Some stories should never be told...

So I won't go into detail about what My Hero and I spent our evening doing yesterday, but I think it was one of those ordeals that permanently changed us, at least a little.

I caught Peanut Butter removing items from our basement freezer a few times, and was severe with him that it was not permissible. I don't often let the boys play in the basement when I'm not down there, for a variety of reasons, including that it's not terribly safe (woodstove, chainsaw, chemicals) and that they make a mess of an area that's not terribly organized to begin with, which just overwhelms me.

Our basement has been smelling poorly of late. Yesterday when I went to the basement searching for a bottle of play bubbles I thought I may have put down there, I visited a corner I don't often see, and discovered that who knows how long ago Peanut Butter had removed from our freezer and left out on his play tool bench a package of frozen pumpkin, frozen chicken stock, and, ugh, a freezer-paper-wrapped steak.

There were worms.

That's all the detail I'll go into, but I think, think from the roundness of Peanut Butters eyes when I showed him the mess and expressed my horror, that he understands he is not to remove anything from our freezer ever again.

On a positive note, I think our basement will be smelling much better this week.

overheard this morning

Christopher Robin: *munch* *munch* "Grapefruit makes us live longer."
Peanut Butter: "Nigh, grapefruit bakes us lib longer."
CR: "But we still want to see Jesus."
PB: "Nigh."
CR: "But we don't want to see Jonah."
PB: "Mm-mmm. Jonah mean guy." (in low, growling voice.)
CR: "No. He just didn't listen to God."
PB: "Oh."

ambling ramblings

"I'll go first, Mom, so you know how to get back," Christopher Robin says boldly as he heads off through the woods in the wrong direction.

"This way, bud. Follow the trail," I point at the well-packed path of footprints through the snow leading from our basement door, through our backyard garden patch, into the woods to where we're standing now and to every one of our tapped maple trees.

"Oh, yeah," he says with assurance. "I'll make sure you know where to go," as he misses the path again and heads through unbroken snow in more or less the right direction.

I decided to take him with me this time, since most days I gather sap while the kids are napping. Trecking through snow in the woods is rough going, especially for 2 and 4 year olds, so this day, when My Hero is home on a day off, I can take each boy with me one at a time. One hand for carrying a bucket, one hand for helping the lurching boy at my side keep from falling.

"Let's leave your green bucket here while we go down to gather the sap from those other trees, since your bucket is full and heavy. We'll get it on our way back," I suggest as we set it down in the snow beside the path."

"I hope we can find the green bucket," Christopher Robin says a few minutes later after sap from more trees has been gathered.

I smile, marvelling that the woods could seem so myserious and bewildering to him so close to the house, paths that lead our way back right at our feet, and green bucket actually within sight. Then he begins his brave assurances that he will be my guide and lead me home. As he marches in the wrong direction.

Phew! Don't you ever go exploring in the woods on your own, four year old boy. I may never find you again.

And it's funny how eyes can be trained to see what's important. A path in the snow. Landmarks ahead. My Dad knows maple trees by their bark. To me, pine, maple, and oak bark all look the same. I look up the tree and see pine needles and know it's pine. I look up the tree and see a few brown oak leaves clinging to a branch and know it's an oak. I'm starting to recognize the shape of maple branches, the way they spread at the top in a different way than oak trees do. As I travel from maple to maple gathering sap the trees grow more familiar to me. I liken it to the way it is with identical twins. To a stranger they're indistinguishable, but when you have become close friends with one or both of them, the differences are too obvious for error.

To Christopher Robin the woods is such a strange, unfamiliar place that the thick trees and reaching branches everywhere make everything look the same. I know what it's like. When we were young, my sister and I decided to follow the stream that forms at the far end of the apple orchard every spring, and see where it lead to. It led us into the woods for quite a distance, until after a while we realized the stream had lost shape and become a swampy area of puddles. When we tried to turn around and go back, we couldn't find the stream we had been following, and were hopelessly lost. I don't know exactly how long we wandered, but I do remember feeling surprised that we could become so lost, and the relief we both experienced when we finally saw an edge to the woods and came out on a nearby road, less than a mile from our house.

