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!"

Big! Airplane!

Here is my YouTube debut. I'm disappointed to discover how much the compression degrades the video quality--it looks vastly better on my computer--but it certainly captures Pete's enthusiastic little self. Before we had a child, I would wonder why people ever ate at certain restaurants, the loud places with mediocre food at prices that would buy you more interesting fare in a quieter setting elsewhere. The answer: because at the loud places, nobody cares when your child mangles his cheeseburger while shouting at the window. This video will show you what I mean. And let me emphasize that you're seeing one continuous shot, the only one I filmed. It's a representative sample.

Airplane!

We got back yesterday from a trip to the DC area to visit friends and family on both sides.

The theme of the trip turned out to be aviation. Not only did we fly with Pete for the first time since he began to understand what airplanes are, but we also went to the new suburban annex of the Air and Space Museum, the downtown air and space museum, and then back to the suburban one! And just when we thought we weren't doing anything related to flying, we went to dinner with my cousin's family in Arlington and found ourselves right under the takeoff route from National. Now Pete regularly tells stories of seeing the Space Shuttle ("huge, huge, huge nose!"), the cool spy plane ("huge, black airplane"), the upside-down airplane, the airplane with teeth, missiles, and the Story of a Flight, with some mix of these components: "Big airplane! Here it goes! Take off! In the sky! Landing!" He had an amazing stamina of excitement for watching takeoffs; the hundredth one occasioned the same enthusiasm as the first. I got a great little video of his commentary that I'll share when I find the right cord to get it off of my camcorder.

Weekend of sick

from Carolyn

We've spent the weekend caring for a Pete who was sicker than I've ever seen him. I haven't left the house since I picked up him early from daycare on Friday, where he had already thrown up once.

Is it awful to admit that Saturday held some real pleasures, even in the midst of Pete being sick? He had a temp all day (104 at the peak) and threw up whenever he tried to eat anything. His only demand, really, was that he get to stay downstairs with us, and so we spent most of the day taking turns cuddling with him on the couch while he dozed and slept. We got to doze and sleep, too, which was heavenly. He's not usually very cuddly, so this was a treat of sorts. We watched a lot of basketball, and I read an entire book, which is unheard of in the era of Pete. When he was an infant and spent a lot of time in my arms, I was suffering from awful pains in my hands and wrists (an unusual syndrome that occasionally plagues nursing mothers), so I couldn't hold a book. But yesterday he was so worn out all day that I could read without him noticing. It was kind of great.

The one very strange thing about this whole episode is that he started adding "eeee" to certain words. "No" became "No-eee" and, similarly, "juice" became "ju-eeese." "Pooh" became "Pooh-eee." "No-eee" in his small little sick voice is pretty heart melting.

Today the fever was gone, but the vomiting continued. And the crankiness began. He still wanted to be held, but couldn't get comfortable, so was unhappy most of the day. Having a throwing-up two-year old is so much better than a throwing-up pre-1-year old, though. 1) the all-milk diet of a little one makes for a unique sort of nastiness. 2) two-year-old Pete is great at throwing up into a container, even when he's not happy about throwing up. "No-eee," he says over and over.

Ice storm!

Yesterday's was the second major ice storm I've seen--the first was a legendary storm in Virginia and elsewhere in 1994. This one was much more localized but much more damaging. We were without power from about noon yesterday until early this morning, and four or five large branches fell on our little property, including one that tore off the side mirror of what Pete calls Papa car. We were very lucky compared to a lot of people, including our next-door neighbors, who have at least a dozen large branches down, some of them huge, and some damage to their fences and perhaps also their deck. We were also very lucky in that we got our heat back overnight when radio reports were warning the outage would take "not hours but days." I walked two blocks last night and saw dozens and dozens of downed branches and a couple of power lines. The amazing thing about ice storms is that the damage is all about having the perfect temperatures for making ice accumulate on surfaces, so they can be ordinary-seeming winter storms, slow and fairly calm. It's like getting hit by a train that has almost stopped. It doesn't look like much, but you don't want to be hit by a train.

