Category: the boy
Language Lessons
My parents were in town this past weekend for the girl’s birthday, and everyone had a great time. My mother outdid herself making delicious food for every meal that both kids gobbled up eagerly, and both grandparents enjoyed playing with the kids.
One of the things I do with my parents, often without knowing it, is slip into speaking Marathi. Once, at the lunch table, my parents and I were having some rather simple back and forth in Marathi (“Can you pass me the pickle?” “Here, take it”) and the boy started to hyperventilate in his dramatic way and wailed, “When am I going to learn that?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“When am I going to learn to speak Indian?” he replied. “Aaji,” he said, turning to my mother, “Where did you learn to speak Indian?”
I had a twinge of guilt over not being better about teaching him any Marathi, but the truth is I’m not very good at it anymore after years of not practicing it, and was never fluent in the first place. And another truth is that, well, it simply isn’t that useful to know Marathi.
In a country with hundreds of beautiful melodic languages, Marathi is like the German of the Indian languages, in sound and in culture. It’s just rough. There is no common way to say, “Please” or “Thank you,” and no one would say it anyway. The typical greeting when you answer the phone is not “Hello,” or even the elegant “Moshi Moshi” of Japanese, but is instead, “Kon aye?” which means “Who is it?” I recently learned that there isn’t even a true word for the color brown–everyone just says “chocolatey.” This in a country where EVERYONE IS BROWN. How does that make any sense? (My father told me that there is technically a word for “brown,” but no one ever uses it.) Even the way to say “I love you” is somewhat convoluted and people just end up saying it in English.
We use Marathi when we wish to gossip about someone who is right in front of us without them knowing. This works poorly for two reasons. First of all, in accordance with the language, Marathi speakers are not typically subtle. This means that we will walk up to a grocery checkout line speaking in English, then see the lady with the crazy curly red hair wearing large polka dots in line, look her over, make eye contact, and then promptly switch to Marathi. When gossiping about how her hair and clothing makes her look like a clown, we will speak the word “clown” in English, which the woman will overhear and be able to deduce that we are talking about her, which makes the entire switch to Marathi completely pointless in the first place.
Now of course, Marathi is apparently the 17th most commonly spoken language with 70 million speakers worldwide (surprisingly, more than Italian)–I don’t mean to say that the language shouldn’t exist. After all, people still learn Latin and it’s not like you ever have a riveting chat about how the Nuggets are doing in Latin. But the sad fact is that my kids will probably find cause to speak Marathi about 20 times in their life. Even when my sister and I TRIED to speak Marathi with our cousins in India growing up, they generally mocked us for our poor grammar and we ended up just using English–in this lies the big problem, which is that most Marathi speakers we would interact with speak English just as well. Many first-generation Marathi kids speak less Marathi than I can and it’s doubtful that they would be able to speak to each other in Marathi without a great deal of effort. If kids that are raised by two native Marathi speakers don’t speak Marathi fluently, then there’s no hope for my kids at all.
From a cultural heritage perspective, it would be great if they spoke Marathi but the reality is they won’t. Of course, I could just focus on the more useful vocabulary and mild swear words that I know so that at least we could insult each other in Marathi when necessary. That would probably stick.
Spring Break 2010
Monday Zoo Day:
Exploring brambles
Proudly scratched up
Waiting for Carousel
Why is it moving?
Tuesday Art Museum:
Dazzled
Building together
Wednesday hiking and painting:
Trailhead
Love!
Dueling Picassos
Which is the masterpiece?
Thursday… I messed up my schedule requests and had to work, so the boy went to the office with Dad and the girl stayed home with a sitter.
Friday, we went to the Dino Museum in the morning (sorry, no good pictures) and then, in the afternoon, I was so exhausted from the week I just put Sesame Street on and sat on the couch with the kids, intermittently nodding off until the girl sat on my face to wake me up, which she thought was a hilarious game.
Hats off to the stay at home parents–while it was really fun to be home with the kids, it is a lot of work and I was tired by the end of the week. I worked on Saturday and Sunday, and that felt like a break. Still, sometimes I feel guilty that we both work and aren’t home with the kids more, but the truth is I get a lot more quality time with my kids than a lot of working parents, and for that I’m grateful. I also have the advantage of having a lot of weekdays off, so I can use that time to do errands and have time to myself so that when we are home with the kids we can just hang out with them and not have to get a lot of work done. All I’m saying is I’m pretty lucky to have so much flexibility. Eric would probably prefer if I didn’t have to work so many weekends (two out of four every month) but you can’t have everything, no?
