I hope she said yes

from Carolyn

Pete, looking at an awesome photo of Ozzie Smith: "Is that Papa?"

The oddly bland fruits of his labor

A couple of days ago, Pete brought the materials from an Olympics-inspired day care project in which he was making his own flags. He held one of them up to me and said, "Papa, I worked hard on these flags, and that was like one of your students or one of Mama's students!"

I love that comment--love that he's valuing his own hard work, love that he admires college students for theirs.

After he said it, however, I did notice that the flag in question was a slightly rumpled piece of blank white paper. Does that transform the cute story into an inscrutable parable?

This is cheap, but we're not above it.

Pete, on learning to read The Cat in the Hat: "I'm really good at the F words!"

Our five-year-old potato

Today is Pete's fifth birthday. FIFTH. We still discover so much about him day by day. Sometimes the discoveries are purely cool: a couple of weeks ago, we realized that we hadn't done much lately by way of prompting Pete to try reading, so I started looking at the first few pages of The Cat in the Hat with him, and boom! Those words are sticking like anything. Watching the process is fascinating. Pete doesn't have one method for figuring out words. Sometimes he's using phonics; he gets the letter-sounds, but they do only so much for him. Sometimes he recognizes individual words. Sometimes he deduces words from context, or he remembers the phrasing of the book from previous readings. (You can tell what tools he's using by the mistakes he makes.) The big picture is the amazing part: you've got one little person with almost no reading vocabulary struggling against the whole of written English, with its arsenal of tricks and misdirections. It's not fair. But Pete--and any new reader--grabs every tool in the house and tries to get something to catch. Seeing the beginning of the process, I still wonder that Pete's going to read, really read, before long. And that any of us do.

We have also figured out recently--largely on the basis of an attempt to see The Lion King in Des Moines--that Pete is unusually sensitive to loud environments, which make him something between anxious and (occasionally) terrified. We've been slow to understand this characteristic, partly because Pete generally deals with new situations well (he sailed through our 2,700-mile holiday odyssey, for instance) and partly because we don't encounter loud environments very often. But after The Lion King freaked him out a bit, we started thinking through what has made him anxious: cheering at a minor league baseball game, the buzzers in Darby, a couple of concerts, fire alarms. We had been trying to reassure him about the content of the situations, telling him the environments were safe, but that reassurance never worked because, we think, we were missing the point: the sound is itself the problem. This too is fascinating, though discovering it has been hard on all of us.

So we learn how Pete will come to be like us, as he starts to read, and that we need to understand how he's not us but profoundly Pete. But the whole five-year-old him is wonderful to know.

In other ways, he's a pretty typical kid.

Every time we take Pete to the grocery store, he insists that we buy a cabbage.

That's the spirit.

Pete is grappling with the holiday spirit for the first time in many ways, largely because he now has a clear sense that he should expect Christmas presents, but we're also hammering home whatever anti-consumerist social consciousness we can muster. So he careens among generosity, thankfulness, and covetousness. Somberly: "We are very lucky." (Beat.) "Because we get MORE and MORE TOYS!"

Let's not even contemplate the kiss

Pete has revealed to Carolyn that he got a time-out at school today

Carolyn: Why?

Pete: Hugging.

Carolyn: ...

Pete: It's called a knockdown hug.

Bingo

Pete, at night, walks from his bed to the bathroom.

Erik: You goin' potty?

Pete: Yeah. You guessed it, Papa.

Pete's further career advice for Carolyn

Background: Jackie Hutchison is the volleyball coach. Her son Henry is a little older than Pete. Pete and Henry often play together at the volleyball games.

Pete: Mom, are you going to be like Henry's mom?

Carolyn: How so?

P: Are you going to be a coach?

Erik: Pete, Mama's a teacher, and that's kind of like being a coach.

P: Except it's different, and I want her to be a coach. (Pause.) Mama, do you just want to TRY to be a coach?

C: Well, I don't know a lot about sports.

P: I could teach you!

Not you either, kiddo.

Erik, reading Space Heroes to Pete, comes to the part about Sally Ride.

Pete: Mama! There have been boys AND girls who have gone into space on rockets!

Carolyn: Yeah!

Pete: Though not you!

We didn't even think to ask!

Pete has recently called a minor ruse "a dusty trick."

And informed us that when he was still in mama's belly, he wanted his name to be Braxton.

Wait'll you hear how we plays War--

Pete: After dinner, we can play 52 pickup!

(beat)

Pete: When you have cards, and you drop a few of them on the floor, that's 52 pickup!

Carolyn (gently): Um, I don't think that's right.

Pete: Yes! You can drop one card, and it's 52 pickup!

Carolyn: I think that would be one pickup. See, a whole deck of cards has 52 in it, so when you drop the whole thing, you call that 52 pickup.

Pete (with pity): No.

Fotografías

Ecuador pictures



iguana | hatching Pete | the view from the house | same, at night | how we woke up | the twinkle in Pete's eyes | fantastic flower blooming steps 1 2 3

Must be some fine teaching in the new preschool room

Last night, Pete asked us at dinner what poetry is. Carolyn got going on a good four-year-old-level answer, and then Pete volunteered,

"A poem is when you read something, and you see things that are different."

And we said, um, bwa? (As many of you will know, he's getting pretty close to a number of classic formulations of poetry's function.) I have no idea where this came from, and I don't mean that in a "Wow, this kid is an inexplicable genius" kind of way. I mean that we can't remember saying or reading anything remotely like this to Pete, and it isn't the kind of thing we think he'd run into at daycare. (Any of his preschool teachers or babysitters think you're the source?) And although we've read tons of poems to him, they tend, of course, to be rhymey, story-driven kids' poems, so it's hard to imagine him deriving such a definition from that. He has never said anything I found so mysterious.

In the moment, of course, I didn't tell him any of this. I did what any parent would do: I scolded him for wordiness, made him revise out the two needless "to be" verbs, and showed him how he could express the same sentiment directly as "poetry transforms vision." Then I explained how even better formulations might reflect the transformative power of poetry in their language, and sent him to bed with a copy of Shelley's Defence of Poetry and my lecture notes.

