MOU: Oh the sacrifices we make

Last night we sat down to a quick and easy dinner of pesto and veggie pizza--Amy's, which has fresh tomatoes, pesto instead of tomato sauce, cheese, and small bits of broccoli. We tore off bits of pizza crust and pizza toppings for Otter to supplement his o's and bunny crackers; Otter was not interested in the tomato, and only marginally interested in the cheese and crust. What he really wanted was the broccoli.

So we stripped off every visible piece of broccoli from both small pizzas to give to him. I think G and I each had only a bite or two of broccoli before we realized that Otter wanted all of it.

If only all parental sacrifices were this easy.

Commenting and trackback

I've just added haloscan's commenting and trackback features to this blog. If you have no idea what that is; don't worry about it.

If you are interested in leaving a comment, I do request that, even if you know Otter, G and, me "in real life", please use our "blog" names if you refer to one of us in your comment. I will edit any to change posts that don't do this.

If family members and friends want to add their own stories in comments, that would be lovely.

Thanks. I now return you to your regularly scheduled Otter-channel.

One foot up: musings on parental speculations

Today at daycare Otter was standing looking out the glass door at a helium balloon saying "Boston Red Sox" tied to the daycare playground fence. It was quite windy out and Otter was fascinated by the balloon's bobbing and weaving. Just in case I hadn't seen, he came and grabbed my hand and led me over to see, saying "boooo," his word for balloon.

Then, as I was walked away, he stayed by the door, and began doing some Otter-designed version of acrobatic exercise, while keeping his eyes on the balloon at all times. He would stand on one leg and stretch the other out at waist length, bending to be somewhat T shaped... then pivot around, and switch positions, experimenting with his balancing, never falling down.

I can't believe he can stand on one leg.

(Anyone encountering this blog without any inherent interest in Otter must be massively bewildered that it's here...)

It's bizarre that as he did so, I found myself wondering what it meant for the adult Otter who doesn't exist yet, as I so often do I look for clues in his behavior, hints, signs of what a grown-up Otter will be like. Will he do yoga? Will he dance? Will he always be able to stay focused on what interests him regardless of distractions?

When he dances, when he loves to read, when he eagerly grabs the seat in front of us riding the park's train, when he comes over to another crying child at daycare and touches her shoulder in apparent sympathy, I speculate about each pattern, each tiny piece of evidence as to who he is and who he might become.

Last night, he helped me push the vaccuum around; my parents will be relieved if that means he's a neat housekeeper and a motivated vaccuumer (both things G and I both are not so much, ourselves).

Why do we do this (or why do I do this, if in fact others don't)? Is it because parenting requires that you manage both to make long-term plans and to stay in the moment, to be present for the things your kid is doing right that second, focusing in on the cat's whiskers or the letter O, while also noticing that...

he needs new shoes soon, and in a few months it'll time to put him on a waiting list for a preschool, and we should add more money to his savings account, and next summer we'd like to take him on a real train, and when can we give him peanut butter without much risk of allergies, and how can we help him eventually learn to pick up his toys and to have a work ethic and that women and men can both love to cook and that you should be kind to animals...

and all those other big and little things you want to help your child to do, to be, to learn.

Or is it that we have so many hopes for them (many of which are, if not mutually exclusive, at least not easily combined)? I want him to know as much about house repair as my brother, as much about bread-making as his great-grandmother, as much about movies as his dad--but I want him to pick his own interests. I want him to feel comfortable with himself, and not tie his own or others' worth to how much money they make--but I want him to always have financial security. I want him to know how to survive and learn from failure, know how to take risks--but I never want him to get seriously hurt.

I know he'll be fine; I know we'll make mistakes in parenting. I know he'll grow and surprise us, and yet at the same time we'll look back and say, "from the beginning he was like that; there were signs of that very early on."

I guess I see a lot of balancing going on here, and not just Otter's one-foot experimentations.

MOU: letters... we get letters

Okay, letter, singular, but still...

