Halloween 2009

For Halloween, Peter was Percy (Thomas The Tank Engine's best friend). His costume was lovingly and painstakingly crafted by hand by his mommy (and I helped out a little, too). It was probably about 42 degrees out when Peter hit the street to get his share of loot, and we were out for about an hour. He got many compliments on the costume, too the point where some people told us he was getting extra for being so cute.

After getting home, he was more than happy to hand out candy to the other kids still trick or treating. He would get very excited when he saw some coming up the driveway and would shout "kids!" Then he'd hustle to the door with the basket of candy and help dole out the goods. And for the most part Halloween passed with "no scary."

Halloween Pix

Pre-Halloween Pix

No news here

So anyway, we had to take Peter into the shop for servicing ten days ago. No story there.

 

…Fine, fine, I will elucidate. Peter has an under bite, and it caused his front bottom teeth to essentially scrape away the enamel on the front of his upper teeth, leading to tooth decay and cavities. To make matters worse, he likes getting his teeth brushed about as much as he likes wearing a coat these days (i.e. not much), and so he’s always made tooth brushing time a matter of a wrestling match. Because of that, he also got a couple molars that had problems, too. So, his dentist said we could either bring him into the dentist’s office many times, strap him onto a board and wrap him up like a little mummy so he couldn’t kick and scream like he’s inclined to do (all while being on laughing gas) or we could take him to Children’s Hospital where he’d be put under and they’d do the work all at once.  We decided to go with the hospital.

 

Technically, the experience at the hospital was pretty good, aside from Peter coming down from the anesthesia in an exceptionally aggravated and delirious state. They said that’s not uncommon, but even if it’s ordinary it’s not fun to go through.

 

Getting the preapproval from the insurance companies before hand was nightmarish, though. I don’t see how anyone can be against government involvement in health insurance after all the time wasted talking to people who couldn’t help me or even look up what I was talking about. I went through layer upon layer of useless bureaucracy and was transferred around without explanation or announcement 3 or 4 times each call before I could talk to someone who knew how to find out what I needed. I even talked to one guy who apparently had no access to the original request tell me it wouldn’t be covered because of reason A, B and C (and needless to say, Peter was qualified under each A, B and C, so why was this knob giving me his unqualified opinion?). We did get the approval sent out at about 4:15 the day before the procedure, but it took them a month to do even that. I’d take the Zimbabwean government taking over rather than keeping the status quo, because at least I’d know I just need to bribe someone to get something done.

 

Peter’s post-procedure recovery seemed to be going ok until he pretty much passed out on his mom’s lap two nights later. He stared running a fever that was getting to the 101-102 degree range. We talked to the hospital and also his dentist, and they said that if he was going to have an adverse reaction to the anesthesia that it would have occurred on Friday night or early Saturday, so whatever he had was likely something else. His fever did come down on Monday, and he had lingering symptoms until about Friday morning, including congestion and coughing. We came to the conclusion that he has the flu, probably (hopefully) the swine variety. If that’s as bad as it got for him then we’re pretty happy because he should be immune now. Over the weekend he would cough in the morning so we tried to limit his exposure to others, but even that is gone now. He is still a little whiny, though. Partly because he just doesn’t nap much at all on the weekends and so winds up burned out come Monday, and partly because he’s a toddler asserting control any way he can, and this is the method du jour. He’ll get over it. Sooner is better than later, though.

 

In other news, I carved his pumpkin the other night. He wanted Elmo, so I gave him Elmo. We have three other pumpkins to carve. He said he wants those to be Elmo, too. I am opposed to that, quite frankly. Especially my long tall pumpkin, that looks kind of like a tall, orange zucchini. That one is mine. I found it. I hauled it around that pumpkin patch (well, I hauled all 4 of them, and I killed my back and arms on the two gigantic ones – one now being Elmo) and it is Daddy’s Precious Pumpkin. I know Peter thinks everything is his, but that one is Daddy’s assertion of parental individuality and authority. But I shall adhere to Peter’s new Halloween mantra: “No scary.” I just have to figure out what to do with it.

The Ghost of Halloweens Past

I went down to the basement to look for Autumn shoes for Mommy now that Canada has exported their weather to us, and found Peter's first Halloween costume (but not the shoes). Peter wanted to put it on immediately, and then started asking for Halloween candy. He knows how the game is played.