We had to get seriously creative about playing with Pete. We were well and truly stuck in our house. Two of the day's highlights:

1. In the morning (before the outage), we persuaded Pete to wear a bib when he refused by putting one on a doll of Shakespeare (a gift to Pete from one of our friends). Background information: Pete's big fabric model of Thomas the Tank Engine was folded flat on the couch.

Erik: Pete, do you want the blue bib?
Pete: No!
Carolyn (knowing this had worked before): OK, we'll have Shakespeare wear the blue bib. (Puts blue bib on Shakespeare, sets Shakespeare on another seat at the table.) Would you like the green bib?
Pete (hesitantly, eyeing Shakespeare): No.
C: Would you like the blue bib?
P: Uh-huh.
(C moves the bib from Shakespeare to Pete.)
(Pete looks at his cereal, thinks. Gets down and walks to the other chair.)
P: Shake speare seepy.
E: Shakespeare's sleepy?
P: Uh-huh.
(Pete takes Shakespeare to the couch.)
P: Move train.
(Pete tosses Thomas to the floor and gently sets the Bard, face down, on the couch.)
P: Shake speare seepy.
(Pete heads back to the table to eat his Kix.)

2. After learning volleyball hits earlier in the week (he now has spotty setting skills and an uncannily good bump technique), Pete turned his attention to baseball yesterday. He started out wanting us to pitch to him--underhand, with puffy balls aimed at where he usually swing--and later in the day decided to pitch to us. He's very good at the step-and-throw pitching motion, and yesterday he decided to extend that to many steps. As you recall, we were inside for many hours, so this had time to develop into its culmination. Carolyn or I would stand with a bat (a toddler maraca) by our front door, with Pete about five feet away. He would consider throwing the ball, then decide to get a head start and run with his quick toddler steps to the adjoining living room. (We have a small house with the kitchen gated off, so this is all the space he has to work with.) Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp (circling around the dinner table and then getting louder) stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp THROW!

And the pitch would come in from about four feet away, very fast and completely unhittable at that distance. Pete would collapse, laughing, then pick up the ball and start again. Stomp stomp stomp ...

On being overtaken

from Carolyn

For the first time ever, Pete expressed a strong opinion about what clothes he wore this morning. That's why he headed off to school with his Thomas the tank engine pajama top over his blue shirt and crazy striped socks that didn't match anything.

Actually, Pete would point out, as he did to me last night, that his pajama top has pictures of Thomas AND Percy. Where did he learn to distinguish between the two? I hadn't noticed that there were two differently colored trains on the article of clothing, and although I have a general sense that Thomas's friends are different sizes and colors, I wouldn't have been able to identify that Percy was Thomas-sized and red. I've learned a lot from Pete over the (two) years, and he has pointed out a lot to me that I would not have noticed on my own, but this might be the first time that he's concretely known more about a topic than I have.

I still know more letters of the alphabet than he does, though, so he'd better not get too high and mighty.

Pete becomes a toddler

I haven't written much about Pete lately, so as the Super Bowl winds down, I'll try to capture some of what it's been like to watch him pass his second birthday and careen into full-fledged toddlerhood.

We've been struck by how Pete develops in streaks and bursts. For example, he was a little slow to pick up his numbers; he had gotten pretty good at identifying two of something, and he had become fond of five ("Pie!") as a word for more than two. He had said three only sporadically and almost never four. Furthermore, he had never counted, even to two. Last Sunday, we all came downstairs in the morning, and Pete was standing in the kitchen as Carolyn prepared the coffee that would fuel the day. Pete looked around, then, as Carolyn put the scoops of coffee in the filter, said with complete authority, "One! Two! Three! Four! Five!" Or, phonetically, "One! Choo! Fwee! Fo-or! Pie!" And he squealed and clapped and laughed until he fell on his butt.

