maybe they aren't trading languages--too simplistic, I guess--but they've got some kind of exchange going. James tries to get Isabel to pass the ball back and forth to him, he providing most of the impetus and the accuracy, and she the giggling soundtrack. They play for a long time.