Photos

Above, Peter tries on his sister's infant clothes.

And below, Elana gives Peter a smack.

Some More Pix

Some Pix

I Was Never Tardy In School

I know I haven’t posted anything since Jimmy Carter was president (or maybe it just seems that way), but I have many good excuses. So select the one you like and run with it:

 

1.         I was busy.

2.         I was really busy.

3.         Boy, was I busy!

4.         Can’t talk – busy!

5.         Busy!

6.         My bookie had my fingers broken for failure to pay up on my bad bets, so I couldn’t type anything.

7.         I have a blog?

8.         Summertime! And the living is eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeazayyyyy!

9.         Peter has been sitting quietly in a corner, reading Chaucer, Faulkner, and Danielle Steele ever since June, and has therefore been boring.

10.        The internet was busted so I couldn’t do nuthin’.

 

 

And for anyone who doesn't know, Peter's going to be a big brother in about 4-5 months. We just found out today that he will have a little sister (well, we can't say that with 100% certainty, but we did not see any twigs or berries in the ultrasound this morning. There could have been some hiding going on, but we doubt it). Peter was pretty adamant about preferring to have a puppy instead of a baby at first, but now he's come around 180 degrees and is now obsessed with Baby.

 

I had started another blog way back when we found out about the baby so I could record what was going on in the early stages of the pregnancy, which I failed to do in this one. I started this one what, two or three months before the due date? I wasn't going to let that happen again. Except for the part about having about 18 minutes of free time all summer. Didn't see that coming. Well, I'll just dump everything in this blog now, you know, every three months or so...

 

Ok, maybe not that intermittent, but I can't guaranty anything. I'll see what I can do.

 

Oh, and Peter's doing fine. Talking a lot, running around, doing little boy stuff. I'll ask him to do something entertaining one of these days so I can write something about it. Or forget to...

The Long Short Weekend

Saturday morning we hit the road with Grammie for a trip to Green Bay, with the National Railroad Museum being the ultimate destination. The Day Out With Thomas tour was in town, and there was no way we were going to let that go by without taking Peter there.

 

Now, it has been “unseasonably cool” here in Southeastern Wisconsin for the past 3 or 4 weeks. (When the high temperature in June is something like 15 degrees below average the weather people will say “unseasonably cool.” In December, they call it a cold snap or something like that. Can we call it a cold wave if we would call 15 degrees above average a heat wave?) The weather in Green Bay was as close to perfect as you could get, temperatures in the low-to-mid 70s, pleasant breezes, sunny. There were a bunch of cottonwood trees around the museum grounds, though, so there we seed puffs floating around most of the time, too. It was your typical Green Bay snow shower, but with a different kind of snow.

 

We got there about an hour and a half before the scheduled ride on the train. And might I add that parking was free? Chicago, you could learn something from that. Seriously. Anyhow, we got there about 10:45 or so, maybe 11:00 by the time we were actually inside the grounds. Peter was delighted, to say the least. Besides the life-sized Thomas taking people for trips around the museum, there were a bunch of retired engines and passenger cars. And of course a gift shop, which was the first thing Peter ran to. After getting him out of the gift shop tent, we took him to see the big engines.  He liked that, but at the same time they were gigantic, black, dirty things that didn’t bring to mind the colorful happy engines one would find on the Island of Sodor, so he was a little intimidated, too.

 

There was also a wooden observation tower on the grounds, and I carried Peter all the way to the top, about 50 feet up. Once at the top we waved for Mommy and Grammie, and then Peter headed right back to the stairs, which was just as well.

 

Soon enough we were in line for the train ride with Thomas. We waited about 20 minutes in line, and if we had gotten to the line about a minute earlier we could have fit into the open-air car. Instead we sat in the 1917 passenger coach named Josephine, which I think turned out better than being on the open air car. Especially when the fluff from the trees really started clogging up the air. Peter liked the train ride, and he also liked the kettle corn that he was munching on for most of the trip. He was very well behaved, unlike some of the other kids there, and really soaked in the experience of the ride. He probably could have stayed on the train all afternoon, but he understood when it was time to get off.