If only it always worked that way

Back from annual college-friend reunion in New England. Outstanding. Pete walked across a bridge to Maine, and he eagerly awaits pulling a new state out of his US map to show he's been there.

No, seriously

preschool humor: completely fascinating. Pete LOVES this, and laughs right along with the other kids.

Maybe they weren't screwed in all the way yet

Carolyn and Erik are jabbering about something at the dinner table

Pete: Mamapapa, do you know what? I'm putting my listening ears on!

Erik: Really? What do you want to listen to? Do you want to listen to us talking?

Pete: What?

One step from The Show

Pete has played his first "organized" "game" of tee-ball. "Organized" meaning a split into two teams, with everybody getting a turn to hit a tennis ball from the tee into a small mob of preschoolers who do not even pretend to spread out or play positions. "Game" meaning one inning, every batter and runner advancing on every hit, no scorekeeping. No mechanism for putting a batter/runner out, for that matter. Pete ripped the ball through the crowd when he had the chance and recovered ("caught" would be hyperbole) three or so of the other team's balls, though he afterwards lamented turning his head on one ball, letting his friend Will gather it. He'll now graduate to the "league"! With team shirts! I'm gonna go sharpen some teeny spikes.

Where did your parents go to grad school again?

Pete, unprompted: "When I grow up, I'm going to be Ben Franklin."

I hope this wasn't the science lesson.

From Carolyn --

Pete [somewhat grimly]: Mama, did you know that there are people with arrows. And they PUT them in other people!

Me: [trying to figure out if he's talking about Indians or pirates or some superhero with arrows I'm not recalling]

Pete: And then they FALL IN LOVE!

We should probably avoid The Hindparts Album, too

From Carolyn --

Scene: I'm driving Pete and one of his friends to College Preschool. We're listening to a somewhat age-inappropriate song sung by a female friend of mine that includes, I confess, the phrase "James Marsters' buttocks."

Ezra [cracking up]: She said "buttocks!"
Pete [sternly]: You shouldn't laugh, Ezra. It's just a name.
[pause]
Me: Actually, Pete . . .

So today, Pete learned what "buttocks" means. And I'm thinking we need to stop playing my friend's awesome Buffy tribute album and go back to Winnie the Pooh on CD. At least while other people's kids are in the car.

Under 50 inches? Gotta throw 'er back.

Pete: Mama, did you know that boys chase girls?
Mama: Oh?
Pete [reassuringly]: But not mamas. [pause.] Just kid girls.
Mama: What do you do with them when you catch them?
Pete: Just let them go. So we can chase them again.
Pete: When I was in Lambs [the name of a specific room at his daycare], I chased three girls. [He holds both arms straight out in front of him.] I had my pincers out!

Is this how Mark Fidrych got started?

Pete had his first organized sports event last night: Happy Feet soccer. It was a friendly, fun bout of kicking and running and flailing, and Pete loved it. This morning, he informed Carolyn that he'd like to eat the same dinner before future sessions of Happy Feet because the food made him run so fast.

As far as we know, he has never heard about lucky sports foods. So after his first 40 minutes of sports, Pete has begun developing superstitious rituals. He's got six years to build them up before Little League.

In which sense of "your"?

From Carolyn --

Pete: "Mama? Do you know what your lips are called? They're called pork chops. They're called that."

I think he had his thirteenth birthday while I was gone

Pete wanted to get up early today, so I made a deal with him: you can go downstairs and play, and I'll lie on the couch. This worked pretty well, and I dozed on and off. Then I woke up and realized that I didn't know where he was. I went upstairs to find him pressing his head next to the stereo in his room, listening to They Might Be Giants.

Yes, if you'll call me "fine young thing."

From Carolyn --

Pete: "Mama, when I'm seven, can you call me George?"

Good jobbuh

Pete and I went to the community day at the observatory last
night. He had lots to say about it to Carolyn this morning,
including an almost verbatim repetition of Bob Cadmus's description
of the way the mirrors of the telescope work--I had no idea he was
listening at the time. Then this:

P: Mama, do you know what the man's name was?
C: What was it?

P: Bob! [Heavy emphasis on both Bs. Bobbuh.]
C: Oh, like Spongebob!
P: No. [Helpfully, with a touch of condescension] He's
not a sponge.

From a recent trip, at my parents' house:

I walk into Pete's room and find him climbing up onto the bed,
which is piled with stuff and way too high for him.

E: Pete, what are you doing?
P: Getting on the bed.
E: Why?
P: There are some sheep behind it.
E: How did they get there?
P: I don't know.

[E climbs onto the bed]

E: I see the sheep, Pete. You must have thrown them there.
Please don't throw toys in this room, Pete!

[Carolyn enters]

P: I didn't throw them. I dropped them.
C: What's the word for someone who argues finely like that?
E: A casuist?
C: Yes.
P: Papa, you're a casuist!
E and C (in striking unison): No, Pete. YOU are a casuist!
P: But Papa's the one who's arguing!

One of us is cute, and one is wrong

Pete, feeling this morning's warm air: Papa, is today spring?

Erik: No, today is March fourth. Number four. Spring starts on
the twenty-first.* Twenty-one. That means 17 more days until spring.

Pete: Seventeen days? Oh, my heart!



* An alum pointed out that I was wrong: it's the 20th this year.

Like Dickinson without the creepy

Pete, on the way home from school, with pauses indicated by line
breaks:

The pinkies
and thumbs
on my hands
love each other

Not that I would have done much better in the evening

This morning, I come home from the gym and bustle about getting ready to shower. I hear Pete starting to wake up. Then boom!--he realizes I'm in the hallway, and he's at full speed. As you read this, bear in mind that I have at this point had no coffee.

