In a while, Comrade . . . oh, nevermind.

from Carolyn

Pete's confusing send-off today: "See you later, McCrocodile!"

Or dot dot dot dot, as the case may be

Now that Pete can kinda follow along when we read to him, he scans every page for ellipses in order to insist that we read them aloud as "dot dot dot."

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.

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.

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.

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."

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!

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

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)

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.

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.