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!