4yo boy visits waterfall

automobile elephant

When Benjamin was born, Miss Angel gave him a wonderful mobile for his crib. It played Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach. Benjamin adored it.

Before he could walk, before he could even stand unsupported, he would pull himself upright in his crib and select his favorite composer: Mozart.

This afternoon, Benjamin started requesting his "automobile elephant." I had no idea what that meant. Eventually, we figured out that he meant "mobile" and not "automobile" and that he was missing the one seen here:

So I got it out of storage and set it up in his playroom for him. And he lay down beneath it and stared up at it.

And the way it's set up now, I could lie down with him and finally look up to see what he saw every night, three years ago.

Thanks, Miss Angel.

as in uffish thought we drove

Benjamin and I were stuck in traffic the other day. The boy had requested "a drive," and I had obliged. Traffic was thick on the way out of town and on the way back in.

As we sat in gridlock, Benjamin suddenly said, "Look, papa: it looks like a monster!"

Where? Where?

There!

He was pointing to the car in front of us. Between the shape of its trunk and the shape of its tail lights, it did look very much like a monster staring back at us.

Benjamin said, "It has eyes of flame."

I think that counts as his first literary allusion. He was thinking, of course, of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky":

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

Backhoe

Benjamin's favorite "tractor" is the backhoe loader:

Today, the nice man at the dump let him climb into one:

CMoR

Benjamin's first visit to CMoR, the Children's Museum of Richmond:

family seat

Benjamin goes to a preschool on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. A week and a half ago, the head of the preschool told me that she thought Benjamin was bright enough and mature enough to move to the 3-year-old class, but that he'd need to be potty trained before he could graduate from the 2-year-old class. Benjamin's interest in the potty has waxed and waned for a long time, but he showed absolutely no interest in giving up his diapers.

Yesterday they moved him into the 3-year-old class. Yesterday we canceled our diaper subscription with Amazon.com. Today was the first day I've taken him out on the town (a visit to the Discovery Museum in the morning and a park in the late afternoon) without spare diapers, a change of clothes, etc.

We even have a new "family seat" for the bathroom:


I can't believe how quick the transition was. He really wanted to move to the 3yo class. That was apparently sufficient motivation. He may not have been the oldest kid in the 2yo class, but he was certainly the tallest. He looked oldest. He's clearly the youngest in the 3yo class. We're very proud of him.

I've been proud of him at every major development — sitting up, crawling, standing, walking — but this was the first one to feel like it was "his" — like a decision and an act of will on his part. That changes the quality of my pride in his accomplishment.

- particularly proud papa

First day of... school

Benjamin started preschool on Monday. He'll be going 3 days a week. He LOVES it—particularly the playground.

I'll try to post more about it later (and add one of the not-so-great first-day-of-school pictures I took), but for now here is what his first "What I did Today" sheet said:

I ate turkey and cheese, grapes, peppers, and corn. 
[Note from Maman who packed the lunch: It wasn't corn. It was chickpeas.]

I ate graham crackers.

Other drinks/snacks I ate today were: water, juice, milk

[I'll skip the diaper info.]

At naptime I slept from 12:55 until 2:28. Notes about naptime: good nap.

Today I had fun when we:

• Had fun making a key chain.
  
• Practice[d] the planets and states.
  
• Story time
  
• Spanish time
  
• Played outside
  
• Trace[d] the letter "O."
  
• French time
  
• Bubble time
  

gone fishing

tricycle

Petting Farm

Fire Station

This morning, Benjamin took his first tour of Charlottesville's main fire station. He was most interested in the giant wheels of the fire engine.

no more crib

Last Saturday, Benjamin and Nathalie returned from Kentucky quite tired. They both looked groggy and had apparently both slept throughout the flight back.

Benjamin had slept in a borrowed pack-n-play while there, and Saturday night was his first time back in his own crib in almost a week. But rather than sleeping in Sunday morning, he awakened around 5 or 6 AM and cried endlessly. When his mother tried to calm him down, he did something he'd never done before. He climbed out of his crib.

There's the inevitable feeling of pride mixed in with all the other sources of ambivalence as I report that. Any step up the ladder of childhood development is an opportunity to celebrate, but this was one of the scariest ones for a couple of reasons:

1. climbing out of the crib does not mean climbing down safely;
   
2. to be candid, I'll admit that the crib is a handy sort of prison cell, and our beloved inmate could now escape.
   

What both reasons have in common is that we were very worried for Benjamin's safety and had lost the one place we could put him and relax knowing that he couldn't hurt himself.

When Benjamin climbed out of his crib, he started to topple head first to the hardwood floor. Fortunately Nathalie caught him. It occurred to me that the sides of his pack-n-play (see photo to the right) might be taller than the sides of his crib, but no such luck. He immediately climbed out and began to fall, head first, to the floor. This time I caught him.