He's still shaky with three and four, and he still likes shooting balls at his hoop more than counting them--these developments have been complicated and cyclical, but the initial gains can be flashes of lighting. Just as he passed that tipping point from not counting to counting in a night, he later did a somersault out of the blue and began without warning to catch thrown balls; the kid who wouldn't leave our grasp in a swimming pool eight months ago wanted immediately to climb the ladder and jump in by himself this winter. In the last few weeks, Pete has gone from identifying no letters to naming about half the capitals most of the time.

I say these things not to brag about Pete but to wonder at toddlerhood: this is the stuff kids learn at Pete's age, but I find myself endlessly amazed by the way the process plays out, and my favorite part is how--as in the counting breakthrough--Pete takes such joy in the new things he can do.

Oh, a random bit of fun from the last week: Pete continues to love music--playing it as he can (mostly drums and kazoo), listening, watching videos, whatever. Becuase Carolyn's dad plays banjo, that is one of Pete's favorite instruments, so I found him this vidoe of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. As we watched it together after breakfast a few days ago, Pete started holding his nose and saying, "oooo." Over and over. After watching this for a minute I realized what was happening: Pete was playing harmonica! So we learned that word and looked for other harmonica videos. Excellent.

Quiz question

Though he doesn't get to do it much, Pete likes to watch TV. Though he knows the words for most things he likes that much, he doesn't know the word "TV." He does, however, have a set word for the TV that makes a lot of sense. My guess is that nobody on Plans would have used this word for the TV at Pete's age. What word is it?



(answer coming)




Computer

Pete for THREE!

Pete now hoots "For three!" when he hits one from downtown. He also calls out "Yay, Papa!" or "Almost, Papa" (or "Yay, Pete! and "Almost, Pete!") as appropriate. I think "Almost!" is one of my favorite Pete expressions: he doesn't get down about a ball not going into the basket, he just celebrates its closeness to the basket.

He's also starting to string words together, often when he wants something. He was doing it a lot today: "Mama? Ball? Shoot?" when he wanted me to play, too. "Pete? Out? Snow?"

Tunney, tunney, tunney

From Carolyn

Pete turned two on Saturday. And he will answer you correctly if you ask him how old he is.

He's finally learning colors, or at least learning to tease us by insisting that everything green is blue. He can be quite crafty.

However, I think his repeated proud statements about his "big cup," in which he consistently replaced the final "p" with a "k" sound, were actually innocently spoken.

He traveled very well on our adventures out east, remembering how to sleep in the car and being game for new places to sleep many nights. The saddest moment, though, came the night after we drove through Pennsylvania. Pete loved driving through the tunnels along the Pennsylvania turnpike, and was very sad each time we headed out into the sunlight and left the tunnel behind. He woke up that night crying. Sometimes when he cries at night he's just fussing, but sometimes he's crying for some specific thing. If we can hear him say what he wants--water or his blanket, for instance--we'll go in and give it to him. That night, though, we heard him wimpering "Tunney, tunney, tunney." It took us a few seconds to figure out that he wanted tunnels, something we were unable to provide on the spot.

Companions

from Carolyn

Pete has recently started wanting his blanket with him when we get him out of his crib. And he's also gotten very invested in holding a single wet wipe. ("A one!" he calls it. "A one!" "A one!") So he often heads down in the morning or after his nap with a wipe in one hand and his blanket in the other (often draped around his shoulders so it won't trip him up). That leaves him with no hands free to negotiate the world. Yesterday he just sat looking at his cereal. I had to feed him a couple of bites. Finally he decided to put down the wipe to feed himself, but it took a while. The blanket makes some sense to me, but why does he want to hold the damp clammy wipe?

Giving Thanks

from Carolyn

I was putting a diaper on Pete after his bath tonight, and he burst into a little exposition on the subject of gratitude: "Home, yay! School yay! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Oh, Sweety P! You're so welcome!

