City boy

We have a real city boy on our hands. He doesn't like walking on snow, especially when it shifts and collapses under his feet. (When we went walking in the woods in Chardon at Christmastime, he cried and had to be carried.) But he likes snowmen a lot.

We went out yesterday to check on a little snowman we had made in the Training Field. But it was gone! Eddie decided to go up to the Monument, and up there we found three big snowmen. He wanted to see them, but he had to trek across the snow to get there.

Whenever the snow shifted, he said "Oh noooo." Then he would whimper "See snowman, see snowman." He bravely persevered, in this pathetic way, till we got to the snowmen. He was excited to see them: one had a bright plastic nose, one had hair made of twigs, and one had horns made of snow!

On the way back, we had to go down a little hill in the snow. Eddie said "Slippy, slippy," then he stopped and wouldn't go down any further (he's fallen down slopes before.) I said "You can do it!" and he said "No way!"

Well, eventually he found that he could do it. Then we went down the stairs and he counted them: "Two, eight, nine, ten, eight, nine, ten, nine, two. . . all done!"

A common conversation with Eddie

Eddie: "Mumble mumble, please." (His "please" sounds more like "peas.")

Parent: "What?"

Eddie nods in confirmation. "Please."

Parent: "We don't know what it is you're asking for, Eddie."

Eddie: "PLEASE!"

Mortification

I was in a small produce shop with Eddie yesterday, getting some eggs. We were the only customers at the time. He pointed at the guy running the shop and said "Fat!"

The guy was portly, but not really obese. He was also wearing a hat. I tried to ask Eddie if he was saying "Hat"? But no, he was having none of it. "Fat!" he said, pointing right at the dude.

He repeated himself several times before we could get out of there.  Oh man.

Words

Eddie's known the word "funny" for a long time. But he's been using it a lot for the last few days. A small tree in a planter in front of someone's door is "funny"; some dogs are "funny doggy"; sometimes his parent's choice of wardrobe is "funny." Occasionally he accompanies this declaration by saying "ha ha" (that is, saying the word "ha".)

We have some bathtub letters that stick to the sides of the tub during bathtime. Yesterday, I spelled the words "Boy" and "Hug," and he kept pointing them out and saying the word. Today I was making some words, and I put up "Hog". Apparently, Eddie recognized the H and G because he said "Hug"!

I thought another word he might recognize would be "Woof." One of his favorite books now is called Fleabag, and it has a dramatic page mostly covered with a dozen copies of the word "Woof!" So I put "Woof" on the tub and asked Eddie if he recognized it. He said "Doggie!"

Eddie still wants us to read with him all the time, and I think he really wants to figure out how to do it himself.

This morning, we all took a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts. Eddie got to ride on the train (he said "choo choo," a sound the MBTA trains don't ever make). We went to the ancient art section. Eddie liked the huge statue of the pharaoh Menkaure, and a neo-babylonian sculpture of a lion, and a bunch of ancient Egyptian model boats (with cute wooden people on them.) He said they were funny. Mostly he wanted to run around and put his hands on the glass.

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.