We took him into bed with us, and he did sleep for maybe 45 minutes, but then it was time to get up and play, which his overwrought mother acceded to. His father, with more sleep than the rest of the family, spent the day researching options, none of which could apply to Sunday night. I ordered a crib tent (see photo to the left) but it wouldn't arrive until midweek and we needed a solution — at least a temporary solution — within the next few hours.

This is where the narrative gets told out of sequence. Back in January, I wondered when Benjamin would start to climb out of his crib. I had read not to worry about it until he was 2 years old, but I decided to be prepared. When we selected his crib 2 years ago, we picked a "3-in-1" model — one that could be converted from crib to toddler bed with an in-between stage for transition. To go from crib to bed requires only that we remove one of the sides. To do the in-between configuration, we'd have to order an extra part, a guard rail to keep baby/toddler from rolling out of bed. What I discovered in January was that our model of crib had been discontinued, and with it, the matching guard rail. So I corresponded with the parent company of the crib maker and then with a retail outlet of a sibling brand of cribs, then back and forth between them for a while to get their stories straight, since the model numbers differed between company and store, and finally paid for the guard rail (and shipping) for a different-but-similar line of cribs. Only problem was the current cribs didn't come in natural blond wood, just white or dark wood. We ordered white to go with the white accents in Benjamin's mostly blue room. Then in March (yes, 2 months later!) the store called me back and said that white had also been discontinued (!) and that all they had was dark wood. Fine, fine. Just send it along.

The piece arrived the week Benjamin and Nathalie were in Kentucky. I had stored it in the back of his closet, figuring we wouldn't need it until this summer at the earliest. What good timing that it was there.

So I spent Sunday evening converting his bed and then attaching safety locks to all his drawers. If he's going to be free to roam his room at night, we don't want him to be able to climb up onto anything he could fall off of, or to pull anything heavy over onto himself. His new prison is bigger, but (we hope) just as safe as the old one.

The first few nights, he'd come and cry at the locked door of his nursery (which is a screen door I put in 2 years ago so that we could always look in on him — and, later, so that he could look out), but now he seems to be adjusting. I suspect we'll return the crib tent, unopened.

Here are some photos of Benjamin sleeping in his new big-boy bed:

petit crapaud

At 21 months, Benjamin meets his first toad.

Benjamin's first Easter egg hunt

first time on the trampoline

Trampoline by Miss Angel. Photos by Miss Angel.

B says buh-buh-Benjamin

Benjamin has had foam rubber letters and numerals in his bath for as long as he's taken baths in the big tub — less than a year but longer than 6 months. He loves them, but has never associated the letters with sounds, and I try not to push the issue. Every once in a while, I'll try to introduce him to the idea that "The B says 'buh' like buh-buh-Benjamin." But he either laughs or ignores me and I drop it.

Tonight he grabbed the T and announced Travail! (French for "work.")

I stared at him a moment and then called to his mother, "Did you teach him that T is for Travail?" Yes, apparently she had, but he'd shown no sign of understanding her.

I was very excited. Our first hint of literacy.

Then Benjamin grabbed the Y and said something I didn't understand.

I called to Nathalie again, "What starts with Y?"

"Yaourt."

Yes! That's what he'd said. French for yogurt. I just hadn't recognized his pronunciation.

So I tried "The B says 'buh' like buh-buh-Benjamin" for the three-dozenth time — and he got it! Show him the B, get back "Benjamin."

A photo of someone else's kid (from the ad for this toy)

And that's not all. He can reliably point to the M and say "M-M-Maman," the P and say "puh-puh-Papa," the L and say "L-L-L-Lutece," and the G for "G-G-G-Gramma." Not just once or twice, but over and over again, reliably, never getting any of them wrong. The only "mistake" was to turn to the letter V, stuck to the tile wall behind him, and announce "Yaourt." Honestly, the V and Y look very similar in this set. I showed him the two letters next to each other. I didn't tell him what sound V makes. I just emphasized that it was the Y that says Y-Y-Yaourt.

It was a bit dreamlike, this experience of suddenly having the boy be able to associate letters and words, after all those fruitless (but very casual, low-pressure) earlier attempts.

Nathalie says they'll start doing phonics exercises tomorrow.

-extra proud papa

fun milestone

If we didn't have friends with older toddlers, I wouldn't have even known to look for this milestone:

As of this weekend, Benjamin can climb, unassisted, into his high chair. It's really amazing to watch, and the kid looks good with a beaming smile of pride once he's done.

- papa

verbs

Benjamin's first definite sentence, complete with verb:

"Benja mange Cheerios."