Pete: Papa, when I'm seven, I'll like scary movies.*
Erik: OK.
P: Or maybe six.
E: Sure, maybe six.
P: Or nine.
E: OK.
P [holding up two open hands]: Grownups are ten!
E: Well, ten is more of a big-kid age. Grownups can be more than that.
P: When you're a grownup you get all big and then you shrink [squeaky voice] a little bit [regular voice] and then you die.
E: Uh, yeah. [again: no coffee]
P: And when you get your head cut off, you die.
E: Um. I guess so, but usually people die because they get old and sick, and their bodies just wear out.
P: Because they don't have any medicine to drink.
E: Or because sometimes there's no medicine for the way you're sick.
P: But sometimes they get their head cut off.
E: Well ...
P [nodding vigorously]: Sometimes!
E: Uh.
P: And sometimes they get shot with a gun!
E: Uh, well, not usua...
P: SOMETIMES!
E: Pete, hey, it's morning! Do you want to go see if Mama's awake?


*The scary movie he has in mind is one of the later, dumb Disney adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh. Not, say, The Silence of the Lambs.

Image me this

Pictures galore comin' atcha.

An old gag made new

Getting ready to play "volleyball" (i.e., the classic hippie non-competitive game of hitting a balloon back and forth, counting how many hits you can get) tonight, Pete said, "Papa, if we get to 17, I win. If we get to 12, you lose."

We're already regretting the storytime ritual

Ono: Pete figured out his first spelled word today (the name of his friend Jack). The Parental Spelling Code Era begins its fade into twilight.

Four more years!

Last Inauguration Day, we were in the hospital, enduring a second day of induced labor, finally going into surgery at night. Pete was born at ten o'clock on the dot.

Which is to say, today is Pete's fourth birthday. It's hard to believe that Bush was President for two of his lifetimes. Pete has been wonderful about the birthday, exuberantly pleased at passing the milestone. On Saturday, while getting his gifts from Carolyn's family, he said to nobody in particular, "I am lucky to get so many nice presents." We feel lucky, too.

I suppose you have to like the enthusiasm

Pete had a huge day today. We had his birthday party at brunchtime, and he had a great time. Then he opened his presents from Carolyn's family, and he loved them. Then he played with the presents for a couple of ours. Fantastic. Then we went to dinner, and as it wound up, Carolyn said, "So, Pete, what was your favorite thing we did today?" Pete: "Going swimming!"

Playing defense

Last night


Scene: Erik and Carolyn have received a lovely bottle of Greek red wine as a gift. Long after Pete goes to bed, and when we think he has finally stopped the questions and demands and dropped off to sleep, we open the bottle and have a little of the wine with cheese and crackers. Then Pete, sounding worried, calls Erik up to his room.

Pete: Papa, I don't want a fire alarm in my room.
Erik: Oh, it's OK, Pete. Those are just there to keep us safe. We have them all over the house. Nowhere I've ever lived has had a fire, and I don't think we'll ever have one, but they help us stay safe, just in case.

In the interest of full disclosure, I suppose I should say that the house next to me burned down in Philly, I had to call 911 when I realized that flames were all I could see from my third-floor window, and the firefighters chopped through my ceiling and windows to put the fire out, and it was all very scary, but that wasn't technically a fire in my domicile. I chose my words carefully.

Pete: Papa, if we had a fire, would you run out of the house and the firefighters would come and help me?

Erik realizes that Pete is genuinely scared and that this is therefore a Big Parental Moment. He lies down next to Pete on the bed.


Erik: Pete, I don't think we'll ever have a fire here. But if we did, the very first thing I would do is come to get you and take you out with me. And that's what mama would do, too, OK?
Pete: OK. But firefighters help kids in fires, too.

Erik and Pete undertake a brief conversation detailing the complementary roles of parents and firefighters in keeping kids safe.

Erik: So all of us would work together to keep you safe, OK?

Erik is, frankly, feeling pretty good about himself.

Pete: Papa, I smell beer. Were you drinking beer?

In retrospect, this is what I would like to have said: "No, that's wine, Pete. Remember Will and Giota? Giota's father makes wonderful wine in Greece, and Mama and I just opened it up to taste it. Isn't that cool?"


What I actually said:

Erik: No!

True! Technically true!

Pete: That's what beer smells like.

In a further gesture of defensiveness, I hereby attest that I drink maybe a beer a week in a fast month. And a glass of wine here and there. Carolyn drinks even less. This is NOT a kid who should have a highly developed sense of alcohol smells.

Anyway, I try the old change of subject.

Erik: I was eating cheese. Do you smell cheese?
Pete: No.


[beat]

Pete: Was it beer cheese?

Sweartogod. WAS IT BEER CHEESE.

Erik: No, just cheese. It's time to settle down again and sleep, OK?
Pete: OK. Papa?
Erik: Yes?
Pete: Would you tell Mama to get me first if there's a fire?
Erik: Absolutely, Pete. Have a good sleep.
Pete: Good night, Papa.

Pete goes coastal

We went to San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. It was a working trip for me, but we all went. When we took a taxi from the airport into the city, Pete saw the bay and said, "Oh, a flood!" Ah, Iowa boy.

Other quotations from San Francisco:

In the hotel room, after seeing a cartoon kid singing cheerfully about going to school, I looked for a way to reinforce any positive feelings Pete has about education and said to him, "Hey, you go to school, too!" Pete gazed lovingly at the TV and replied, "Not in this world."

On seeing murals in the Mission District, many of them violent or sad, one with a prominent crying figure, and having Carolyn explain that they represent the way some people see the world, Pete mused, "If I saw that, I'd cry too."