I tried to stump him last night by asking him where his tail was (while he was trying to hold Giddy's tail). He put both hands right on his backside, very matter-of-factly.

Character

Carolyn is gone from yesterday to Sunday running a convention in Chicago. I've never been with Pete for so long on my own. Though I'm fighting through a minor illness, we had a good day yesterday, going through all the routines cheerfully. Then, reading the very last bedtime book, as I began to exult in having conquered the first day, Pete turned to me with an odd expression on his face. I think it was somewhere in the middle of the second wave of vomit that I realized that the theme of Friday and Saturday had fully shifted from "father-son bonding" to "limit-testing building of character."

(We saw the doctor. Having regained his appetite, Pete should be fine soon.)

The Hawkeye of peace, and a floor show

Pete has been ridiculously happy this weekend, so much so that it's been hard to keep up with. This morning, we sat down in church, and he spent a minute checking out the silhouette of the dove of peace on the bulletin. Being the product of daycare in Iowa, he thought about it for a second, then pointed to it and yelled, "Hawkeye! Hawkeye!" On the way home from Iowa City, he said "Iowa Hawkeye." Note that he knows very few two-word phrases at the point--they don't go far beyond "big ball" and "big puppy"---so that's a remarkable development.

In the evening, in Iowa City (at Z'Marik's), Pete attracted the attention of a table of three female UI students. So he started waving. And screeching. And then spinning in circles, grinning, until he fell down from dizziness. Then dancing, in full groove. Then alternating among those activities and absolutely refusing to be removed from his little self-decreed stage in front of their table. This contined for a good while until the students finally left. As I said, a happiness so extreme it's tough to manage.

Take that, Eve!

Last night, Pete ate a whole apple. As in peel to core--the WHOLE apple. Less than a year ago, a tiny corner of an apple-flavored baby puff made him throw up because he couldn't handle such a big bite.

Summer photos

Here are updated Pete pictures, with scads of new ones from the summer.

Studio 916: The Art of Peter Simpson

From Pete:

I'd like my blog readers to know that instead of posting occasionally about my art here, I now put that material up at Studio 916: The Art of Peter Simpson.

Language acquisition runs hot and cold

From Carolyn:

Pete has been saying "hot," and making attempts at blowing on his food when we put it in front of him. We thought he was clearly a genius. Until this morning when he took a bite of his cereal and (cold) milk and insisted it was "hot."

He has been coming to grips with the concept "two." Often he says "two" when he sees two of any one thing: two cats, two birds, two cups. And although he occasionally says "two" when staring into a bowl full of dozens of pieces of Kashi, he has seemed to reserve the term for things that are actually in pairs.

Last night he blew us away by saying "two towels!" when I showed up with, in fact, two towels to wrap him up after his bath. This was the first time he had linked "two" with a plural noun. However, he then proceeded to say "two towels" when he saw the two cats together, two bugs on the wall, and two feet in one of his books. It's so hard to understand what he thinks some of his words or phrases mean.

He also said "two" and pressed the number "2" on a toy keyboard last night. I was ready to call the local news to proclaim the discovery of prodigy RIGHT IN OUR MIDST, and then he said "two" and pressed lots of other keys. Woah, Mama. Take it easy over there.

Dancing fool

We went to a fantastic dinner put on by Grinnell's International Students Organization--great food, lovely atmosphere. Pete was especially fond of tortilla soup and sweet potato pie, but he sampled a bunch of things. And THEN! There was world music playing, mostly dance-oriented stuff with a heavy beat, and Pete started dancing with his little friends Emma and Bea and Shivani, occasionally joined by Timo. The girls and Pete were all dancing like crazy, in Pete's case well beyond anything we'd seen before--jumping and waving and squealing and grooving. For a long time!--at least half an hour. All this was punctuated by occasional sprints around the gym where the event was happening. (We are grateful for the tolerance and sidestepping of everyone in the kids' path.) Pete's giddiness persisted until bedtime. He should sleep well tonight.