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."