Today I took the kids to school for the first time in nearly 2 weeks. I was prepared for tears, a struggle, leg-clinging. Instead, I had two children who happily picked up their lunch boxes, ran into their classrooms, smiling and happy to see their friends and teachers, and ready to start learning again.
WWHD?
Last year, we bought a few children’s books of Hindu mythology. One of these was the story of Hanuman, a monkey who is the son of the wind God and has magical powers. He has the ability to fly, to grow and shrink as he wishes, and is incredibly strong. In the Ramayana, a Hindu epic, the evil demon Ravana steals Sita, the god Rama’s wife, and Hanuman helps to save her. To paraphrase heavily, he first flies over to the island (Sri Lanka) where Sita is being held captive, then purposefully gets captured. The demons set his tail on fire, so he grows his tail out as long as possible before dancing all over the island and setting it ablaze, then jumps back to Rama on the mainland. Later, when Rama’s army is in full battle with Ravana’s and there are many dead warriors on the field, he is told to fly to the Himalayas to bring back healing herbs. Unable to tell which are the right herbs, he simply lifts the entire mountain and brings it to the battlefield. As the wind wafts over the mountain, the scent revives the fallen warriors.
We recently bought a new illustrated book of the Ramayana, and the boy loves it, as do I. The pictures are stunning, and the text is witty and clear. It’s a joy to look at and to read, which we’ve been doing almost every night since we got it almost six weeks ago.
His favorite character, by far, is Hanuman. Whenever we get to Hanuman’s part in the story, he pumps both fists in the air and yells “Hanumaaaaan!” Once, right before he was going to fall asleep, he cocked his head and whispered to me, “You know what, Mommy? Hanuman is more powerful and braver than all the superheros!” After reading the Ramayana, he told Eric he wanted a mantra of his own, and Eric asked who his favorite person was in the story. Sometimes we’ll hear him softly chanting, “Hanuman, Hanuman” to himself, over and over. I couldn’t figure out his adoration at first, but then Eric pointed out that Hanuman is basically a monkey and a superhero, so what’s not for a four year old to love?
This is so cool to me that he loves the Hindu myths and is familiar with the gods and demons. Like I’ve mentioned before, we’re not religious but I think it’s great that the names and stories are familiar to him. After all, it’s all part of who he is and I want him to be connected to it. Honestly, I didn’t know the stories in such detail until we started reading them to him. More than cultural identity, though, I learned the other day that there are more immediate tangible benefits to his love of Hanuman.
A few nights ago, we received “Fantastic Mr. Fox” from Netflix, which the boy had seen in the theatre with Eric, but which I hadn’t. I asked if he could wait to watch it for a few minutes while I cleaned up the kitchen, and despite my polite exhortations, he refused and said he wanted to start the movie right away.
I went upstairs while Eric stayed down with him for a bit, and then I heard him yell up the stairs, “Mommy! I’ll wait to watch the movie with you!”
Eric came upstairs, and said, “Ok. Now, don’t laugh at this, but do you know how I got him to wait to watch the movie?”
“How?” I asked.
“Well, I sat down, and looked at him, and I said, ‘Now, what would Hanuman do in this situation?’ The boy said sheepishly, ‘He would wait for Mama.’ And then he thought for a few seconds, and yelled up the stairs that he had changed his mind.”
Not only did he wait for me to watch the movie, he came upstairs and helped me clean up the kitchen. He wrapped the leftover pizza in foil, wiped down all the countertops, the fridge, and the dishwasher, and then patiently waited for me to finish the dishes before we headed downstairs and watched the movie together.
If Hanuman can inspire my child to be a thoughtful, considerate person, I’m all for it. Moreover, that a phrase which has been reduced to a bumper sticker and is basically fodder for pop culture mockery (WWWCND, anyone?)–that this sentiment can still hold meaning is rather remarkable. Maybe there’s some power in these old myths after all.
Old Man Winter’s Last Stand
Yesterday, at 8 am, our street looked like this:
Like the rest of us, this little red-breasted robin below thought that it was supposed to be Spring. Undaunted, he scampered among the snowy branches. Robins are a hardy sort.
So are the kiddos, who had a ball with this (hopefully, right, winter?!) last snow of the season.