Nutri-Santa

We were in Iowa City's Sycamore Mall yesterday--that's the slower-paced, less crowded alternative to Coral Ridge. (Not that we're above the occasional hit of Coral Ridge.) Carolyn was doing some Christmas shopping, so I walked with Pete to get a snack. Suddenly, and surprisingly, we encountered the Mall Santa, with nobody in line behind the boy already on the lap. We had managed to avoid dealing with commercial Santa laps for almost four years, but there was no escaping this one. Santa was nice enough, and Pete adorably couldn't think of anything he wanted. (He crinkled his brow and turned to me: "What do I want, Papa?" I suppose I should have said "Peace in your heart!" or something, but when on the spot, I went for Lightning McQueen stuff. Pete approved vigorously.) When the conversation was over, Pete got a present from the present basket--four crayons--and we walked on to Panera. Only later did I realize that Mall Santa, the traditional purveyeor of candy canes, was one of the few adults who resisted shoving candy at Pete during December. Good work, Santa.

If he's going to be a doctor, I hope he has a better handle on biology by then.

Two nights ago, Pete was up in his bed hooting about an angel flying too low and crashing into the Baby Jesus. Basically, the Christmas story has gotten way out of control at our house.

Pete today: "Mama, when I grow up I am going to be a papa, a doctor, and a firefighter."
Me: "That's great. How may kids are you going to have?"
Pete: "Just one. We're not going to lay any more than that."

A doctoral dissertation in 6 seconds

Pete dons his cat costume--ears and tail

Erik: Pete, are you a cat?
Pete: No. I'm wearing a cat costume.

I hate to think what duckball would involve

Last week, Pete wanted to "play football"--that is, for us to pretend we have a football and tackle each other--when he was supposed to go up and take a bath. To accuse him of a certain lack of seriousness regarding the bath, I said, "I think you want to play gooseball."

To our great surprise, Pete said OK, gooseball then. What, I asked, is involved in gooseball? "Tackling, tickling, and tumbling," replied Pete.

Gooseball was played.

Later that evening, we asked again how you play gooseball. This time: "Tackling, tickling, tumbling--and TEASING!"

OK, I said. Tease me!

Pete thought about this for a minute, then said, "Building rhymes with car!"

Laughter was laughed.

What this one goes to

Pete and I went to the homecoming parade last night. Returning home, Pete decided to set up dozens of his toy cars in a parade. He said, "They'll all move along very slowly. Each by one, each by one! And one and one and one and one! That's a lot of elevens!"

Tough questions

It's an eventful time for Pete: in the last ten days alone, we have attempted to explain the extinction of the dinosaurs, testicles, and death. As you might guess, the latter was the trickiest.

Pete has been thinking about death, and he seems to have some idea what it means. He can explain that he has killed a bug, for instance, and that said bug was alive and is now dead. (We do try to discourage the killing, incidentally. Another story.)

On Monday, Carolyn found the obituary of Karen Choate, a woman we knew who took a special interest in children and in Pete. In her sadness and surprise, Carolyn told me the news before either of us thought about the fact that this was the first time someone had died whom Pete really knew. So he started the barrage of "why" questions.

Why did Karen die? Well, we ventured, she was sick. Mistake: Pete knows that all three of us get sick, fairly frequently, so we scrambled to make the distinction.

After working through the specifics for a while, Pete pushed on the implications of this death, with many variations on the question of whether everyone dies. We did our best to combine honesty and reassurance: yup, everyone dies, but don't worry--when you get sick, we take care of you and give you medicine, etc.

Pete absorbed all of this, and he seemed OK. After a little thought, he brightened and concluded, "But we won't die!"

Oh, sweetie.

Legacies

Pete, yesterday, as we dropped him off at daycare: "Mama and Papa, would you give me a favorite?* When I'm a grownup, would you take care of my big-boy bed?"


* [i.e., do me a favor]

The depressing middle section of a "Behind the Music" episode

Pete: [bangs sticks more or less rhythmically on a wooden cobbler's bench]

Carolyn [sings]: There was a farmer had a dog, and Bingo was his name-o!

Pete [stops drumming]: No, mama, that's not what I'm playing!

The life of the keyboard

Pete has started typing words on our desktop computer: he does "PETER" and "MAMA" and "PAPA" without prompting, and he's working up some others. He is learning to write those words as well, but typing is easier, of course, given that he knows how to spell them. This all has made me wonder whether for him, a child of 2005, it would be possible to skip writing altogether and just learn to type. (For the thought experiment, set aside the process of learning handwriting in schools.) Will most of his school assignments be on computer? In how many jobs would anyone even notice if he couldn't write by hand? I'm guessing that electronic note-taking will be utterly routine by the time he reaches working age.

This fantasy may stem from my own struggles with handwriting as a kid. Boo, penmanship.

Thinking big

We finally got around to swapping Pete's crib and changing table out of his room to give him his own twin bed, known as the big boy bed. He's been excited about the idea for a while. After we put the bed in his room on Wednesday, Carolyn told Pete that we had a big surprise waiting for him at home. "Is it a sucker?" asked Pete. "No," said Carolyn, "it's much bigger than that." Pete: "Is it a big sucker?"

A subtle pronoun shift pays off for Pete

Carolyn finished her dissertation, and thus her doctorate, yesterday. Congratulations to Dr. Mama! The previous evening, as Pete got into his bath, we had this conversation.

Pete: Is mama here?

Erik: No, she's in Philadelphia.

Pete: Why?

Erik: You know why. Why is mama in Philadelphia?

Pete: She's finishing her DISS-PERTATION! When she finishes, she can have
candy! When she finishes her diss-pertation, she can have candy! When
she finishes her diss-pertation, WE can have candy!

You know how this ends.

Pete is accustomed to getting a complimentary lollipop when we check out at the grocery store. Today the cashier kindly offered him a balloon, which Pete accepted. When he gradually realized he had gotten the balloon instead of the lollipop, he got a little sad, and I wasn't sure whether he was going to descend into tears or not. When we got into the car, he was still teetering on the verge. No sucker. But balloon! But no sucker. And yet, balloon! Then the balloon popped.

Many many photos

My goodness, it's been a long time since I linked to photos. Sorry.

Here are updated Pete pictures, with hundreds posted since the last update here.

I have no idea how to title this post.

Pete, in the tub, just now, totally unprompted: "Plop goes your heart when you come to the end of your lollipop."