For some reason my favorite thing in the world when I was young was following streams through the woods. My dad used to take each of us kids on a "date night", probably one of us each week, and when my turn came around, and I could pick anything I wanted to do, I remember some of my brothers chose going for ice cream on their turns, but I chose going to the woods and following a stream, leaping from rock to rock down the middle when I could, or climbing along the edges.

My little Peanut Butter

I've known him for 2 years and 7 months, but I can't seem to get my mind around what makes him tick. If I had to try to peg it down, I'd have to say the most important thing to him is that he gets to make the decision. And yet he's sometimes content to play with Christopher Robin, letting him call all the shots and tell him what to do, and he'll agree with everything Christopher Robin says.

He's been strongly attached to me since he was a month old; refusing to be happy with anyone but me for about his whole first year. He wouldn't cry for 10 minutes and then resign himself to the fact that I was gone; he'd scream until I came back, even if it was a couple of hours. Nowadays he loves to sit in my lap and have me read to him, but only if it's the book he wanted. He gives wonderful hugs, but only when he decides he wants to.

Last night My Hero sent him to get a new pair of undies from his drawer. I had already gone to the bedroom to get his pajamas and undies, and met him halfway with them in my hands. "Would you like these jammies tonight?" I asked him. He stopped, deliberated, then agreed those were the ones he wanted. Then he saw the pair of undies in my hands. Despair and anguish took hold of him. "Daddy said me go get mine undies!" he wailed. I handed him the undies, told him he could put them back and choose the ones he wanted. He came back a few minutes later with those same undies in his hands, telling his daddy he couldn't find undies in his drawer. "What are those in your hand?" My Hero asked, confused. Not the ones Peanut Butter chose, that's what.

He is enraged if I help him with something he was planning on doing himself, but at other times he demands my help with the very same task, and throws himself down in wails if I make him do it himself.

He had two accidents yesterday in which he did not make it to the potty in time. That's the first time since about a week after he was potty trained sometime in December. My Hero was home for the second one, and he asked me before he went to talk to Peanut Butter if he should suggest reverting back to diapers. My eyes got wide. "No. I'm afraid he would like that." Sure enough, when My Hero asked Peanut Butter if he should go back to wearing diapers, PB's eyes lit up and he said, "Nigh!" (PB's word for yes) "No!" My Hero chided, "That would be bad, you're learning to be a big boy!" and he went on to talk about Peanut Butter growing up and learning to do things like Daddy does them.

He doesn't seem much interested in being like Christopher Robin. He definitely wants the same privileges, but he seems to thrive on their differences. Last evening they had brought up some 2X4's and other boards from the basement and constructed a "building" on the living room floor, so later I sent them back down to put the boards back. "Be careful going down the stairs with them; some of those are heavy," I warned. "This one's not heavy!" Christopher Robin said proudly. "Mine not heavy," Peanut Butter echoed. "Because I'm really big and strong!" Christopher Robin assured me. "You both are," I said. "No, me tiny," Peanut Butter said, "Christopher Robin's big."

What fills his head? Occupies his thoughts? These days it really seems to be all about being the one to make the decisions. If Christopher Robin and Peanut Butter want the same toy, the sparks fly. If I mediate and come down on Peanut Butter's side, leaving Christopher Robin in tears, often Peanut Butter will wait a minute, feel the power of having the upper hand, then benevolently hand the coveted toy to Christopher Robin. He just wants to be able to choose to do it.

Trying to change Peanut Butter's mind is like beating against a wall. I'm not really even sure how to pray for him. I see how much determination and passion and strength is built into who he is, and I think if it was bent on building God's Kingdom, he'd be unstoppable. I just haven't figured out how to successfully influence him in a certain direction. My prayer is usually to hand it over to God. "Please harness Peanut Butter's passions and use them for your kingdom."

Maybe I'll never wrap my mind around what makes Peanut Butter tick. I'm pretty sure I will always find it a challenge to deal with him. I'm not naturally a leader, and to be the authority over such an unwilling follower is daunting to me. Thanks be to God that He can redeem him in spite of my weaknesses and failings as his mother.

Peanut Butter is a gift I'm not worthy of. Even as I sit exhausted by the endless battles fought or averted, I watch him rocking to his own beat, listen to him speak his own form of language, see him invent things none of the rest of us would have thought of, and I admire this unique creation of God.