 

After the ride we went inside the museum building for the first time. Peter liked the models running on the tracks. Making our way to the back of the building we found Sir Topham Hatt, and Peter got in line with Mommy to get his picture taken. When it came time for the little boy in front of Peter to go up to Hatty he decided it wasn’t really a good idea, and cried up a little storm. Not Peter.  He went up there with Mom and posed like it was no problem. Once that was done he took off like a shot to go see the set-up of model trains with Thomas, Percy, Gordon, James, Toby, and pretty much every engine in the Thomas universe.  He checked them out for a while and then he agreed with the rest of us that it was a good time to get something to eat.

 

We went to a restaurant a few blocks away and dined well.  Peter enjoyed drinking a lot of Mommy’s root beer, and also liked dipping his fries in the tartar sauce that came with his fish fry. He ignored the fish for the most part, but then he did drink a lot of the root beer when we told him it could give him a belly ache. We were sitting outside at lunch, and next to the restaurant was a private marina. When we were done Peter wanted to see the boats (which he calls “dips” for some reason we aren’t sure of). After we saw the boats we loaded him into the car and took off for the amusement park at Bay Beach. But within about 2 minutes Peter was passed out in his seat. It was around 4:00 at that time, so we decided the park could wait for another visit. Peter slept in the car for about an hour before waking up in time for me to pull into a McDonalds on the drive back so I could inject some caffeine into me. Peter ordered a 49¢ cone.

 

After we got back home Grammie was packing up to leave. When Peter saw her pulling out of the driveway he got very upset, so I brought him inside and we watched some Thomas DVDs to take his mind off things and decompress.

 

Sunday (yesterday) wound up being another beautiful day, and Peter was outside playing with the kids next door from about 11:00 AM to 4:30 in the afternoon. Inflatable pools were inflated and splashed in while parents did yard work. Again, Peter lit the candles from both ends and played harder than anyone. After we brought him in he went down for a nap, but he slept for maybe 45 minutes before getting up. After he got up he just sat on the sofa with us and chilled out with his blanket.

 

So it was another action-packed weekend for Peter, and come Monday morning we needed heavy duty machinery to get him out of bed. He seems to know that other kids are on summer vacation, so he’s got that sleeping-in mentality.  I would have liked that this morning…

 

Long time, no post

Peter is 2 now. Pictures of his birthday will be posted “soon.”

 

Anyway, Peter is making great strides in his development lately. He is showing a lot more maturity (relatively) these days, and is in the midst of the full-fledged verbal explosion.

 

We took him to get his hair cut on Saturday, and the times we’ve done that before have been less than pleasurable.  Each time there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Not this time. He sat patiently and munched on fruit snacks. He didn’t fidget much, and his eyes stayed dry the whole time. He was calm like that when we took him to the doctor’s office last month, too, so it’s not like it was just a one time event.

 

He went to church Sunday morning surrounded by a large number of other kids, and he sat quietly or played by himself for the bulk of the mass. The past several months had seen him being quite the handful in situations like that, but not this time.

 

He’s also saying new words every day now. This morning he said “blueberries.” He’s even constructed some basic sentences like “hit the ball.” He’s doing a lot of parroting. Yesterday his mom said something was fast, and then he said “fast” a bunch of times.  He hasn’t mastered all the sounds of spoken English yet, but he’s working on it. He still says “fra fra” but he will also say “choo choo” and a recognizable version of “railroad.”

 

Another sign of the new maturity is the honesty, or at least self-awareness he displays. He never would admit to being tired before, but now when I ask him if he’s tired he’ll actually think about it and admit “yeah,” he is tired when he is. Does he maybe want a nap? “…….yeah.”

 

I wouldn’t mind a nap…

 

Almost a Deuce

In a matter of days, Peter will be two years old. Two years ago today we were trying to get Peter to turn upside down by holding a couple of lit cigars against Mommy’s toes. That sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. Well, the cigars part is inaccurate, but it was still burning stuff.

 

It didn’t work and Peter stayed breech despite our best efforts. After living with him for these past couple years I know why: he didn’t want to. End of story. He’s strong-willed, smart, and strong. My hunch is he figured out while in the womb that he preferred having his head up, and that last week he figured out how to position his body in such a way that he could stay like that as long as he wanted.  I remember that first day with him, when he had his eyes open and moving around, and he could lift his head on his own. That was a clever little strong guy who had mastered his environment.

