Monday April 26, 2010

One of my very favorite things about children is the funny things they say. I think this is partially why I still look back at the year Adam was three years old as being one of my favorite years with him. That year he said things in such funny ways, he had me laughing multiple times a day. He’s still fun to be around; only now it’s often the concept I’m laughing at more then the twisted words.

On our trip to Maryland, I sat between Zachary and Liam. Zachary always asked me to “please buckle him” and I’d say, “Sure, Zachary,” and do it. And every time he would seriously tell me, “God ‘ppreciates when you buckle me.” Is that not just angelic? Anyway, his cuteness inspired me to document some of the cute things the boys are doing and saying. I often keep a piece of paper on my desk to scrawl the gist of things down as they happen so I don’t forget them. I just wish I would have started tagging all my blog posts way back in the beginning because it makes them so much easier to find.


Recent words from Adam that either made me laugh or surprised me with the things he is thinking about:

“I’m going to go scale myself.” He is constantly confusing the words “weigh” and “scale.”

“What does multitude mean?”

Since Christmas I’ve been reading the Laura Ingalls series to Adam. We just finished, The Long Winter, yesterday and he was utterly dismayed at naptime that there was no available Ingalls story. It’s been funny seeing him try to connect it to life today. Last night he shoved his plate back and said, “This is when Pa would push back his plate and finish his tea.” The other week when we were driving down the road he heard someone yelling. “Mommy,” he said seriously, “I just heard some rough talking.” (We’d just been reading the part in, On The Shores of Plum Creek, where Ma doesn’t want Laura to get close to the railroad men because of rough talking.)

“Mommy, some day I want to have a screaming festival.”

I do. not. do. well with cold weather and definitely not with cold, grey weather. Adam has obviously picked up on this. Back in March when we were having yet another cold snap he checked accuweather for me and said, “Those two 59’s just cheer me right up.”

In a lot of ways, Adam has always been our more difficult child. He is not hyper, in fact, sometimes he gets himself into trouble simply by not being motivated to do anything. But he is so intense and so strong-willed. When he was very tiny, he was cuddly; but by the time he was a year old, he was fighting for independence almost every waking moment. He wasn’t thirteen months old before he hit the terrible twos. Two months later he would throw a full-blown temper tantrum at the very idea of needing to hold my hand to walk somewhere. He blew our minds so many times and I had many, many days when I wondered if anything we were doing was working at all. But one of the things that has made it so much easier to work with him is that he is so transparent and honest. I do not think he has lied to either one of us ever.

I love, love, love that about him. I also love that he is so responsible for his age; although sometimes I worry that he is taking life too seriously. He always checks the gas level when I start the car and if we are anywhere close to 1/4 tank, he is totally worried that we are going to run out of gas (we never have). Ever since he found out what those white signs along the road stand for, he watches for them and checks our speedometer like a hawk to make sure we are not speeding. And 48 in a 45 mph speed zone is enough to make him issue a warning. He is so paranoid about being buckled in that it is almost inconvenient. Because he is so slow and methodical, I often start backing out of the driveway while he is getting settled. “Mommy, WAIT!!!! I’m not BUCKLED yet,” he yells. And if on very rare occasions I make him get unbuckled to quickly pick something up off the floor for Liam he does it so frantically I feel guilty for asking him to do it.

Adam is completely taken up with school and everything school related right now. One day while we were at a gas station he watched a man in his early twenties (?) get out of his car and sling a backpack from the trunk to the back seat. Adam was incredulous. “Mommy, how OLD is that man and he STILL has a backpack?”

Today when he and Liam were playing church I heard church come to an abrupt end. “Ok everyone can stand up and have a nice life.”

When we got back from Carmen’s wedding Adam was asking us all about it.
A: “Were you in the bridal party?
David: “No.”
A: “Why not?”
Me: “Well, usually you put your closest friends in the bridal party. Like, when you get married you will probably have Liam and Rochelle and, I don’t know, maybe Lawrence in your bridal party.”
A: “Um, no, not Lawrence because he lives pretty far away.”

Back in February when Adam had a really nasty bout with the flu, he lay on the couch completely miserable. “Mommy,” he said listlessly, “my brain is just not telling me what to do. I think I might have brain infection.”

One day when Adam wanted me to do something with him, he wasn’t very happy about my saying no. I told him my long list of things I had to do right then and he said, “Well, set the timer for ten minutes and see what you can get done.”

And this is where I wish I would write down the whole sentence instead of just scratching the gist of it out on paper. Because I don’t have the background for this but apparently somewhere naughty children were referred to as “boogers.” I suspect that it may have been in the Laura Ingalls books but I can’t say for sure. At any rate, what I do know is that Adam said, “Their children were always boogers — even from the first day they were out of the tummy.”

Liam’s communication is so incredibly limited compared to what Adam was saying by this age … which is why I don’t even go back to look. I think I’d worry. But he is quite capable of getting the point across 85% of the time and the other 15% of the time he screams. He hasn’t seemed to figure out that screaming isn’t helpful.

What really cracks me up though is the way he turns words around. Like “shoes” are “oosh” and “snow” is “nose.” But a nose is “nose,” too and probably means he needs a tissue.

Mostly there are words like ‘ouse (house) and ‘ac – ke’ (jacket) and b’k’st (breakfast). Adam taught him to say ‘ikes (yikes) and for a long time he would yell it several times a day because it always made us laugh.

He does incredibly well with pretend play and interacts with us a lot so I’ve never really worried about him. Still, I felt like cheering the day Liam told David his first story. The tree trimmers were on our road one morning and that night at the dinner table totally out of the blue Liam pops up with, “Up, up, up, up, dees (trees) high, up, up, up.” YEAH, Liam!

He loves to talk on the phone and if he is hard to understand in person when you can see all the nonverbal cues, he is impossible across phone lines. Still, he waves his hands frantically saying, “u-lo, u-lo, u-lo” (hello) whenever the phone rings.

In a lot of ways, we have babied him. This has much less to do with him being the youngest and much to do with the fact that he is so often unwell and sometimes it is hard to tell if he’s not feeling well or being grouchy. Plus, all the unwell issues last summer seemed to slow him down developmentally for awhile last summer and he acted more like a baby then other children his age for awhile. So he gets catered to too much and held more often and cuddled and cajoled. I realized very quickly that he is NOT a baby anymore when I was trying to say something and he put his finger on my lips and said very emphatically, “shhhhhh.” Or the day when he was screaming at the top of his lungs because Adam was keeping him from opening the door. I sat Liam on the recliner and told him to sit there til he could be sweet and went to have a talk with Adam about being kind. When Adam and I got back we stood beside the recliner and Adam apologized. I looked at Liam and said, “Can you be sweet? You need to say “please” instead of screaming. Can you say, please?” He glowered at us both and shoved Adam with a sullen, “Mooooose.” (move) Nope. Not a baby anymore.

I love this stage with the boys!

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