Misconceptions of Childhood

"B-five-N-G-O,
B-five-N-G-O,
B-five-N-G-O,
And Bingo was his name-o"

~Peanut Butter, 2 years old

How to raise a girl to be tough:

Give her an older brother or two.

His speech will be intelligable soon enough.

Peanut Butter has learned to speak, and can say almost anything he wants to, but often I still can't understand what he's saying unless I know the context and get help by what he's pointing to or what he's doing. People outside our immediate family have difficulty understanding much that he says at all. I'm working on trying to help him stop and hear the sounds he says and practice saying words correctly, to help prevent him from forming bad speaking habits he won't bother to unlearn, but he still has a long way to go.

I'm just not sure that's a bad thing as yet. Several times in the past few months I've been silently grateful that those around us can't understand what he says.

I love how honest kids are, and how when they're small you never have to wonder what they really think or if they're just acting like they're interested in what you're saying when they're really not. If they're not happy to see someone, there's no hiding it. Which is okay most of the time, but once in a while I'm really glad for a language barrier between my uninhibited 2 year old and unsuspecting adults around us.

Today Christopher Robin and Peanut Butter tromped down the stairs to the children's section of the library, and I followed carrying Raindrop in her carseat. At the bottom, as I began hanging up coats and bags, Peanut Butter looked me in the eyes and said, "Bissus Bennet 'as bunny ah." I glanced up in surprise and was greated by Mrs. Bennet, the children's story hour host, her hair nicely styled as though she just come from the salon. I greeted her warmly, silently thankful that her morning wasn't tainted by a small boy's uninformed opinion that she had "funny hair".

Link & Logs

Christopher Robin received a set of Lincoln Logs from my parents for his birthday.
Today he asked if the plastic parts, the windows and doors, were the links.
Link & Logs

A small boy's perspective

"Tuttles finds dead mice and leaves them on our deck." Christopher Robin informed my mom.

Yes. Our cat hunts all night long for the dead ones.

Just the usual, everyday problems...

During bathtime last night Christopher Robin informed me that he and Peanut Butter were drinking water from the tub faucet to wash the hair out of their mouths. I watched them rinse their tongues in the falling water, and then asked him why there was hair in their mouths.

"Oh, there just is," he said with a shrug. "I licked Tuttles."

Tuttles, our cat.

Pockets

My boy has found his pockets. I now have to remember to check not just my husband's pants pockets before I throw them in the washer. Green Beans pants could hold any kind of precious object, or just something that will affect the state of the whole load of laundry, like a tissue or (horrors) a pen.

Early one morning after Green Bean woke up, he dragged a stool over to the Christmas tree so he could watch the automated Bambi ornament spin, and then he asked to get dressed. That was odd. He had never paid any attention to when he changes from pajamas to day clothes before. And we almost always wait until after breakfast. Mystified, I told him he would have to wait until after Peanut Butter woke up, because to go in the bedroom while Peanut Butter was sleeping would certainly wake him. Then Green Bean's reasoning became clear; "I want pants with pockets," he said.

Green Bean's favorite item to pocket is his daddy's cell phone. That way he has it on him at all times, and he loves to go around the house taking pictures with it. He has figured out that by pushing "Okay" twice he can take a picture of anything, and his photography skills have dramatically improved with practice. The phone's photo gallery first was filled with lots of black, blank pictures, because he paid no attention to lighting and got too close to the object he was trying to capture. But now the gallery is filled with colors and random snapshots of family members doing ordinary daily things. My Hero is glad he spends so much time taking pictures instead of pushing all sorts of buttons that change the entries in his "phone book" from, say, "Dad's cell" to "Dad's cellffffffhhh". It's risky to let him play with our cell phone, you say? Yes, it is. But Green Bean knows never to push the green button, and he obeys. He has pushed it once or twice, whether accidentally or on purpose, and the cell phone is taken away for a while, but he loves playing with it too much to make that mistake often.

Other things he has put in his pocket:
-a small purple stone given to him by the kind lady who does "Story Time" at the library
-all of our pens ("They won't all fit," I predicted. Why do I say things like that? He continued sticking them in one by one until they were all in there.)
-all of our chopsticks, which stick out of his pocket in the same manner as the pens
-my hair elastic
-a penny

He reminds me of Tom Sawyer and all the boys in that book by Mark Twain. It's a boy thing to do, fill one's pockets with treasures. And he's my boy.