 

Now if I had a time machine and could go back two years to suggest a way get him to flip over, I’d tell us to play Thomas videos at Mommy’s feet so he’d turn to check them out. Of course, that would work today. But back then he had dug in his heels (literally, pretty much) and was happy being where he was. If we asked Peter to stop doing something he liked so he could do something else he doesn’t know about, well, let’s just say he’d decline. Some things don’t change.

 

So much is different now about Peter, but really it’s more like our understanding of him that has changed instead of him. He’s really pretty consistent. We’re just kind of slow in understanding him in some ways. And, of course, by “we” I mean me.  

At The Movies With Peter & Dad

Peter, Daddy’s watching that Food Network cake decorating competition. Why are you putting this DVD in my hand? You want to watch it every day, and Mommy can recite the whole thing verbatim now. Ok, fine, we’ll watch it again, but we’re going to do a little work afterwards, ok?

Thomas And The Magic Railroad (2000)
Reviewed by Peter & Peter’s Dad


Peter: Fra! Fra!

Peter’s Dad: Thomas And The Magic Railroad is a feature-length film based on Thomas the Tank Engine, and its American showcase program, Shining Time Station. It was directed by Britt Allcroft, the producer of the Thomas television programs. I think I’ll repeat that for emphasis, she is the producer of the Thomas programs. Directing. Ok? Good. So it stars Alec Baldwin, Peter Fonda, and Mara Wilson. Peter?

Peter: Fraaaa!

Peter’s Dad: That’s right Peter, the trains were the real stars of the movie. Well, I mean, they should be, but they really aren’t featured as much as one would like. Instead, it’s heavy on the people.

The story deals with Mr. Conductor (Baldwin) being called to the Island of Sodor to take the place of a vacationing Sir Topham Hatt. Also returning to the island is Diesel 10, even though he was a new creation specifically for the film (so how is he returning?). Mr. Conductor travels between his usual home of Shining Time Station and the Island of Sodor via gold dust. He blows his whistle, and gold dust flutters all over him, which somehow causes him to teleport to Sodor. Or maybe he folds space like in Dune. Anyway, he goes tweet and he winds up elsewhere. We learn that his gold dust is running out and he needs to figure out how to get more.

Meanwhile, the granddaughter (Wilson) of Burnett Stone (Fonda) is sent out from The Big City by her very pregnant mother to spend some time with Grandpa. Burnett Stone has been keeping a secret for many years that weighs heavily on his soul. Now, I don’t know who is ultimately to blame, but Peter Fonda’s performance can be summed up like this: lobotomized. No, that’s not his secret, but it would explain a lot if it were. No, this character is about as dynamic as a frozen meatloaf sitting out on a counter, thawing slowly. Has it been in the freezer too long? Does it have freezer burn? Did it smell like that when it first went into the freezer? Maybe you should just have that can of ravioli, instead. Anyway, should I blame Fonda or the director who is really a producer? For all I know, Peter Fonda is a thespian of the highest caliber who got beaten down by a director who just doesn’t understand artists. He could also be less stimulating than a sheet of ¼ inch plywood and the director did a bang-up job of making him as perky as he’s ever been in his life.

Peter, you still with me?

Peter: No noooo!

Peter’s Dad: Ok. Peter, is Gordon in the movie?

Peter: Yah! Go-go!

Peter’s Dad: Good! Does Gordon do much in it?

Peter: Noooooo…

Peter’s Dad: That’s right, he doesn’t. Do you want to go have a cookie?

Peter: Yah! Cook-ah!

Peter’s Dad: Ok, you can go get one in the kitchen.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Alec Baldwin is the highlight of the film. It’s obvious that he likes doing a role for children and it really suits him well. He’s almost the opposite extreme of Peter Fonda, dynamic and interesting. Mara Wilson was kind of famous at the time the movie came out, because she was in Beaches or some other chick flick. Well, not Beaches, maybe Prince of Tides. You know, something Streisandy. Wasn’t she? Well, she wasn’t nobody, but… Oh man, I’m going to say mean things about a kid. Ok, it wasn’t her. It was the director who is really a producer. There, let’s leave it at that.

