Tag Archives: adventures in normality

Can you read this?

For the past few days, Declan has had an insatiable appetite for books. He’ll want to read eight, nine, twelve in a row. Some are stories and others are just picture books that let him identify shapes, animals and emotions or count vegetables and fruits. Every fifth one is, naturally, about space.

But he’s also taken to pulling art books off the shelf. Marc Chagall is a favorite of Dan’s – a fact that is well known to several friends and family members – so we have a number of books in several sizes with reproductions of the work. Declan pulls them off the shelf and brings them to me, usually presenting them with a Vanna White wave.

“Mommy, can we read this?” He asks. “Because this painting is so, so beautiful.”

My mother taught me to read paintings in Manhattan museums, often by standing me in front of one, covering my eyes with her hands, then lifting them and asking me quickly “what do you see first?” We would talk about what the colors, images, shadows and textures might mean, what was happening, the feelings of the beings and objects depicted on the canvas, even which ways the artist’s tools might have been used to create a particular mark.

Every day, Declan’s ability to read a painting is growing exponentially. I’m looking forward to our next visit with his Giga (my mom) at the museum.

Related Posts:

Someone to watch over me

My son has been busting out with mad sweetness for the past 24 hours. Although he asserted his masculinity by roaring along with some despairing OSU football fans last night for the first half of the game, when we came home, he sweetly decided he should brush my hair before bedtime. Then he kissed me on the forehead and said “Good night, mommy.”

This morning, he noticed the tiniest cut on my finger.

“Is this a boo-boo, mommy?”

“Yes. Just a little one. It doesn’t hurt,” I said.

“I’ll go and get you a bandage.”

And off he went to the bathroom, foraging for the band-aids, which were stored in a high cabinet that he had no prayer of reaching on his own. I tried to tell him that I didn’t need one, but he insisted until I brought down the box, pulled one out and helped him curl it around my pinky.

“There you go. Is that better now?” He asked.

Seeing his desire to be a caretaker, to be useful and kind, my heart lurched a little.

“It’s so much better now, thank you Declan,” I said, hugging him tightly, kissing his forehead.

“You’re welcome,” he answered.

Do I really have to subject him to (or share him with) the rest of the world?

Related Posts:

This is a galaxy

Photo by Sufi Nawaz.
That’s what Declan told me this week.

It is a disk, like our Milky Way.

He’s been collecting them.

“Can I have another galaxy, mom?”

“Can you find me another galaxy?”

We have a galaxy bank.

We are far richer than we imagined.

Related Posts:

Earth boy

Wisdom, while enjoying a “blueberry Mars” popsicle last evening:

“Earth is a good boy.”

He considers this for a minute, then corrects himself.

“No, Earth is not a boy. Earth is a good ball.”

At bedtime, he turned to Dan and said:

“It’s a nice sunny day downstairs.”

Related Posts:

OutrĂ© d’ouevres

We had spaghetti and meteor-balls for dinner.
Declan also ate a bag of crunchy frotons that came with the salad.

Rather than sneak all kinds of food to the dog as many toddlers do, he gets completely unsettled if the dog comes anywhere near him while he’s eating.

Tonight, he dismissed the pooch with a firm “Buzz OUT, Arrow!”

Afterwards, we all retired to the family crash pad to watch a movie. One of the newer Star Wars films was on cable when we turned the television on. Declan fixated on an asteroid-dodging sequence for about 45 seconds then dashed all the way across the room and pressed his face against the wall.

“Violence!” he yelled. “VIOLENCE!”
“I’m scared of the television,” he told me.

The only other thing he’s ever been that scared of is the dinosaur puppet that says “Bwah!” on Baby Mozart.

More mysteries of toddlerhood

Related Posts:

Blinding me with science

Negotiations over things like bathtime and meals with my terrible two-year-old keep getting stranger and stranger. On some days, I must serve soy nuggets in flower formation with a pile of ketchup in the center to make food appetizing, or sing the same songs or read the same books 364 times in a row.

Today Declan wouldn’t put on a sweater before he had to go out into the cold with his father. He wanted to watch episode three of Elegant Universe for the second time. (My favorite thing he has said to me while watching this show – which I am still struggling to understand – is “Look, mom! It’s Ed Witten!”) Mind you, we do love Blue’s Clues, Elmo and prominent theoretical physicists around here.

I grabbed a kelly green thermal shirt and said “look, it’s a Brian Greene shirt.” That worked well. He wore it until bathtime tonight, when, after insisting that I draw Saturn in the water and spiral galaxies on the bath tile with pink foam soap several times over, he finally surrendered to the desire to get into the warm water and told me “I need to take my Brian Greene shirt off.”

Related Posts:

Random acts of sweetness

Declan and I have been spending time outside of the house this weekend in order to give Dan some time and space to finish a paper for school (he’s taking some classes at OSU).

Yesterday, we took my mom (Declan calls her Giga), who is still recovering from painful shoulder surgery and cannot drive, out to do some errands. It wasn’t without it’s rewards for him. He got a wooden train and a “tangerine” Fiestaware place setting out of the deal – every two-year-old’s dream! (He is actually tremendously excited about having his own orange mug.)

Afterwards, we camped out at Giga’s house for a while and watched a movie. When we finally left, he obediently thanked her for the train and the orange cup. She walked us out to the car, where he blew her kisses from the car seat and suddenly said “thanks for all your help today, Giga” followed by additional thanks for the train and cup.

Today we went to the bookstore, where he made me sit on the floor and read an entire children’s book about human anatomy to him. He’s very excited to learn that we have “tunnels” in our necks and chests that help us breathe and talk. He’s also obsessed with the ways that pupils respond to light. When he asked about a picture of a cat scan, I told him what that it was a picture of the brain, inside of the head. He thought about it for a minute.

“The pupil gets smaller with the light and bigger with the dark so you can see the nebea in there,” he said, pointing at my eye.

“Nebea” = “nebula.”

If you’re feeling spacey, there’s a diagnosis you won’t find anywhere else.

Related Posts: