Count on Eddie

The other day, the paper talked about 100,000 people doing something. I wanted to impress on Eddie that this was a big number. "Wow! That's a lot of people," I said. "Can you count that high?"

"Yeah," he said. "Oh yeah." He nodded.

"Really?" I said. "Let's hear it, then."

He turned to his mother and said "Mamma, start counting."


He recently started asking us what we're doing, all the time, by saying "Papa doing?" or "Mamma doing?" or so on. In the past couple of days, he's hit on asking "Eddie doing?" I guess he's perplexed himself! Sometimes he seems to enjoy trying to stump us with this question: He will walk in, holding his arms in front of him with his fingers all twisted into a weird shape, and ask "Eddie doing?"

You got me, kid!


It seems like—even more than usual—all he wants to do these days is have us read books to him. He has to be enticed into playing with his toys (his blocks, or trains, or trucks); otherwise, he just gets us to read him books.
Well, just two years till we can enroll him in youth hockey.

Knock knock

One of the ineffable joys of parenthood is, when you are sitting on the toilet, to have someone burst into the bathroom and proclaim "POOP!"

Well, today I was in the bathroom, and (inexplicably) I had locked the door. Eddie came along and, finding the door locked, starting knocking, then said "Knock knock."

Papa: "Who's there?"

Eddie: "Boo."

Papa: "Boo who?"

Eddie: "Don't cry!"

Papa: "Ha ha ha."

Eddie: (knocks again) "Knock knock."

Papa: "Who's there?"

Eddie: "Boo."

Papa:  "Boo who?"

Eddie: "OPEN DOOR!"

Literacy

Eddie is starting to be able to recognize his name. He can recognize a few letters, especially O and I, and when we write out the letters E-D-D-I-E, he says "Eddie!"

Lately he is very excited to read stories about bears. He points at our bookshelf and requests "Bears, bears." If we don't act quickly, he will pull out one of our adult books and assert that it is about bears. (Even though we cleared out the lower shelves, he can reach a lot of our books now.) We don't have too many books about bears, so sometimes we read one about something else. Then he seems to say "That was pretty good—but no bears. Two stars."

Today Mommy sat in the chair at the end of the table, which we don't usually use. But when Nonno visits, he uses that chair. Eddie remembers this—when Mommy sat there, he said "Nonno's chair! Nonno's chair!" Then he went to the other chairs and reminded us how they are supposed to go: "Mommy's chair, Eddie's chair, Papa's chair."

Speaking of relatives, Eddie has been talking about Uncle Bo even since our trip. His first words of the new year were "Uncle Bo, Uncle Bo." Sometimes he uses his little wooden phone to call Uncle Bo and tell him about the day.

Talk

The other night, Eddie was in the bath, walking his ducky around the edge of the tub, saying "Quack quack quack". He got to where Mommy's feet were up on the tub and said "No, Mommy! No, Mommy!" The duck could not get by the feet! After some persuasion, Mommy moved her feet back so that the duck had room to get by, but Eddie still wanted them gone. Daddy explained that the duck could get by now, and they could share the road. The duck decided to try it and quack-quacked by, but after this successful experiment, Eddie decided the feet had to go anyway, so Mommy moved them back on to her seat. Then the duck happily quacked all the way around the tub. But when he got back to where Mommy was, with her feet back on the seat completely off the tub, again we had "No, Mommy!" Does the duck's insatiable demand for foot-free space know no bounds?

Yesterday, we were looking at some animal magnets and naming the animals, and whether we had ever met one. Daddy mentioned that we saw a goat pooping in Bolzano once. Then when we were going back through the animals, Eddie said "Goat poops." Well-remembered! We agreed and pointed out that all animals poop. Then Eddie went through and (all on his own) described the habits of all the animals: "Horse poops. . . Duck poops. . . Turtle poops. . . "

In the bath again, Eddie had a fish, and for some reason we were talking about its hair. I asked if the fish had hair, and Eddie said "No." So I asked if Eddie has hair, and he said "Yes." I asked if Mommy had hair, and he said "Yes." Then I asked if Daddy has hair, and he said "Don't cry."

Ouch! Well, I'll try. . .

Home again

Shortly after arriving safely home, Eddie was heard to remark "Yaaay home!"
He started playing with his vehicle puzzle and his legos right away.

Later he got on his toy phone and made a call. "Hello," he said. "How are you." (Mumble. Pause.) "No. . . Home. All done." After reporting that he was home, he hung up.

Third day of Christmas

Nowadays, Eddie mostly counts by going "Two, three, two, three, two, three." But he does count One, Two when he is getting dressed or buckling his booster seat or something similar, saying "One buckle" when he gets the first one in, then "two buckles" when he's done. This morning, when I was putting on his socks, he said "One feet" after I got the first one on. Haha! WRONG

When he came out and saw Grandma, she asked him if he liked bacon. He said "Yeah yum yum bacon yum yum." He was pretty clear about it.

In the morning we went to a big indoor playground called Amazone. It was three stories of tubes, bridges, slides, swinging balls and the like. A parent had to accompany toddlers under 4, so Papa got to crawl through the habitrail too. Whee!

Eddie was timid at first, but he got into it. When it was time to leave, he tried to run back in.

Boxing day

This morning, Eddie ran straight out into the dark living room where the presents were left, saying "Truck! Truck!" After the lights were on, he pulled out some toys and said "Fun, fun, fun." Later I found him rocking on a rocking horse, talking to his grandma. "My mommy sleeping," he said. "Mommy coming."

Later, he was eating breakfast, and the grate was open on the stove in the fireplace so we could see the flames. "Fire hot," he reported, several times.

After his cousins got up, Eddie and Stephen had an argument. Stephen was sitting in the high chair, eating, and apparently Eddie didn't approve. He said "No!" Stephen turned around to regard Eddie severely and said "Make an S and close the gate, that's the number eight eight eight!" Eddie insisted "No!" and Stephen said "EIGHT! EIGHT! EIGHT!"

Lately, Eddie's been asking us to sing "This old man" a lot. He does this by saying "Singing old man" or sometimes just "Sing old man." Or maybe he just wants me to sing: "Sing, old man!" The latter theory might be supported by this:

Eddie had pulled a little kiddie chair up to the raised hearth, which was at about the same level as the seat, so he could put his feet straight out onto the hearth. He pulled another kiddie chair up to his, so that Papa could join him, and said "Sit old man!"

In the afternoon, we visited Eddie's Bisnonna. On the car ride there, he started saying what sounded like "Take, take." After we arrived, he kept saying it. We figured out he meant "Cake"—he remembered getting treats there on Sunday, and when we told him we were headed to Bisnonna's house, he was ready! We let him have two cookies. He also ate a whole apple and banana.

While we were there, he ran around and climbed up on the couch and pretended to take a nap, lying down and saying "nap." But Zia Franca wasn't fooled—she said "Your eyes are open! Close your eyes!" Eddie evidently understands this, because he screwed up his eyes and pretended to close them, but we could still see them slitted open. Zia Franca said "You're cheating!" and he laughed.