Peter’s Mom read a book that said eating corn is bad for cows because their stomachs aren’t supposed to be eating it, and it can cause e-coli contamination and other nasties. The screenplay of this movie could cause your average heifer to keel over dead from one page. Alright, maybe it’s not that bad, but whenever I’ve edited the writing of others’ I always advise them to avoid repetition of certain idioms or phrases. If – Peter, stay in the kitchen! – you took a shot for every time “Little engine’s can do big things” or “This is our/your Shining Time” is said, you’d be drunker than Mayberry’s Otis on his biggest bender.

On the whole, it is an entertaining film, even with the flaws. Baldwin is fun. The trains, when they’re around, are fun. Even Peter Fonda does a great job if you tell yourself that he’s actually a leftover zombie from Night of the Living Dead who is slow and emotionless, but he looks great!

Right Peter?

Peter: Fra!

Non, Nein, Nyet, Nuh Uh

And so it has come, the era of No. Last week, Peter started saying no clearly and firmly. He had always relied on the simple head shake before, but now he can just say no. And so he does. It was nice last week when we'd get just a single no, but now he's on to the no-no-no-no-no-no-no response. He doesn't even need to be asked a question for that to come out.

 

I thought he might be saying it just for the sake of saying it, so I tested him.

 

"Peter, do you want to change your diaper?"

 

No.

 

"Do you want to go night-night?"

 

No.

 

"Do you want to take a bath?"

 

No.

 

"Do you want to have some ice cream?"

 

Yeah!

 

 

 

 

He's probably at the doorway to the toddler verbal explosion. He is saying a lot more, but he's working on making the things he says clearer. Case in point: I put him in his car seat last week, and afterwards said "I love you, Peter." He then said back to me "ah lff" and smiled. He also has been saying "doo" for juice, but him mom coaxed a "joo" out of him after several attempts.

 

This afternoon he called me at work. I picked up the phone and before I could even say hello he shouted “Da Da!” After recovering my hearing, I asked him if he was being a good boy. “Yeah!” I asked if he was playing. “Yeah!” I asked if he was playing with Mommy. “Yeah!” I asked if Mommy was being good. Then there was a pause. “Yeah.” I guess I’ll have to make sure he isn’t covering something up for her when I get home.

 

And I would be remiss if I did not let you know that I have had the Thomas and Friends theme song stuck in my head most of the day. It’s not the most pleasant experience.

Before & After

Pix

Pix

Prodigious

I know I’m slacking in putting up stuff here, but I’ve been busy. Doing… stuff. Y’know.

 

Anyhow, I just want to take a moment here to state for the record that as of March 5th 2009, at age 22 months and 2 days, Peter can identify numbers. Yes, thanks to the digits on the sides of the engines of Thomas and his friends, Peter knows the numbers. He already can point out the difference between a steam engine as opposed to a diesel, and in his Richard Scarry picture book he can point to a car, truck, bus or whatever when asked (and he’ll always point to a duck when he sees one, no matter where we are). But this morning I decided to ask if he could point to the number 4 on Gordon’s coal tender, and he pointed right at it. He went on to point to the number 3 on Henry’s coal tender, the number 1 on the side of Thomas, and then later he pointed to the 6 on both sides of his toy Percy.

 

Next: long division.

 

 

Oh, and we brought our car in for an all-day servicing this morning, and got a loaner from the dealership while Old Blue is getting pretty much everything replaced. The loaner was a small, black, sporty sedan. Peter did not care for it at all, and he let us know. But we’ll have our car back tomorrow morning, so it shouldn’t be so bad. I hope...

But How Does Lowly Worm Drive The Apple Car Without Arms?

As a parent, I want to make sure that Peter develops his own taste in things. I don’t want to force my likes or dislikes on him. I don’t want to try to get him to love the things I loved just to validate my own childhood attitudes. I’m totally groovy with him digging his own thang. Unless he got hooked on The Wiggles. But anyway…

 

I do have a slight exception to the above statement. I did import one thing from my childhood to see if he’d like it: Richard Scarry. I think when he was just an infant I picked up a copy of Richard Scarry’s Best Story Book Ever, which is a big collection of various little Golden Books anthologized into one big volume. Now at the time I got it he was too young to get into it much, but it managed to stay close to him. And now, at 21 months old, it has become An Important Part Of His Life (sweet!). Almost every night before he goes to bed he wants to go through the book, usually to find his favorite part: the trains. The train section has drawings of a bunch of engines over the years, from the first steam engines up to a relatively modern Amtrak type car. But he’ll grab the book for himself, go through a bunch of pages, get to the trains (then point and chat to us) and then go back to shuffling through the pages. Then he’s ready for night-night.