Hail no

Pete and I left dissertating Carolyn behind to go on Pete's first camping trip--and my first tent camping trip since college--last Friday, with a family of friends. Unfortunately, the weather killed off one of our two nights; we got caught in a nasty hailstorm on our bikes, and the forecast told us to head back to Iowa. The feeling of squishing the wet and icy bike helmet back onto my head to finish the ride (after we found shelter for the worst of it) is burned on my poor brain. In spite of the setbacks, though, it was a remarkably good time, and the kids held up beautifully. It made me think that there might be hope for us as a camping family yet, even though neither Carolyn and I grew up campy.

Freedom isn't free

from Carolyn

I was getting dressed this morning while Erik was dressing Pete. I heard Pete suddenly scamper down the hall and down the stairs. My Motherhood Superpowers told me that this was the scampering of a not-fully-dressed child. Pete exuberantly hollered back, "I'm free, Papa! I'm free!"

(On the other hand, he's currently in bed, howling, "Mama, come back" over and over, so clearly his freedom has its limits.)

Pete becomes a character in a bad rodeo movie

Erik: Pete, let's get you in the tub so you can finish your bath and say goodbye to grumpy.

Pete: Hold on, Papa. I'm suckin' on my juice.

Boy writes name, receives feedback

A few months ago, my son (who turned three in January) wrote his name for the first time. As a teacher of writing, I thought it appropriate to give him some comments. Here follow the image and my response.



Assignment: Writing Your Name
Peter Simpson
Introduction to Reading and Writing
April 2008


Dear Pete,


Congratulations on writing your name for the first time! You have done an excellent job learning the three letters necessary for completing this assignment, and you wrote them in sequence with only minimal supervision and guidance from Mama. She and I are both proud of you, and we hope you look back on this as one of the highlights of your three-year-old year.

I also have some suggestions you might consider as you continue writing your name in the future—as I would encourage you to do, given this promising beginning. The first point involves spacing. As you know, you ran out of room on this sheet of paper after the first three letters, so you had to make the final “e” next to the initial “p.” It would be better to plan out the spacing of your words in advance to avoid confusing the reader. Also, most readers and editors will expect any capital “e” to have exactly three horizontal lines. Drawing many more horizontal lines on each “e” is fine if you are writing for Mama and me, but when composing for a wider audience, try to stick to three. Along the same lines, you seem at this point to be capitalizing the letters “p” and “e” but not “t”; I would suggest either capitalizing all your letters or only the initial “p,” to make either “PETE” or “Pete.” If you want to know which of those two forms is preferable for a given piece, consult your teacher or editor. Finally, though I certainly understand your desire to reduce your spending on school supplies, especially since you will not even get an allowance for some years yet, I do think you’ll find that readers prefer letterhead or plain white writing paper to hotel stationery. Mama or I can show you where to find such paper at home.

Do not let these details overwhelm my main point, Pete: you have done very well with this assignment, and I sincerely look forward to seeing what other words you will write soon. Nice work!


Best,


Professor Simpson (Papa)

So that's what they do behind the cameras

from Carolyn

Pete asks for an adventure every night, and tonight we went over and had a picnic on campus, about half a block from the house. And then we went with Pete to hit balls with his new baseball bat on Mac Field. Pete was getting creative--stepping away to let "another batter" hit, etc. At one point he walked over to the left of the "plate" and said he was "going where the baseball players live" "behind the gate"--i.e., to the dugout. Erik and I played catch, waiting for him to decide it was his turn to hit again, and when I looked over a minute later, his pants and underwear were around his ankles and he was peeing on the grass.

I just hope it's not mildew.

from Carolyn

Pete in the dark at 4:30 this morning: "Mama, there is something huge on the ceiling. [whispers ominously] It eats boys."

You have to admit he's communicating clearly

Another one from Pete, who is on a roll:

Pete: Mama Mama Mama!

Erik: Pete, Mama's busy right now. Can I help you?

Pete: Yes.

Erik: OK! What can I do for you?

Pete: Get Mama.

The boy needs work on pronoun referents

This morning:

Pete: I'm going to tell you a story, Papa. It's called "The Cereal Goes into the Owie on My Finger."

Erik: How does the story go?

Pete: It goes into my finger. And then it feels better.

I think I was in the other room hoping you were asleep.

I just walked into Pete's room, about ten minutes after he went to bed, because he was yelling for me to do our ritual of cuddling for a second in a rocking chair before counting to ten and blasting off (lots of rocket sounds) into his bed. Upon my arrival, Pete gave me this monologue:

I was being silly in my crib (pron. "cri-buh").
I thought my pillow was a cabinet.
I thought my pillow was a cabinet with lots of toys in the drawers.
I was PRETENDING my pillow was a cabinet.
I think you were in the cabinet, Papa!

Four items, no unifying clever title

1. He's utterly obsessed with books. I mean, one wants kids to like books, right, but he's relentless, especially now that he's discovered the wonder of getting a whole new batch of library books every week. I can step back and think objectively how cool this is. But I admit that there are also times when I want to give him a Clifford video or a donut so he'll give the reading a break already.

2. Lest #1 seem a bit of insufferable puffery of little Pete's intellectual ambition, consider this point as well. He was counting something a few days ago--coffee scoops, I think--and made it up to fifteen. I took the opportunity to talk him through the late teens, and then he remembered twenty, and I told him about the twenties. Then I explained thirty and, getting increasingly excited, told him that if he figures out how the twentys and thirtys work, he'll be able to do hundreds of numbers in no time at all! Pete mulled that over for a minute and responded, "I want to play basketball."

3. This is less a Pete story than a humanity story. Pete got a new race car from a box of Cheerios a couple of days ago. He played with it for a little bit, then went upstairs and came back down. He said, referring to his established race car collection, "I put it with the other ones, and now there are ten." There's nothing unusual about that sentence in the conversation of Pete and his peers, but it blew me away that the human mind goes from no language to that kind of complexity in such a short time. The sentence involves space, numbers, time, categorization, agency, two kinds of pronouns. I've probably said this before, but the most of the things that amaze me about early development are the ordinary ones.

