Also, the school is different from Fairview Elementary in Grinnell.

Pete starts school Monday. The entrance form has a section for "language spoken at home" that lists 25 options.

The end of six years of hypocrisy

Erik, to Carolyn: What would you like to drink?
Carolyn: Diet Coke.
Pete: Can I have Diet Coke?

Erik: So, water all around?
Carolyn: Water all around.

Obviously, we're hoping he can transfer to Grinell.

Pete got into Carlton! Primary school.

"Literally" in the literal sense

You've got to get up pretty in the morning to get something past Peter Simpson. I mean that terribly, terribly literally.

London living

Pete now loves Stilton almost as much as Angry Birds.

He's going to love frequent flyer incentives.

Totally unanticipated difficulty of London: Pete has become a museum maniac and now has more stamina than we do for them. We went to the Keats House today, and I was giving him a little introduction to what we were about to do as we walked over. It started to sink in, and he turned to us and said, "IS THERE AN AUDIO TOUR?" Because we all now understand that if there's an audio tour, the boy is going to listen to all of it, precisely as instructed. He was captivated by the Brighton Royal Pavilion a couple of days ago, or the audio tour thereof. In a twist, however, it turned out that the Keats House no longer has an audio tour, but they do have a quiz book for kids, and if you complete it, you win A BADGE. The only problem is that Keats is not alive to articulate the resulting intensity of a boy's love for his badge.

Oddly, nobody else seems to be playing the same game.

Some parts of adjusting to London have been hard. I always have trouble with new places, even when they aren't that new to me. It's been up and down for all of us, including Pete, who has been delightfully excited about England but also sometimes cranky, understandably so given that the trip made him so tired he fell asleep at dinner yesterday while carrying pizza from his plate to his mouth. The best part for me has been taking walks to play baseball (specifically, "Giants vs. Dodgers" simulations with a tennis ball) on Hampstead Heath.

Completely out of nowhere. Seriously.

Pete: “When I was in Mama’s stomach, I thought marbled paper was made in the toilet.”

It wasn't so funny when the Coast Guard clipper pulled up to the house.

When Pete sneezed spraying chewed up cereal: “Some got away! Some got away! Mayday!”

Just walking around will be tantamount to this.

Pete suggests a method for greeting the natives when we live in London this fall: waving US flags and saying, "Hi, we're American!"

How tyranny begins

Pete: "If I grow up to be President, do you think I would say there should be a skee-ball place in Grinnell?"

Pondering the effects of early fame

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to extract the photo from the slideshow, but Pete made the Omaha paper! He's, um, 11th up from the bottom of the thumbnails on the left.

The Lehman version of this wasn't so cute.

Time from Pete receiving first tooth fairy payout to devising scheme to put fake (paper) teeth under his pillow to fool TF: 11 hours.

Bad science, great poetry

Pete, beholding a bonfire: "I wonder whether sparks make fireflies!"

Division of labor

Off to Pete's first piano recital. His job: enjoy the experience and play the best "Sleepy Alligator" he can play. Mine: monetize it.

You just never know.

Another one--

Pete: Papa, I’m happy that I’m alive.
Papa: Oh, Pete, I'm so glad.
Pete: Even though there are some parts of my body that I’ll never see.

(pause)

Papa: Well, yes. I hope there are some parts of your body that you’ll never see.
Pete: Like my bones.

(pause)

Pete: Because if I saw my bones, I would be a ghost or a zombie.

(pause)

Or a spirit.

You can't say he lacks self-awareness.

Pete has a way of tilting his head and raising his eyebrows when he's trying to get you on board with one of his ideas. This morning:

Pete wakes up. (This is 7:20am, so he has slept in a little. I, alas, have been up for a while.)

"MOM AND POP, COULD SOMEONE COME IN TO SEE ME?"

Erik goes into his room.

Erik: "Hey, Pete, what's up?"

Pete: "I was wondering if it's time when I could get up and maybe go downstairs and (head tilt, eyebrow raise) have some oatmeal?"

Erik, laughing: "Sure, Pete."