Okay, so the girl had a bit of a rough start. She must be from my school of thinking when it comes to winter, which is this: If we were meant to live in cold, snowy weather, we would have been born with thick fur. Like yaks. (I cannot claim originality for that line. It came from a college roommate, who may have stolen it herself.)
Like the robin, the girl is a hardy sort and soon found her footing:
A VERY serious shoveler, there. Note the pink and purple sparkly scarf, created as requested. I held one strand of Cotton-Ease with one strand of some cheapo acrylic sparkly yarn and just knitted garter stitch lengthwise until it was wide enough, and attached a sparkly fringe.
Here’s a closeup:
Back at the snow day, after a few finishing touches, came….FrankenSnow!!
You know what’s great? Frankensnow is wearing the itchy mohair scarf that I had made for Eric! He didn’t seem to mind. Sadly, he was not long for this world, as here is what our street looked like at 5PM THAT EVENING.
The best part of the day, though, was that some of the other kids and parents came out in snow gear and we all played together. That’s one of the things I love most about my neighborhood–it’s a very porchy, neighborhy, impromptu playdate sort of place. Everyone seems to hibernate in the winter, and then come spring and summer we’re all out in our front yards and hanging out. Much like the return of the robin heralds the beginning of Spring for nature, I hope that this gathering signals the beginning of the outdoor season for those of us in Denver, even if it did take place in almost 2 feet of snow.
Musical Beds
Last night was great.
We had put the girl to bed around 6:30, her usual time and she seemed to fall right asleep as per usual. We finished with the boy’s bedtime routine around 8 pm, also as per usual. A bit later Eric went to bed earlier than usual because he was really tired.
Shortly after that, the boy yelled downstairs “Can I sleep in your bed?” “Fine,” I yelled back. He crawls into bed with Eric.
Then the girl wakes up screaming, so I go comfort her and then go back downstairs.
I hear intermittent grumbling from our bedroom as the boy is probably kicking Eric in his sleep.
Then I hear the boy start to scream, and hear Eric call my name. I run upstairs and find the boy shuddering in fear and crying, almost inconsolable. “What happened? Did you have a bad dream?” The boy nods. “Can you tell me about it?” The boy shakes his head and starts shuddering anew. “Was it that scary?” “Yes.” “Were you in it?” “No.” “Was I in it?” “Yes.” “Was anyone else in your dream?” “No. Just you.” “Can you tell me what I was doing?” He starts to shudder again and shakes his head, “No.” He calms down and then I put him back to bed and go downstairs.
The girl wakes up screaming AGAIN, and I give up on the evening, pick her up out of the crib and go to lie down with her in the boy’s bed, thinking at least this way we’ll all get some sleep.
Then, Eric enters the room carrying the boy, who had been snoring and kicking him, hoping to put him to bed in his own room. Finding us sleeping there, he says, “What the hell is going on here?” and walks out, deposits the boy back into our bed and heads downstairs to sleep in the basement.
At this point, the girl and I are in a twin mattress on the ground, the boy is alone in our king size bed, and Eric is in the basement on the couch.
Now I realize that I’m cold and need another blanket, which is, of course, in the basement.
I sneak out of bed and head downstairs trying to be as quiet as possible, sounding for all the world like a prowler, and scare the living daylights out of Eric who’s asleep downstairs. I’m thankful he doesn’t sleep with a gun under his pillow.
I grab a blanket and head upstairs, and try to get comfortable. The girl is farting and crawling on my face in her sleep.
I take the girl and bring her into my bed where the boy is, where she continues to crawl on my face and generally squirm around.
A few hours later, the boy sits bolt upright in bed and exclaims, “I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!” “Take what?” I ask. “Sleeping in this bed with the girl!” “So go sleep in your own bed, kiddo.” He takes off and goes to sleep in his bed.
Then HE starts crying saying his tummy hurts. I go into his room, rub his belly. “Maybe it’ll help if you try to poop,” I offer. “Okay,” he says. Sleepily, we walk to the bathroom where he does his business, says he feels better, and then heads back to bed. I think it’s around midnight at this point.
The girl continues to fart and roll onto my face all night long.
So not only did I not get a wink of sleep, but apparently I’m so terrifying I give my own son nightmares that are too scary to talk about. Parenting FAIL.
Scientific Child
For Christmas the boy got this science experiments book, which is better for his age group than the one that I mentioned in the earlier post. The experiments and concepts are tailored more to a 6 to 8 year old, but many of them are still fun to do even if he doesn’t completely understand the science behind everything.