4. Pete has developed a completely diabolical strategic sense. For example, if he gets a little scrape on his knee, he will want a Band-Aid on it. When he was younger, he would want the Band-Aid right away. Now he waits. The rest of the day passes, then bedtime books, then getting in bed, then saying good night. 15 minutes later, he demands the Band-Aid. Knowing we won't refuse him that (or a couple of other key things like trips to the potty), he has saved it all day so that he has the right ammo for disrupting the bedtime routine and avoiding sleep. We have begun to evolve countermeasures, but he's winning the battle in a rout.

Yeah, well, so's Dick Cheney!

Pete, last night, upon pausing suddenly while getting his toy dinosaurs out of the bathtub: "Papa, do you KNOW? A spoon is a tool!"

Perhaps it goes without saying, but we have no idea where that came from.

Easter balls

Video update: a year ago, we brought you Pete watches airplanes. Behold the transition from phrases to stories! This year, Pete talks about Easter weekend.

I always wondered what that sounded like.

Just now, Pete was playing in the bathtub with some toys, and he started making an odd groaning sound. "Pete, what's up?" I asked. "Are you all right?" Referring to his little sponge dinosaurs, he replied, "They're just talking about their mamas."

Invention

Pete continues to love rhyming. Today at breakfast, he announced, "I found a rhyme in my bed!" It was a triple rhyme, even: stair and scare came first, then chair. So proud was Pete of himself that, contrary to his usual joy in compiling as many rhymes as possible, he proceeded to deny that anything else rhymes with those words. Bear, we asked? Or hair? Not today, mama and papa. Not today.

No, it's not a euphemism for death

Pete is now a three-year-old. (Incidentally, because Pete was born on inauguration day, that means the current Presidency also turned three on Sunday.) He had a wonderful birthday: he loved seeing his little friends, he loved his presents, he loved his amazing 17-car train cake from his grandparents, he loved his new fire truck and bath drums. Good thing, too, because none of us had much energy in reserve: he stayed up howling until midnight the night before and got up at six, leaving us with about four hours of sleep. In the morning, to try to get him to settle, I whisked him through the ten-below cold into the car, and we drove parallel to the rising sun until he slept just a little more--a nap that probably got us all through the day. Now, when we get in the car each cold morning, he asks whether we're taking the sleepy ride.

Using your book-learning to vex your father

This morning, after Pete had been rustling in his bed for a little while, he yelled to me, "I WANT TO GET UP!" I walked across the hall and opened his door. When I entered the room, he whimpered, "but not yet!"

(If you get Pete's Augustinian allusion without clicking on the link, bully for you.)

To the minute

from Carolyn

Pete took his first breath almost exactly three years ago (10:00 p.m.). He's really really great. I've been feeling amazingly fortunate all day. He and I even took a nap together this afternoon--something that only happened a handful of times back when he was an infant. Oh, Sweety P, we love you so much.

Not if you know what's good for you, monster.

We've back from visiting my parents, and Pete has again prompted
Pete to great leaps with language. He's really into rhyming and
stories. At first, he loved having me and Carolyn tell whatever story
we could make up, usually with Pete himself at the center of the
action. Now he constantly injects his own plot events, the majority of
which involve the arrival of new, scary characters. "And then a
monster came!" he volunteers. "And then the witch came
back!"

You can bet that those monsters and witches end up regretting the
day they messed with little Pete Simpson.

In retrospect, it seems a turning point in the primary campaign

Pete and Barack gave each other some (disputed) type of "five." They discussed a "high five" in the seconds before it occurred, Pete then offered what I'd call a "low five." Obama, after returning with an appropriate reciprocal gesture, referred to the interaction as a "soft five," and Pete referred to it this morning as a "small five."

Knowing your station in life

Something put Pete in mind of Space Shuttles this morning. After
noting the shuttles' salient features--wings, huge nose--he paused and
declared, "I'll be astronaut." Carolyn immediately pointed
out the wisdom of this ambition: space exploration is probably the most
prestigious profession that allows, and even requires, the wearing of
diapers.

When parents overestimate their children's readiness for public events

from Carolyn

Whoops. The first note of a percussion ensemble concert tonight did Pete in. He then inserted his own solo during the otherwise deep silence: "I want to goooooo!" Sorry about that, percussionists.

No connection with the voters, no nomination

from Carolyn

The phone rang last night, and it was a recorded message from Chris Dodd. Pete ran over, clammering to talk on the phone. So I handed him the receiver, saying, "It's Chris Dodd." Using one of his most friendly voices, Pete said, "Hi, Chris Dog!" Then a pause. Then, again very engaging, "Hi, Chris Dog!" Then a quizzical look at me, since Chris Dog wasn't pausing in his monologue to say Hi back.

Limits

Pete's favorite number has long been five. He insists that he has
five grandparents, for instance, and this evening he wanted to go to
five restaurants for dinner. He recently decided in the singing of
"Take Me Out to the Ballgame"--a frequent event here--that it
is, in fact, FIVE strikes you're out at the old ball game. I think we
have a healthy sense of the value of imagination over undue literalism,
but come on! Three strikes. Three. Carolyn is with me on this
one.

Let me tell you a tale of the upper Midwest ...

Pete has started to love "stories,"
whether established (we can struggle through a passable Goldilocks or
Three Little Pigs) or made up. I've been using a formula I think I got
from Adam Gopnik's brilliant essay "The Rookie" (about
telling stories to his son): make the main character like the kid and
throw a bunch of obstacles in for drama. Every evening, Little Petey
Fish tries to make it up a stream to find a sandwich (obstacles: log
and rapids, overcome by alliances with frog and salmon, respectively).
Or, in a Carolyn creation, Pete gets a family of ducks off a runway
using duck food from the zoo, thus rescuing a family vacation. Pete
loves this stuff, to the extent that stories even capture his attention
and calm him when he's really upset about something (e.g., having to
get out of the bath). Last week, Carolyn told me she had asked Pete
to tell his own story, but he just named a bunch of things from our
stories--the ducks and so on. Said Carolyn, in totally unironic
disappointment, "It was completely derivative." Little Petey
Fish meets a tough crowd!