Pete thinks. Pete and Erik start to walk downstairs.

Pete: "Pop, I hadn't raised my eyebrows in a long time."

He calls 'em as he sees 'em.

from Carolyn

We were walking across Mac Field around 8:10 on Saturday morning. There was a table and chairs in the middle of the field,a two-liter bottle oddly upright in the grass, a backpack abandoned, random articles of clothes, beer cans/bottles, water bottles, and general detritus.

Pete: What’s all this?
Me: Well, on really nice days, the students like to—
Pete: POLLUTE???

And wonderfully zany comments from left field.

“I think that I’m built for running and skipping, pretty much.”

Disconcerting!

Pete on Easter preparations: "It's time to start DYEING! We have to start DYEING!"

I can't think of a snarky title for this.

Pete: "The Easter Bunny knows a lot about me, doesn't he? It's nice to have a friend like the Easter Bunny."

Some things should last forever but won't.

Pete has taken to using "the heck" as a general intensifier, placed willy-nilly in sentences, as in, this morning, "My shoe has a hole in it. It is really the heck hurting my foot."

Maybe Congressional deadlock isn't so bad after all.

Inspired by seeing the Cubs and Pirates (no, seriously) at Wrigley yesterday, Pete contemplated growing up to be a baseball player. Then he thought for another minute and remarked on all the choices he has about what to do. More thought. Then:

"When I grow up, I'm going to be a lawmaker, and I'm going to say, 'You can be naked in public.'"

Thoughtful smile.

"Heh-heh. Then everyone's going to be naked."

Parenting gets harder when kids get a clue.

Tonight was Pete's first tornado warning where he was old enough to understand exactly what was happening, both in the narrow sense that a tornado warning is a warning of a tornado and in the broad sense that our getting him out of bed and going to the basement together is very strange. He was such a tired, scared little thing. Turns out it's hard to explain how everything's totally OK when you are, come to think of it, acting as if your house could be swept off its foundations at any moment.

Milestones

from Carolyn

“Were you amazed that I didn’t have to hang on to the banister? I’m becoming one of you guys!”

Later: “Mom! In 4 years, I’ll be 10!”

Our boy's growing up.

Pete, upon hearing the alarm waking him for his sixth birthday: "All I want to do is go back to sleep!"

(He was plenty excited about 30 seconds later.)

As he gets older, the tough questions come.

Pete: "If a wooly caterpillar has one orange spot, how long will winter be?"

A boy who discerns the best things in life

I recently heard a non-Christian talking about how much she enjoyed the great traditional carols of the Christmas season, to the point where she wanted her kids to know that music, too. She contrasted these carols with the winter songs that kids sing in school now--the genre most eminently represented by "Frosty the Snowman."

I reported that person's comments to Carolyn and said that I love the traditional Christmas music as well, and I'm glad Pete is getting to know it. Overhearing this conversation, Pete raised his hand--obedient kindergartener that he is--and waited for me to finish the thought. When I did, he said, "I was thinking we should get the recording of dogs and cats singing the Sleigh Ride song."

He paused, then continued in a knowing, confidential tone: "It's VERY funny."

I admit, it WOULD be nice.

Pete had two expectations for the department's external review: first, that we would win; and second, that winning would involve receiving medals.

Is this my punishment for studying Adam Smith?

Pete told us over the weekend that he doesn't want to be a paleontologist after all. Instead, he wants to build robots that will dig up dinosaur bones and discover new species. By having the robots do the digging, he explained, he will have more time to write comic books.

Nowadays?

The Second Revelation of the Secret Books of Pete Simpson:

"Cheese sticks aren't so good nowadays."

(Scroll down a few posts for additional context.)

As Carolyn put it, "We are so doomed."

Richard Scarry book: "You can be a doctor or nurse."

Pete: I can't be a nurse. You have to be a woman to be a nurse.

Erik: Well, some men are nurses. Men and women can be doctors, and men and women can be nurses.

Pete: (skeptical look)

Erik: It's true that most nurses are women, but some are men, too.