First you find “dirty” pennies. The boy made it his personal challenge to find really really dirty ones. Mix vinegar and salt together to create a weak acid. You really should use white vinegar so you can see the bubbles easier, but all I had was apple cider vinegar, so that it was. This is very stinky unless you love the smell of vinegar.
Drop them in…
and see what happens after they take a bath!
Before and After
If you leave them out to dry without rinsing, they get all crusty and blue.
We then took a few nails and dropped them into the vinegar and we forgot about the experiment for a few days as work and school took precedence.
When we wondered why the house smelled like vinegar and remembered about the experiment, the nails had a slight copper sheen to it, as you can see on the 2 left nails. I wouldn’t recommend this as a method to plate your metal jewelery, though.
Here’s a page from the Exploratorium (my all time favorite place to go in the entire world, which completely solidifies my standing as an absolute and total NERD, as if you didn’t already know) that describes the experiment that we did and the science behind it.
Obviously, the boy is too young to understand about acids and ions and things like that, but he sees the change happening and it’s the first time that he can see the effects of tiny little things that he can’t visualize firsthand, and I’d like to think it stretches his mind. The fun is in seeing how the world around you works, how you can manipulate it, and beginning to get the gears turning.
Pretty cool, no?
Experiences
That’s what the boy calls experiments, anyway. Currently, he wants to be a scientist when he grows up and do lots of experiences. One of our earlier adventures was here, but now we’re able to do more complex ones.
A while back I checked out a library book with some kids’ science experiments in it, and there was a whole chapter on electricity and experiments with that. I went to RadioShack, remembering it from my youth as a place with random wires and springs and plugs on the walls with acne-faced bespectacled nerds roaming about, and instead found that it had become a mobile phone store with tacky furry talking animals for sale as well. As it turns out, they do still carry all the wires and such, they’re just hidden away in industrial looking drawers in the back of the store. (The acne-faced bespectacled nerds are now running all the large software companies and laughing all the way to the bank.) I purchased a pack of alligator clip wires, copper wire, a buzzer, a switch, a light bulb and stand, and a 9-volt battery, and gave it to the boy for Christmas.
Some of the basic stuff is just learning how circuits work–how you have to complete the loop for the electricity to flow through, starting with a simple bulb. This one is already jazzed up with a homemade switch–nails into a scrap of wood, with a paperclip around them. Squeeze the paperclip, and it completes the circuit and the light goes on.
Then things get even fancier, with the switch from the shop:
I teach him the basic idea by having him trace his finger along the wires from one battery terminal to the next, and showing how there has to be a continuous line for the electricity to flow and for the light to turn on. In case you’re wondering, the 9 volt battery doesn’t conduct enough electricity through dry skin to buzz you. The girl did stick one in her mouth, but it didn’t bother her too much, either. (kidding, only kidding. Sort of.)
The next cool thing is to make a game. Remember that carnival game where you have to guide a loop of wire along another wire without touching it? Well, that’s just a simple circuit and we have all the tools to make it! You connect a bare wire between the two nails on the block, fashion a bare wire loop to go around it, hook it up such that touching those two completes a loop with the buzzer, and you’ve got a good half hour of entertainment.
Concentrating hard:
Aw, man!
He never did manage to win, sadly, but I confess I might have made it too difficult with a loop that was too small. Still, he loves to mess around with the wires and such and figure out how to make it all work on his own, which is really the whole point.
More science experiments to come!
Warts and All
I was speaking with a colleague today about how difficult it can be to have small children and how much they can try your patience. Often, the stuff that makes it to the blog is the fun, entertaining, aren’t-they-so-cute stuff, but a lot of the time it’s just plain hard to have 2 small kids and be 2 full-time working parents, I don’t care how amazing you or your children are.
Case in point, our adventures with ice cream the other day.
I had a day off, put the kids in school so I could run errands, and told them that I’d pick them up early so we could get ice cream together, thinking it would be a fun idea.
We get to Little Man Ice Cream and the boy chooses chocolate with sprinkles in a flat cone. I get the girl strawberry with sprinkles and we sit down on a bench to eat. The girl is somewhat incredulous at being given a whole cup of ice cream all to herself, and proceeds to gorge herself with no attention to precision and globs of pink fly onto her raincoat. The boy is standing up, licking away at his cone, entirely content. I feel like a great mom having a great time with her great kids.
Then, it all goes to hell.
