Week of May 21, 2003
Owen seems so much more grown up to me than even 3 weeks ago. Perhaps new parents inevitably go through this every few months. One stage slips away as the next appears, and while you grieve for the child who is vanishing, you can't help but be impressed with the new child you have. They can do more, think more, understand more.This must be one reason why kids seem to have fussy or clutchy stages. When you're on the edge of learning great things, you feel out of control. It's all too much to learn and you feel you'll never get a handle on what's expected of you or feel proficient at these new skills. It's scary, learning who you are and what's expected, with your abilities changing and your emotions out of control. No wonder he needs reassurance and support, he gets used to the status quo and then *poof* it changes again. Everything is always just beyond his fingertips, one goal is reached, and then the next seems to be pushed further back.
There are lots of signs of this new Owen, one of which is his leaping vocabulary. He studies everything, we watch him file away every name we give him. Each time he is able to convey a need and have us respond appropriately, he giggles with delight. Language is opening up another world for him, and he feels much more in control I think. It's still tough when we don't do what he wants, but there are an awful lot of things we can do. Now when he wants water, he just has to ask. He can get food, have something fixed that needs to be fixed, and he can show us something that excites him. All good stuff!
His play has become more elaborate. Owen is suddenly ready for using track with his trains. He's seemed happy having them chug along on any handy surface, but we put together an oval of track and he was happily moving his engines along. He plays more with his other toys now too, and he's spent some happy hours moving cans of catfood, or Progresso soup, from one part of the apartment to another, making tall stacks. He stacks them, knocks them over, then stacks them again. 12 cans of catfood makes a pretty good noise when they fall over, and 7 cans of Progresso soup is pretty fierce as well. No wonder his blocks can't compete. He loves his balls desperately, often gathering all 7 (various sizes and weights) into one spot. He continues to be an excellent kicker, but his catching still leaves something to be desired. Sometimes he can grab his large purple ball, but often it bounces right off his chest. He still enjoys bouncing things off of other people's heads. When we go to the park, he always heads straight for the swing. Sliding is okay for a few times, but he always goes back to the swings. Perhaps with a stop near the basketball court to watch the balls in action.
The day he had the little pony tail on the top of his head, we went home and snipped it off. It wasn't because we were unnerved, I swear. It just occurred to us that maybe part of his delight was that he could keep the hair out of his eyes. We'd let his hair get long, filled with horror about cutting it ourselves. This home snip is a bit jagged, but bearable, and now Owen has the hair of a little boy. His face seems more grown up. To go with his boyish features, he's moving more like a boy as well. His balance and stair climbing is much more poised. We've been walking along curbs and boundaries.
We've been doing a bad job of keeping track of his words - he's been adding so many, so steadily. He's mostly been using single syllables ("El" for elephant, for example), but he's starting to add some longer words. "Ap-cot" for Apricot, "Heg-ha" for Hedgehog, and he does a pretty good version of "high chair" and "soccer ball"and of course "outside." It's funny what he picks to say. Birds are still "dees" (as in Bir-dies?). He puts together various sentences that start with "I want" and he uses a lot of shortcuts. "Shoes" often means "put on my shoes and let's go outside" - he uses "coat" quite often too. He knows are routines very well. At dinner, he'll often hold up what he's eating, silently ask him to tell us what it is. He can say "green bean" or "bean" or "blue-ber" now. Words that start with "P" often just get said as "P" - so "Percy" is a lot like "Pizza."
There a picture in the Thomas catalog of Percy, Thomas and James without color, just outlines in black and white. Owen can pick them out easily from one another and we wonder what feature pin point the ID for him. The faces? The numbers? Subtle variations in the engines? He can ID Gordon, Edward and Henry now, very well. And he continues to flail in anticipation of every accident in every story - some are particularly scary and he clutches on to us, with little smiles at times so I think he's managing the stress. Nothing competes with Thomas on television, not even the music bits of Dragon Tales. Now that he's getting up a little later, we're watching less TV which is a good thing. He seems to be able to play and use the TV as background, but it's nice to know he's not (yet) addicted.
We've been trying to play more music for him, and one thing we've noticed is his preference for Fur Elise by Beethoven. This was what a toy on his exersaucer played, when he was wee. He's rediscovered another toy which will play bits of classical pieces if you press a button. He'll cycle through the offerings, to get to Fur Elise and contentedly listen to it all the way through. Then do it again. I guess that early programming really worked!
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