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.