The sun goes behind the clouds, and the boy says, “Can we finish our ice cream at home? My hands are getting so cold!!” It seems reasonable enough, but I’ve forgotten that you can’t reason with a 22 month old. I tell the girl, “Let’s finish our ice cream at home,” while I take the cup out of her hands. She responds by screaming continuously. I try to pry the spoon out of her fist but it’s no use. It’s her only ice cream left and she’s not having it. I can’t pick up the livid toddler and carry her ice cream at the same time, so I give the cup to the boy (whose ice cream is now in a cup as well) and we start walking to the car.
As he walks with ice cream cups in hand, he trips and falls prostrate on the ground, scraping his palms on the sidewalk. Both cups tumble to the ground. He stands up and starts bawling while I try to console him with the fact that none of the ice cream touched the ground. Remember, the girl is now being carried like a battering ram and screaming her head off the entire time. The boy gets it together, still sniffling, and we get to the car where the girl proceeds to make her body as rigid as a board and refuses to get into her carseat. With no small amount of wrangling, I manage to strap her in, but I’m frazzled now and say to the boy, who is standing behind me, (and this, I’m not proud of) “I wish you could have just stayed there a few more minutes! She’s so upset now!!”
To which the boy starts wailing, “I’m SORRRRYYYY!!!!” and crying as loud as HE can, repeating “I’m sorry!” over and over. I get to experience screeching in surround sound.
Sigh. Two screaming kids and a guilt trip is not what I had had in mind. People are staring, too.
I turn around, give the boy a kiss, hug him and say, “I’m sorry. It’s okay–it was getting pretty cold. Tell you what–let’s go home, turn on the fireplace, and eat our ice cream by the fire where it’s warm and toasty.” This mollifies him and we put the ice cream into the cup holders in the back seat, where they fit perfectly.
At home, the girl hyperventilates in her high chair until she gets the ice cream in front of her and proceeds to demolish it and then lick the cup. The boy parks in front of the fireplace and eats the rest of his as well; peace is restored.
It all ended well, indeed, but there were a few moments in there where I just had to take deep breaths and do my best to remain calm, and even that I failed to do entirely. This post doesn’t even begin to cover the mad morning rush to feed/clothe/transport children and the reverse routine at night that we have on a daily basis. All of this to say that while it’s fun and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, it’s challenging too–and I’m well aware that many parents have it much tougher. I know that you, too, have a story of when you were not a particularly graceful parent under pressure, and I just want you to know that you are not alone.
Freewheeling
The boy is fully riding a two-wheeler!
He had been riding a push bike for well over a year and had it down. The idea is that the difficult aspects of learning to ride a bike are balance and steering, so a kid can figure those out first without bothering with pedals. Then, when it’s time to ride a two-wheeler, you don’t even need training wheels. At the suggestion of my friends Geoff and Karen who had their 4 year old twins riding without training wheels, we got him a 12″ bike for Christmas, and look!
(Excuse the music. I couldn’t help myself)
A bit of a shaky start, and then he just goes!
It was pretty incredible to watch the first time it happened. More than that, it just felt so BIG. I think that so far, the other achievements that we regard as milestones are all part of being a baby or a toddler. But riding a bike is a big kid thing, and it signifies another level of freedom and ability.
I also realized that this is now the first time that he can go faster than we can. Since, as I’ve mentioned before, history repeats itself, this worries me. When I was six, my parents took me riding at the local park. I rode ahead of them and climbed onto two parallel bars (part of the VitaCourse). Dangling from one, I swayed to and fro, and then spied two elderly women round the corner. I thought to myself, “I’ll show them what I can do!” and got on top of one of the bars. I used to spin around the bar, like on the school playground, and was just short enough that I missed the other bar. Unfortunately, I had grown. As I propelled my body forward, my forehead landed with a sickening thud on the second bar and I dropped to the ground unconscious, with a gash in my forehead and blood everywhere, which was the scene that my poor panicked parents saw as they rounded the corner. Obviously, I survived, albeit with a rather large scar, but I’d rather not have to relieve that particular incident.
As he rode around the asphalt, it also made me realize that this is the first major leap into childhood, and by extension, into independence and pulling away from his parents. It’s a bittersweet feeling when your child achieves something new. On one hand, you’re just so proud of him, but on the other you realize that it means he needs you just a little bit less. I know it’s not the last time this will happen, but it feels like it’s the first significant one. Or, as our friend John, father to teenagers, said, “This? This is nothing. It only gets worse.”
fretzes on the loose 