 

When I was a kid I would do pretty much the same thing with those books. There was something almost hypnotic about the drawings. Something in the cats in lederhosen that made me just stare and appreciate it. Something in the style of architecture that looked like it was in Amsterdam, yet other things that looked as familiar as looking in the mirror. I could look at a single page of drawings and words with more intense appreciation than if I had the Mona Lisa set in front of me. And now I see Peter doing the same thing. Maybe it’s hereditary.

 

 

In other news & notes, Peter had something this weekend. He wasn’t really sick or anything, but his nose was generating copious amounts of snot, which he would sneeze up for several hours after getting up both Saturday and Sunday. He was mostly ok in the afternoons thanks to his being upright. But that was the only symptom he displayed. And then he was perfectly fine this morning. Go figure.

 

Saturday was Valentine’s Day, and he had dinner with his Grammy while his Mom & Dad trudged out alone to a fancy restaurant without him for the first time since before he was born. I’m sure it would have been much more fun to dine with those two, but we, uh, were forced to go out by, uh, the KGB. Or something. Yeah.

 

This weekend coming up is the now-annual trip to the water park hotel in Sheboygan. I’m sure Peter will look like a prune come Sunday afternoon.

February Update

We have Peter in a toddler Suzuki music class that started a few weeks back, every Saturday morning for 45 minutes. He’s definitely not used to the environment, as it’s a group of about 6 little kids from about 6 months in age to maybe 3 years. The music part of the class is pretty rudimentary, primarily sing-song-y nursery rhymes and stuff like that, which you’d think is a pretty standard thing to do. There is some instrumentation, like a xylophone, a glockenspiel, a drum, some little eggs filed with beads that are like maracas without handles. Peter likes the instruments, but he’s not really into the songs so much. More than anything it bores him. Not that he doesn’t care for music, but his appreciation and understanding of music is a lot more developed than sitting in a circle clapping hands. The class this past weekend was relocated to a school that was acting as host for an area-wide Suzuki workshop, with what seemed like every adolescent violinist in a 50 mile radius packed in there. Peter heard them and wanted to go hang with them instead of doing the simplistic stuff we had brought him there to do.

 

The problem, if I can call it that, is that Peter has developed taste in music. I’m not going to say it’s good taste or bad taste, but it’s his own and he likes what he likes. The music he likes is the kind that moves him. Literally. If a song comes on and he likes it he’ll start dancing, or he’ll run to my leg as fast as he can and demand that I pick him up and bounce him rhythmically. Actually, sometimes I only need to say the word “dance” and he’ll zip over to my leg and want to go up. But he has become picking in the music he wants to dance to. He likes funk and some rap, and he’s recently discovered techno. However, no matter which style of music it is, if he doesn’t care for the song he’ll furrow his brow and shake his head emphatically. I have somehow taught him The Hustle (without the aid of the song, he doesn’t seem to care for the old disco sound), and sometimes if we say “Peter, do The Hustle” his fists start orbiting each other for a couple seconds.

 

It’s not just the usual suspects that will get him dancing, though. Yesterday in church, he started doing a slow interpretive dance to the Psalm. And we’ve seen him do a version of ballet to classical music. And I would be remiss to omit that while Peter loves all things Thomas, the only things he’s ever watched on TV without losing his attention through the entire program is Classical Baby. After every segment in Classical Baby he claps excitedly. So if we thought that by signing him up for the class we’d be teaching him music appreciation, he’s showing us that we’re way behind him in that department.

