Crutches No More

A is off his crutches, although not quite back to normal, which is a very lovely thing. No more fear of stairs, no more terrifyingly slow crosswalk use, no more jamming them into the mini-van like another slim, metallic person, and no more A tripping everyone in sight with his dastardly go-go-gadget metal arms....just kidding on that last one. :) It is very nice though. The others are real gratefulnesses and we are so glad to have life a tiny bit more usual again.

The weather has been lovely but I hear that a tropical storm...morphing into a hurricane is slowly working its way up the coast. Time to hunker down. I need to post our ancient metal fireplace insert on Craigslist and then have the chimney cleaned so that we can have fires on the hearth again while we sit huddled with a stack of reads. Ru is getting better and better at reading but it is a mysterious skill almost entirely confined to his "reading book" where I've been working with him.

He is just starting to experiment with muttering sounds under his breath in a forgotten corner of the house or in the inner reaches of the minivan when he thinks I am not listening. His brow puckers and he makes little staccato attempts at sounding out an advertisement for Reese's cups or the latest volume of Asterix and Obelix from the library. Its a tenuous dance. I love watching him teeter on the edge of discovering the world of print but I hate to let him wait too long or miss the opportunity when he doesn't accidently make it work for himself. How much to push and how much let it be organic? The age old question. Just how unschooler am I?

This morning I lost Nib for a bit and then finally he answered  my shouts and came tripping brightly down from the second floor. It took until lunchtime before I figured out what he'd been up to. We had a "picnic" lunch on the kitchen floor together (Mommy laziness trick!) and I noticed he'd neatly address stamped the soles of his feet. If ever lost....he'll be no problem to return...as long as he's turned upside down and examined barefoot.

A Catalog of "Dee-lights"

I'm slowly working my way through capturing all three boys, (if you hadn't guessed already) so, today our middle-man. Dee is fabulous through and through, a completely and thoroughly different animal from his brothers and such a very concentrated personality. Love him to pieces.

Dee Likes:

• Knobs, buttons, levers, locks, screws....any tiny, little mechanism
• Seafood of all kinds...if it lives in water, he'll eat it with relish. You asks for canned sardines as a treat. 
• This book.
• Ataulfo mangoes...not the standard variety which he rejects summarily. He cares a lot about texture. The normal mangoes are too stringy but Ataulfos are super creamy and smooth. He and I eat them together. :)
• Painting! (He and his big brother can do this together by the hour)
• Maple syrup (he'll scoop it off the top of his plain yogurt at breakfast and slyly sip it away and ask for more...not that that plan really works our for him, but he does try)
• Milk, yogurt, cheese, butter and cream, cream, cream. He's our dairy boy. He'd be very happy to never drink anything else. I try to get him to drink a little water now and then.
• Forklifts...not sure where that came from, but its a downright obsession.
• Black olives...he loves manipulateable food and gets no end of fun out of capping all his little fingers with olive hats.
• His penis. (Well! I'm just saying!)
• Closing doors. He's kind of compulsive about making sure nothing is ajar. It bugs him.
• This song. Makes me smile all the time that my two year old walks around singing The Beatles.
• And also this song.
• The concept of "treasure." He's always hunting it and showing it to me and talking about some.
• A's dad. He talks all the time lately about how he "wikes Grandpa Awen...he so nice!"
• Sitting on the toilet. Not sure why. Maybe its great to be alone in there or something? He'll sit and sit and sit and sit...we've started instituting time limits.

 Dee Abhors:

• Keeping his shoes on in the car...I'm really trying to teach him this, especially as the cold weather approaches.
• Changing his clothes.
• Having his hair washed.
• People laughing at him, even in a kind way...he really can't handle it.
• Going down the stairs...not sure why this is suddenly a huge panic button issue, but...yeah.
• Taking naps. He's ridiculously hard to put to sleep these days...far harder than his older brother.
• Hard boiled egg yolks....he peels the whites off and eats them and hands me the pale yellow ball of "yucky part"
• Crowds. He loves it when everyone goes away and he's alone or all the other kids go away and he has a few select grown-ups to himself.
• Spots on his food. He picks them off or cries broken-heartedly....depending on how high his energy tank is at the moment.
• Being sticky. He will happily play outdoors and get all muddy but he'll be beside himself if he gets jam all gummed all over his arm.
• Being put on the spot. He'll melt down instantly. He is not the kind of kid you ask to do a few party tricks for your friends. Heh.
• Spicy foods. He will cry and wipe his tongue with his hand frantically and say, "Its too picey!
• Having his portrait taken. You have to be very subtle to take a good picture of him. There's no way he'll go for "Smile, Dee!" Insta-sob-fest.

These photos of just make my heart pitter-patter. You can feel so palpably what a sweet soul he is. He was just delighted with the fact that he'd been given this tiny pinwheel at church and then that he'd discovered the wind would blow it outdoors. I love how fixated he was and how placidly pleased it made him. I loved it when he closed his eyes to see how it felt too. 

This particular little guy has been quite difficult to parent in some ways, but that particularity also makes him such a wonderful and fascinating little person. I can't wait to see what he becomes.

Dee in Detail

Highlighting my middle son today. I like to do this from time to time. Helps those relatives and friends from afar get to know my kids and also is a good way for me to both document the small things as they pass and notice myself who each of my children has become individually. Good stuff, noticing.

Dee Likes:

• Fish, in any form: smoked salmon, sauteed trout, grilled shrimp, canned sardines, whitefish pate, or steamed mussels...he loves it any way he can get it (he's his mother's boy!)
• Whipped cream. Its his dessert of choice. He's not big on sweets and if given a sliver of pie or a small wedge of cake, he'll scrape and lick the whipped cream off and leave the dessert all naked. We have taken to keeping spray whipped cream around so he can have a ramekin full when the rest of us have dessert.
• Frog and Toad. His favorite stories at the moment.
• Banjos and pianos (how's that for a great honky-tonk pairing) This is what he answers when you say "What instrument are you going to play when you get bigger?"
• Fishing. Every stick is a pole and every puddle is a lake. (Not that we actually take him fishing....that's what we plan to do at my parents this summer!)
• Digging. He has his own small plastic trowel and spends forever gouging a hole in the turf at the edge our fence and delving around in the bark mulch at the side of the next unit. Kid needs a sandbox badly.
• Pretending to be a kitty-cat. The boys often spontaneously turn into cats when A comes home. Somehow this seems like a good greeting-plan to them. Its kind of bizarre.
• Staying awake. (Yet again, his mother's son I'm afraid) We are having, find-some-freaking-way-to-get-the-toddler-to-stay-asleep-issues lately...pretty much every night and I've taken to sitting next to his bed with my hand physically on his body to help him slow down and go to sleep at naptime.
• The Zacchaeus Song. This is how I get him to calm down when he's hysterical or when he has a nightmare...I sing it over and over and over. Its endlessly loved by the little man. Not sure exactly why or how he got attached to it.
• Milk. He loves all milk but holds a special place in his heart for the milk we pick up from New Pond Farm. He holds his little cup out and tells us that he'd like "milk of fahm, pease!"
• Rocks, sticks, leaves and other natural ephemera. I have to check his pockets carefully before I wash his pants because there's always a load of treasures. There are often rocks in our dryer. I keep saying he might end up a naturalist with this kind of penchant for collecting.
• Wearing his rubber boots. Every day is a rainy day!
• "His" baby. Always lots of kisses to give out and every day starts with a dead run for our bed where he says first thing, "Good morning Baby!"
• Play-Doh. The answer is always yes.  
• Scrambled eggs. The boy loves my scrambled eggs. My little mommy heart goes, pitter-pat.