How fetching

Pete and Erik this morning--

Erik: Hey, Pete. I'm going upstairs to get my shoes. Do you want to come with me, or do you want to stay here and play with your cars?

Pete: I get them. I be right back.

Erik (confused--this hasn't happened before): You want to come with me?

Pete (starting up the stairs): You stay here.

Erik: OK. I want the brown ones, all right?

(Pause of about three minutes, punctuated by clunking and clomping upstairs. Pete slowly makes his way back down the stairs, carrying two of Carolyn's white sneakers, which do look like my white sneakers, by his fingers in one hand.)

Pete (on the stairs): I be careful. I have fingers in them!

Erik: Good job!

Pete (at the bottom, handing the shoes to me): Here you go! I did it by self!


Sometimes the most interesting milestones are the ones we never knew to seek.

EVERYTHING.

Scene: friendly conference with Pete's daycare teacher, Stephanie. Erik and Carolyn ask how she organizes lunchtime so we can reinforce the class's little rituals. Stephanie describes how she encourages kids to try everything on their plates before she gives seconds of anything.

Erik: And how does Pete do with that? Does he do all right with fruits and vegetables?

(Stephanie's eyes grow wide.)

Stephanie: Oh. (beat) Pete eats EVERYTHING.

Note the difference between a casual "Oh, Pete eats everything!" and this. It was an expression of a kind of mildly frightened wonder, one I immediately recognized from the comments of previous teachers. And from descriptions of a number of Pete's relatives on both sides.

Mirroring

Pete, on Carolyn's recent placement of some blueberries in his cereal: "Great job!"

Sometimes a cigar . . .

Scene: dining table, lunchtime.

(Pete begins making little waves with his hand and arms.)

Erik: Pete, is that the tuna fish? (referring to a song he knows)
Pete: No.

(Pete switches to a more overhand wave motion.)

Erik: Oh, are you swimming?
Pete: No.

(Pause)

Erik: What are you doing?
Pete: I'm moving my hand!

Changing the old ways

From Carolyn

For years, Erik and I have quoted Trading Places to each other to indicate that we're ready (to eat, to hit the road, to move on to the next thing): "Looking good, Billy Ray" "Feeling good, Louis." We had finished packing up the car to head to the zoo on Sunday, and I was helping Pete get into his car seat. Without thinking about it, I started in: "Looking good, Billy Ray," to which Pete responded (a la his recent response to Erik about his nickname "kitten), "I not Billy Ray. I Pete." True, true.

I not kitten. I blog post.

Pete made a big transition a couple of days ago. He and I had been in the car for a while, and when I got out, I said, "Hey, here we are, kitten!" (That was one of our first nicknames for him when he was born.) He responded, "I not kitten. I Pete."

Baseball and then some baseball, please

Pete has become utterly obsessed with baseball. He has been mildly interested in baseball for a long time, but something clicked when I got a new toddler-sized wiffle ball set for him. We started playing with it about a week ago, and to my surprise, he picked up the basics right away. He started out missing most pitches, and he still misses a lot, but he makes a lot of contact now, and he can handle overhand pitching. He lined a ball at my head yesterday, hard enough to make me flinch. The entertaining parts of this are two:

1) The sheer intensity of his love for hitting. Now when we're at home, every little while, the idea of hitting will come to him, and he begins a relentless campaign: "Hit some baseballs? Hit some baseballs? Hit some baseballs?" He'll make his way to the front door, desperately trying to entice us outside: "Hit some baseballs?" This morning, during one of these episodes, Carolyn said, "Oh, Pete, can you give me a little kiss?" Pete walked to her, put his face up to hers, put a little hand on each of her cheeks, inclined his head slightly to the side, and said, "Hit some baseballs?"

2) Out of nowhere, Pete has made the shift from wanting to play sports to wanting to imitate sports mannerisms, which is much funnier. Jackie Brown's's kids taught him to run after he hits a ball; after seeing the Cedar Rapids Kernels play on Friday, he added the step of tossing his bat away with a flourish. The Kernels also seem to have taught him the art of tapping his bat on the outside of the plate before each pitch--Pete now gives his favorite anthill a few gentle whacks. And when we watched the French Open final on Sunday, Pete started swinging his indoor (foam) bat like a tennis racquet and doing Rafael Nadal grunts with each pitch. If you see him and ask him "What does Nadal say?" he'll give you a great little "Ah!"