First he did his S.O.V. thing — "Benja Cheerios mange" — but his mother modeled the correct order and he repeated her and stuck with that.

For completely correct French, he still needs an article: "Benja mange des Cheerios." But we're not worrying about articles or prepositions yet. I'm must happy to see verbs emerging.

- papa

PS Actually, he is starting to develop prepositions: he's gone from mo' (more) to plus (French for "more," pronounced "plooce") to plus de, as in "Plus de travail, Maman!" (Which means "More work, mom!" It's what I just overheard him telling his mother outside. Apparently he was pointing to a snow shovel.)

back from the coastal south

We're back from an oceanside Thanksgiving spent with both grandmothers in South Carolina.

(No, none of us is from South Carolina, but that's nevertheless where we gathered by the ocean.)

Benjamin got to put his toes into the Atlantic for the first time. He was also in a richer bilingual environment than he's used to, because there were more people speaking each language, or sometimes both languages.

Here are his words from the past week:

159. ketchup
160. papier (paper)
161. ça (this, that, as in "mo' ça!" — meaning "give me more of that")
162. Josh (Miss Angel's husband)
163. Mick (Miss Angel's youngest)
164. apple
165. coucou (peakaboo, pronounced like the cuckoo bird)
166. couvercle (cover)
167. tache (stain)
168. ceiling (pronounced "see" or "seal" and referring only to ceiling fans)
169. mouche (fly)
170. bounce
171. baiser (kiss)
172. douche (shower)
173. picture (as in photo)
174. dehors (outside)
175. keys
176. packing
177. clock (pronounced without the L, unfortunately)
178. nounours (teddy bear, pronounced "noorsh")
179. piano
180. poireau (leek)
181. computer (pronounced 'puter)

My favorite of his new words are "papier" and "packing" because of how he demonstrated that he knows their meaning.

Papier: After Nathalie demonstrated the French word for "paper" (we went through a lot of paper products this past week) Benjamin walked over to a cardboard box and said, "Boîte papier!"

Packing: Benjamin is at a stage where he wants both his parents around all the time. If I'm not there, he apparently says "papa" a lot. When he's with me but not Nathalie, he spends the whole time asking after maman, plaintively.

While we were getting ready to leave South Carolina yesterday morning, Nathalie needed me to keep the boy occupied while she packed (because when he's around for this activity, he spends the whole time undoing everything his mother does).

So he kept asking "Maman?" to which I would at first reply, "Maman's packing. She's packing her bags."

Then when Nathalie took a load of luggage down to the parking level, I changed the answer to "Maman's packing the car."

Then when it was my turn to pack bags and load the car, Benjamin was asking his mother, "Papa?" And she replied "Papa fait sa valise," at which point Benjamin turned to my mother and explained in English, "Papa packing."

- papa

why I need to trust the boy more

After I had posted his new words last night, Benjamin used a few more: the French word for turkey, both masculine and feminine, and both French and English words for juice.

Today, while I was raking leaves, Benjamin pointed to my rake and said balai (broom). He knows the correct French word, rateau, so his mother said, no you know what this is called. We both expected him to reply rateau, but he said "rake" in English.

And apparently, while mother and son were in the car this afternoon, Benjamin said, slowly, "Papa … rateau … feuilles. (Papa rake leaves.)

155. rake
156. placard (closet, cabinet)
157. monsieur (sir, mister, man)
158. bagel (pronounced more like "boggle")

Tonight's bath was an even more wonderful demonstration of Benjamin's growing ability to communicate. At first I ran it too cold, so I added some extra hot water before putting him in. Not only did Benjamin use yesterday's new word, "hot," but he was specific: "hot bath!"

About 10 minutes later, he stood up and wouldn't sit down again. I gave him to the count of 3 to sit down and when he didn't, I took him out of the bath, and explained that if he wanted to go back in, he'd have to sit down. He kept saying, "no." He didn't sound contrary, but he was definitely disagreeing with me about something. I tested our understanding by putting him back in the bath, telling him to sit, but he stiffened his legs and shook his head no, then looked at me and did the sign for "change" as in changing diapers. I didn't know what to make of that, so I just called his mother to bring a towel and retrieve him. The bath was over early. A minute later, as I was emptying the tub and putting away bath toys, I heard his mother call from the other room that Benjamin was peeing in his potty for the first time!

Sonofagun, so that's what he was trying to tell me. The boy needed to pee and he didn't want to do it in his bath.

(I should say that sitting on the potty and pretending to pee is a nightly routine before the bath, so he's familiar with the potty and associates it with at least saying "pee pee" but he's never actually peed in his potty before tonight.)

We were so proud. We did a big congratulatory ceremony of bringing the pot from his bedroom to the bathroom so we could pour it out and flush it for the first time.

- proud papa

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