Pete: Actually, I have secret books. And I was reading them, and one of them said only women can be nurses.

Erik: . . .

Pete: These books are real! And they can tell you about anything!

Better than Dracula, I guess

This morning, Pete derived 85% of the text of Frankenstein in 30 seconds:

Pete: Pop, do you know how God created the first people?

Erik: How?

Pete: He took clay in His hands and blew his breath into it, and it came alive. And that was ADAM and EVE!

Erik: Wow!

(Pause.)

You know, Pete, the thing about the first people coming to life is that nobody was there to see it.

Pete: GOD WAS!

Erik: Well. Um, OK, but we can't ask God directly what happened, so we tell that story about how people were created. Isn't it a good story?

Pete: Yeah. Sometime WE could make a ROBOT!

Erik: Uh.

Pete: And then we could have lots of robots that we could CONTROL!

I swear I am not making this up.

When asked why he had so much trouble sitting down nicely and trying his dinner this evening, Pete suggested that we visit PeterWhatHeThinks.com.

By which he means Rob and Doug

from Carolyn

Pete, this morning: "Pop's off to run with his fellows!"

See for yourself

Pete is a kindergartener!

Next year, the googolplex

Tonight we tried to explain really big numbers to Pete: millions, billions, trillions, . . . googol.

Carolyn: "And you know what's even bigger than googol?"

Pete: "Googol and one!"

Carolyn: "And googol and two, and googol and three . . ."

Pete: "All the way up to GOOGOL AND FORTY-NINE!"

(In the event, he was very brave.)

Pete's summary of his immunization-prep conversation with Carolyn:

"Pop! Even if I'm not brave, we can go to McDonald's!"

Is that the sound of our boy deeply sleeping?

Pete, from his bed at 10:30 p.m., perhaps an hour after we've left his room: "Hey, Pop! What if we ordered some fishing stuff online?"

We have not been talking about fishing.

It is about mercenaries

My book arrived at the house.

I showed it to Pete and had him read the dedication line: "For Carolyn and Pete." He was delighted, to a degree that surprised me.

"Did you make this for ME?"

Yes, I said. I suppose that's right.

He smiled broadly and almost hugged the book. He paused as his eyes widened.

"Does it have BLASTERS in it?"

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."

I don't even need to say it was a Star Wars card at this point

I yelled to Pete, who is in the next room taking a bath, that my dad (Pepa, to Pete, while my mom is Mema) said he loved Pete's handmade birthday card.

Pete's reply: "And tell him not to show Mema! Because it's only for him!"

[Pause]

"Papa! Tell him it's only for him and the cats. It's a private card for him and the cats."

We may have to have The Talk

Pete, this evening, out of nowhere, with a tone of deep suspicion:

"Papa, you don't believe in The Force, do you?"

Sometimes his knowledge of nature surprises us. To say the least.

Pete, to Carolyn:

"Mama, caterpillars can sleep in the trees or on the ground!"

[caterpillar conversation ensues]

"And BEARS make a sleep pack and turn into moths!"

Is this empathy or a wish for his parents' near-term annihilation?

Pete [referring to a friend who moved away recently]: "I miss Hunter."

Erik: "Yeah, it's sad when people go away, isn't it?"

Pete "In Star Wars, Aunt Beru says to Uncle Owen, 'Owen, he can't stay here
forever. Most of his friends have gone."

Mostly to set the context for every post for the next ten years . . .

from Carolyn:

Pete [walking in from daycare]: "Can I watch Star Wars Grinnell?"

Me: "Did you think about Star Wars all day?"

Pete: "Yeah."

Strike that. And that.

We've just returned from a fantastic trip to Austin, during which I introduced Pete to the culture of my youth, which is to say, bowling and pool.

I worried that Pete wouldn't be able to get the ball to the pins consistently, but he did fine, even moving to a two-handed version of the proper side release. Pete used bumpers and hit them most of the time, but in his second game (lifetime), he rolled two unbumpered strikes in a row on his way to a bumper-aided 104. The next morning, he chose to go back to the alley for three more games. Dude is ready.

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."