During Carolyn's current absence, Pete understands perfectly that
Carolyn is in a place called Cleveland "running a
convention"--a phrase he has allowed me not to explain very
thoroughly. I hope this week doesn't give him a lasting,
little-understood aversion to northern Ohio.

Lit theory moment: language fills the gap left by the absent mother

Carolyn is running her convention in Cleveland until Sunday. Night
one of solo parenting is in the books with only a little crying from
Pete. He's gotten very good at saying "Cleveland."

Love and candy

This was Pete's first real Hallowe'en--the first time he was able
to anticipate the event, to know what he was going to be, to leave the
house.

He was Tigger. We got a great costume from a consignment store in
Davenport. Pete loved the idea and had been willing to roar and bounce
for weeks. When I picked him up from school yesterday, he was all set
to get into the holiday mood.

Then, a setback. We wanted to have a quick dinner before heading
out, but Pete was unwilling to eat. This would be normal for many
preschoolers, but it's very strange for him. It was the first sign
that he was uncertain about the whole business. But all went well when
first trick-or-treater--the older daughter of the family next
door--arrived at our house dressed as Carmen (as in Bizet). Pete came
with us to talk to her and seemed to like doing so.

Then, a big setback. The younger neighbor girl, Ryn, arrived in a
ghost mask. Nothing fancy, but Pete was truly spooked. He hopped into
my arms and hung on HARD. Fortunately, Ryn is very sweet and was in no
hurry, so she stayed for a few minutes, mask off, and talked to Pete.
Pete seemed able to separate his fear of the mask from his affection
for Ryn--he cheerfully waved and said, "Bye, Ryn!" between
bouts of cowering--but he wasn't getting over the fright anytime soon.

Back to dinner, with Pete now uncertain about the whole costume
business. The highlight of this time was not directly Hallowe'eny.
Pete and I were sitting at the table.

Pete: Mama's a sgurrial.
Erik: Mama's a squirrel?
Pete: Mama's a guirrel.
Erik: Mama's a girl?
Pete: Uh-huh! I love girls!

This is an instance of Pete's very recent tendency to declare his
loves. As far as I know, the first such declaration came last weekend
in Kansas City, during one of Pete's rare exposure's to cable TV--in
this case, the Food Network.

Pete: What's her name?
Erik, seeing Rachel Ray on the screen: That's Rachel.
Pete: I love her!

Talk about screen presence. No wonder Rachel Ray is a very wealthy
woman.

Anyway, we eventually coaxed Pete into the Tigger costume because
his fear of other costumes was temporarily conquered by his hope that
he himself would be scary.

We went around the neighborhood trick-or-treating, a process that
consisted mostly of our carrying a mildly anxious Pete to the doors of
people we knew. Another child in a mask caused another mild panic, but
everything went pretty well overall, and Pete gained confidence as he
went along. At most places, he was willing to bounce (like Tigger) or
roar or say "trick or treat"--sometimes before, sometimes
after lunging for the candy bowl. He did pretty well with saying thank
you and being generally sweet.

After trick-or-treating, it was clear that we had to work through
the frights. Pete talked about the scary masks many times, and then,
in his bath, he pretended to put on a scary mask himself. We would act
properly scared, then he would take it off, and we would express our
relief that the scary creature was just Pete. He repeated this perhaps
a dozen times.

By morning, however, the masks had largely faded from memory. Pete
is now, emphatically, all about the candy.

See how much you like it after the first stomach flu, kiddo.

from Carolyn

We're grandparents! Pete announced to me tonight that he had a baby, and proceeded to cup his hands together around what I gather is a very small baby. He then said, "I put her to bed," and disappeared into his room, turned off the light, and came back to me, hands at his side. "I threw her into bed. [pause] I missed." But he then went and retrieved the baby and gave no indication that she was hurt at all. I asked what her name was, and he wrinkled up his nose, as he does when he's thinking hard. Then his face opened back up with a smile and he said, deliberately, "My . . . Baby." A little later, he went to bed with no trouble, since his baby was there, and seemed to appreciate the little towel I gave him to cover her up. He seems to be adapting to parenthood a lot more smoothly than I did.

Would that all these moments were the reassuring kind

It's a cliche of parenting: parents are first horrified to hear something their child said and then experience a second horror when they realize that their child is just parroting back something that they themselves have said. Luckily, the same type of realization can happen with something really nice:

Pete: Can I have more cereal, please, Mama?
[I put more cereal in his bowl.]
Pete: Thank you! That's awfully nice of you!

I was first really happy about his manners (which aren't always quite that good), and then I realized that I could hear "That's awfully nice of you" in my own voice. It's good to have moments of reassurance that we're doing some things right. As Pete might say, Good job, MamaPapa!

The very special kitchen implement and other stories

from Carolyn

Last night Pete, out of the blue, started jumping on big pillows and hooting [the name of our friend, biology professor] "Jackie Brown! Jackie Brown!" Then he looked at me like he'd had a big revelation and said, "I'm Jackie Brown!" and went back to jumping and hooting.

He's been having trouble getting to sleep this week, and last night he seemed stuck in a bad place--cranky, wanting Erik to come and fly his planes around his crib, thinking he was wet when he wasn't. I decided he needed something to kick him out of the mental bog he was in, so I grabbed a small whisk from the kitchen and brought it up to him. I explained that it was a whisk and that he was going to be in charge of it for the night. I left him marveling at the shape of it, and that was the last we heard from him. Oh, thank you, whisk.