 

Going back to him doing The Hustle, we’ve learned that his language skills are pretty sharp, because he learned to associate that move with the words “The Hustle” after me saying it only once. And that’s not the only thing he’s been picking up so fast. Peter’s Mom and I now find ourselves S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G out words in his presence a lot now in case he hears them. Like if we were to discuss taking out for something he’d like, we would have to say something like “hey, there’s a T-H-O-M-A-S event in Green Bay in June…” If I had actually said “Thomas” within earshot of El Pedro, he would be all over me like a hungry doberman on pizza delivery guy. And it’s a little disconcerting, too, because it’s obvious that he knows more than he’s letting on, so we find ourselves spelling out lots of things, just to be sure. S-O-M-E-T-I-M-E-S W-H-O-L-E S-E-N-T-E-N-C-E-S.

 

His vocabulary is larger, but understanding him can be challenging. He has some made-up words he likes to repeat, like “pitchigo/ditchigo/bitchigo” (choose the starting letter of your choice, Peter does). Another thing he does is combine words, like how he’ll fuse good and wow into “guhwaaah.” He’s been working on making the TR sound, like at the beginning of truck, so he’ll usually start out with “T… t… tr… truck.” He has a pretty pronounced under bite (although, it is quite handsome, I must say), so I wonder if it’s having an effect on his attempts at speaking. Then again, he’s speaking in complete sentences, even if it’s only understandable to him.

 

Other random Peter things:

-          He’s a backseat driver. If we don’t go the way he wants us to go he complains. Primarily on the highway. I can understand him wanting to get off at the exit that normally goes to his Grammy’s house or Aunt Trucker’s (or Bayshore, for that matter), but I’m at a loss for why he gets upset if we don’t get off at the Southbound exit at North Avenue on I-43.

-          He loves the Domes. Mainly because of the train exhibit there now, but he also loves the jungle dome (especially the waterfall). He’s been there 3 times in about a month already.

-          He’s also in a Montessori class with his Mom on Tuesday mornings. He is learning to focus on doing one thing at a time. Tomorrow is his 3rd time there, so I should be able to report more things about it as it goes along.

-          Pitchigowaaah!

-          Peter loves giving me backrubs, by climbing on my back as I’m lying down, and then slamming into my back repeatedly with his butt. It feels… great. Yeah. Uh, great.

Peter The Tank Engine

Meet Thomas, Peter’s new obsession. Thomas has been around for a long time, but Peter hasn’t, so it’s all very new and exciting to him. A day or so ago I would have thought “obsession” was a strong word for Peter’s interest, but last night he wouldn’t sit in his high chair for dinner without having his Thomas toy with him (and then he fed it, too) and he also refused to let go of the toy when being put to bed. At least 20 times a day, Peter will hum the “toot-toot” whistle noise that plays during the Thomas videos, usually when he’s playing with one of his many train toys.

His Granny got him a couple DVDs of Thomas for Christmas, and it’s fair to say that he likes them a lot. He knows where they are most of the time, and will emphatically ask for them whenever the mood suits him. I know it will probably pass, but the DVDs just cycle through about 6 stories repeatedly, so if you leave it playing it could literally loop the stories over and over until we lose power to the house. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but since it’s a kids’ video it has nice little sing-along songs for the kids to join in on the merriment. Kids’ songs that, if played over and over even just a few times, get lodged in a Dad’s head much like a stalactite dropping from a cavern’s ceiling, piercing the unsuspecting visitor’s cranium. Those songs are also sung by British kids, even when everything else is dubbed by American voices. I’m expecting The Boy to start emulating those kids and speaking like a little Nigel instead of Peter. He’ll probably be using British usage of the language, too, like saying he’s “cross” instead of angry. Then he’ll want all his food boiled to within an inch of total blandness. And kippers. He’ll want them, too.

And did I mention he has a Thomas toothbrush, too? Plays music, 2 minutes worth. And you can’t shut it off.

I don’t want to sound like I don’t like Thomas, I do. It’s a nice little entertainment for kids that doesn’t involve glamorized violence or overt marketing (buuut, if you need some merchandise…). There is, however, and inverted dosing scale that needs to be adhered to, whereby the bigger you are, the smaller your healthy allowance is. Peter, small guy that he is, can take a whole day’s worth of looping Thomas stories and suffer no ill effects. Me being a big guy, I start twitching uncontrollably after an hour.

Now, as parents, we will keep an eye open at all times for anything Thomas, so that we can lavish him with all the Thomasalia he could ever want. And then, when we hit critical mass, he will turn his back on Thomas and all the tons of stuff we got him. I understand how the game is played. Toot-toot.