This morning, about ten minutes after Otter woke up, as G was reading Chicka Chicka ABC (again), Otter looked down at the page showing j, k, l, m, n, o and p, and pointed to the o, and said "O" several times.

I heard it from the next room and came in to see; of course, when asked to repeat himself, Otter instead said "ball?"

But both G and I did hear it the first couple times, even if he refused to perform on demand. Whether he's learned it because we call the organic Cheerio-substitute-cereal we give him "O's" or whether he's learned it some other way (perhaps the Queen Latifah letter and Telly "O" song on the Learning about Letters DVD), he knows it.

I had thought C would be his first letter, especially given the "C is for Cookie" song, which apparently is legally mandated to be included on one of every three Sesame Street DVDs. I had been pointing out the C's in books to Otter--but no, he's starting with the ball-like letter O.

We can live with that.

MOU: It's all in how you say it

As some of you know, Otter's version of a security blanket is a shirt of G's or mine, preferably recently worn. He especially loves the ones I wear to sleep in, which are striped and have two tags, one at the neck for the brand and one on the side for the washing instruction. We rotate them: I wear one for a day or two, then he drags it around for a couple days, naps with it, sleeps with it at night, travels with it next to him in the carseat, and so on.

Last night as I was taking my turn helping settle him to sleep, he sat up on the bed, pulled the shirt to put the washing tag at his mouth, and started chewing away. I said "you like that tag, don't you?" and he replied, in a worshipful soft voice, "tahhhg."

I know it's not a word most people think kids need to learn early, but it matters to him.

MOU (Mini-Otter-Update): Otter's latest words

Last night he said "frog" when we looked at a board book of colors with a frog for green, which I am sure he learned through reading "jump frog jump" with his Grammy Jo and with G. (That book is also how he learned "jump.")

He also said "peez" this morning while yanking on his overall strap, wanting me to take off his overalls. I think he meant please, and I can only hope that his aversion to overalls is temporary, as he owns several pairs and he looks great in them.

For what it's worth, I took off his overalls; after all, he did say "please"--I think.

Why Otter may be able to spell at a young age

We are quickly building a longer and longer list of words one cannot say around Otter without toddler-sized consequences. For example, "grapes" and "popsicle" must be spelled or coded in some way, lest the small child hear you and be inspired to spend the next half an hour making the 'COLD' or 'GRAPE' sign in perennial hope of getting some to eat.

Now, this weekend, we added a new one to the list: wagon. My parents have a lovely red two-seater wagon, one that G and my father and I all assembled a couple years ago for my nephew. It has a door and cupholders and a storage compartment in one of the seats, and when half filled (one kid) is pull-able by one adult with ease; when full (two kids), it is pullable by one adult without ease. I solved this dilemma the last time I took my son to visit my parents by offering my three and a half year old nephew the opportunity to help me pull Otter along. My nephew is still young enough that this did, in fact, sound like an opportunity to him, and even after he got discouraged from helping me pull, he didn't get back in the wagon right away, so half the trip was a half-full trip.

This past weekend, my nephew was not at the house when we got out the wagon. This was fortunate as Otter has developed a near-insatiable appetite for being pulled in the wagon, up to one end of the street, turn around, down past my parents' house to the other end of the street, back to the house, back the first end of the street, and so on. I suspect that between them, my parents made upwards of twenty-five circuits of the street.

When my father finally found this activity somewhat stale and pulled Otter and the wagon into the driveway, and opened the door of the wagon to let Otter out to go play on the mini-swing and mini-slide, Otter calmly reached over and closed the wagon door again and sat back down, clearly waiting for another ten or fifteen go-rounds.

In telling this story, we have found that we must spell the word "wagon" or risk Otter dropping whatever he is doing (including nursing) and heading straight for the door, ready for another marathon wagon session. This spelling trick will work only until Otter begins spell himself, which makes me suspect that he'll learn earlier rather than later.