This morning:
Pete [flying a toy airplane around his crib]: Look, mama! Airplane!
Me: Yes!
Pete: There are people on the plane!
Me: Yes!
Pete [suddenly serious, as if he were correcting me]: *Pretend* people, Mama.

Seriously, you could just snap his nose off at any moment

from Carolyn

When Pete really really wants something, and wants you to know he's really serious about his request, he'll come over and in a low voice state his request very firmly right into your mouth. It's sort of the equivalent of getting in someone's face and looking right in their eyes, except several inches lower. Sometimes he holds your cheeks in his hands to make sure he has your attention. Although such moments are very serious to Pete, they always make me laugh. In part because they tickle.

Blog updaKA-BEEP!

Recently, Pete has reached the point of altering the routines he
has mastered to create jokes. For instance, if we ask him a language
question to which he knows the answer, he will often replace part or
all of the answer with "ka-BEEP." So if we ask him the color
of a purple car, he'll say "Purpaka-BEEP" and laugh. And
after learning how to steer one of his cars along the sidewalk when we
push him, he now sometimes steers it suddenly into the grass to shake
things up, again with much laughter.

What they ARE!

Within the standard big developments--picking up language and
movement and such--we see the oddest little developments. A few weeks
ago, Pete started asking about things he saw by saying waving his hands
excitedly, drawing his breath in sharply, and saying "Oooh! What
HAPPENED what they ARE?" The same phrasing would apply for
singular or plural referents, and often remarkably unexciting ones--for
one of many examples, we were walking downtown and had this exchange:

Pete: Oooh! What HAPPENED what they ARE?
Erik: Well, that's a door.

This kind of conversation happened all the time for about ten days,
and poof, no more.

Preparation for The Waste Land

from Carolyn

Pete Takes after His Parents:

Pete is obsessed with his first literary allusion. It's the framed picture on the wall in Goodnight Moon that reproduces in black and white a colorful illustration from Runaway Bunny. He holds both books in his lap, both open to the correct pages, and looks back and forth. He wouldn't hand them over, last night, and I left him in his crib, in a room too dark for him to really see the illustrations, still marveling at seeing a picture long-familiar in once context (the oft-read Goodnight Moon, newly discovered in another (the more-recently-added-to-our-collection Runaway Bunny).

Speaking of Goodnight Moon, Pete is obsessed with the "old lady whispering hush." When I used to read this book to him every night, he never noticed her. But now that we're reading it regularly again, she's the main focus for him. When we're looking at the pages where she doesn't appear, he always (ALWAYS) asks where she is. In some cases, where the picture depicts the room in such a way that she is simply out of the range of the illustration, I point to a place off of the page where she would appear if the illustration were larger. He's started to do that, too. But he's still unnerved about where she is when the book begins (and her chair is vacant) and ends (when it is vacant again). We talk about how she's probably doing the dishes at the end (since that's what I do after I put Pete to bed), and he'll sometimes suggest that's where she is, but I don't think he's convinced. Her comings and goings really seems to puzzle him. Goodnight nobody, indeed.

I think I should write an essay about all the disturbing things about the books we read to Pete. Like Harold and the Purple Crayon. Being and Nothingness for the toddler set is what that is.

I'm just axing!

In today's raised eyebrow category:

Pete's been testing the limits of being aggressive. He knows he's not supposed to hit, but when he's upset at us, he'll form a little fist and press it against, say, one of our arms, with a little push. He'll see if he can get away with that, and then try pushing a little harder, or pressing a little more suddenly. What is hitting, what isn't?

So the other day, he was doing this with (to?) me, and I said: "No, Pete. We don't hit."

He responded: "I not hit. [pause] I drum. [pause] With my ax."

More like it

from Carolyn

Making up for all the axing, Pete, for the first time completely unbidden, said, "I love you, Mama."

Also the phrase "rigor mortis"

from Carolyn

Pete [pointing to a cemetery we're driving past]: Was dat, Mama?

Me [flustered]: Um. It's where people go to remember loved ones.

[pause]

Erik [dryly]: Way to avoid the word "mouldering."

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 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!"

A hoot

from Carolyn

We saw what I think was a small screech owl on campus yesterday, in the loggia between Clark and Dibble. We were walking through with Pete on our way to Mac Field, and it was just sitting about five feet up on a small pedestal in a corner. It was very exciting to see. ("I scared owl," Pete admitted, although he gave several excited hoots and has retold the story of seeing the owl many times since. I'm starting to think that when Pete says he's scared of something, he really means he's struck by it.) When we passed through again on our way home, the owl had moved to a bike wheel not far from where we had first seen it. Other birds in the area were making a big racket in nearby branches. Maybe because they were unnerved by the owl?

Pete defines the sublime

from Carolyn

We've been walking on campus with Pete most evenings, and we regularly stop in the art gallery in the JRC. We're big fans of the work in there right now (which is part of the draw), but I'm also curious about Pete's reaction, which, every day, is "I scared [of] art." He doesn't really act scared and I can't tell what would be scaring him. I keep hoping he'll elaborate.

Deadeye

from Carolyn

Pete is occasionally hitting shots (into his kid-sized basketball hoop in our livingroom) from about 13 feet. I'm still probably a better shot than he is, but I'm guessing that will change before he turns 4. Maybe even before he turns 3. It may depend on how much I practice this summer.

The song begins.

Pete started singing a couple of days ago, completely out of the blue. I've written before about how sudden these developments are. This time, he went from having never sung a note of the alphabet song to singing almost all of it on his own in two days. This video--a dark and grainy one, alas--captures the transition from passive to active ABCs.

Little blessing

from Carolyn

Pete has developed an occasional timidity (toward big dogs, high slides, sudden noises). As he puts it, when he's apprehensive, "I scary."

Adjectives of scale are still really important to Pete. He's emphatically invested in how big or small things are. Last night, when he was supposed to be sleeping, he sneezed a couple of times. I was in the room with him and so I said, quietly, "Bless you, Pete." His response was to say, in the little high-pitched voice he reserves for small things, "Tiny bless you!"