Pronoun Conundrum

Green Bean figured out the pronoun "me" long ago, that when he uses it, it refers to himself. All his sentences were "Me weally wuv my bunny," "Me want to do it!" "Me have some," etc.

Just yesterday and today he has begun to use "I". And now that he realizes he's been using "me" incorrectly, it sounds wrong to him in every sentence. He now says, "Hey! Let I do it!" "Give I one cookie, please," "You let I turn the water on?"

I wonder how many other nuances of language he's picked up on consciously and changed without me noticing.

Peanut Butter, on the other hand, uses very few words. He communicates nonverbally, through his tone of voice. He's the LOUDEST little boy I've ever met. My ears are hypersensitive, and loud noises tend to cause me pain, but I think he's working on dulling my hearing for me. In a year or two no baby's cry will bother me again. I'll be blissfully unaware of anyone's needs unless they write it out and stick it in front of me.

Really, my nonverbal son is pretty much intelligable just by the expression he uses and his tone of voice. We give him something and it sounds like he told us, "thank you!" even though no words came out. I begin preparing supper and he heads over to his high chair, stretches his arms up as if he's trying pull himself up, and makes, "Please notice me, I'm hungry and I want food" noises. I ask him if he wants some milk, and he makes a pleased /satisfied squeal and heads for the fridge where I hand him his sippy cup. I think he could get by indefinitely with what he's mastered so far, but here's one mama who hopes that learning to speak words will significantly decrease the number of times he howls at the top of his lungs each day.

Misguided Ideas of Childhood

I read this post from Raising Butterflies and it reminded me of some of my own misguided ideas from childhood. But the one that sticks out most clearly in my memory actually belongs to my little brother, who is 17 years younger than I.

He was sick with a fever and vomiting one night...one of those viruses that make you feel utterly miserable, and my mom was awake with him, caring for him, helping him through. "Mom, isn't there any medicine you can give me to help me get better?" he asked desperately. Mom shook her head, "No, honey, I'm sorry. This is a virus, and there's no medicine that can just make it go away."

In the morning he felt much much better, and he seemed dileriously happy. "Mom, I'm feeling better!" He couldn't seem to get over the fact that he was no longer sick, and eventually it began to dawn on Mom that my little brother had been under the impression that he was incurably ill and would be for the rest of his life. While she had meant that with a virus you just have to stick it out and let the sickness pass on its own, he had understood her to mean that he would be in pain and misery for the rest of his life. What a long night that must have been.

Huh?

Green Bean finds a black fold-up mirror in my purse and it's now his cell phone. All his conversations are alike.

"Hello? Oh. Me doing well. And you? Oh, okay. Bye."

I didn't even realize I said, "I'm doing well, and you?" all that often, but apparently I do enough that he's caught on. Another phrase he picked up, presumably from me, is the question, "What's wong?" Only he uses it essentially in any situation whatsoever, as if it meant, "What's up?" It's one of those questions that drives me up the wall, at least when I'm asked it 32 times a day, so I've resorted to answering it with a parry right back to him, "What's wrong with YOU?"

It hasn't deterred him AT ALL from using it. He also says, "Huh?" after almost everything I say, compelling me to repeat myself. I can't seem to break him of that habit, either. He informed my mom a few weeks ago that "Mommy not weally like it when I go like that, 'huh?'" So he knows how I feel about it, but I think as long as it elicits a response from me (and I can't seem to help myself...it's automatic to repeat myself when asked, and I can't seem to maintain a conscious effort to NOT respond long enough to make him realize his "Huh?" is inneffective) he'll keep using it. Probably it's a benefit to his linguistic development or something. He gets to hear everything twice and really GET what I'm saying.

Overall, though, I love his developing conversational skills. I love hearing a surprising new phrase, a way of using words he's never mastered before, come out of my three year old's mouth in an unexpected way. It's a random sprinkling of amusement and pleasure in out-of-the-blue moments of my day.

Lessons Relearned

Wet undies for the second time this morning.

Note to self: When I see him holding himself, take him directly to the potty.

2 minutes after going potty, he's holding himself again.

Maybe I was wrong. He just went.

Wet undies for the third time this morning.

NOTE TO SELF: WHEN I SEE HIM HOLDING HIMSELF, TAKE HIM DIRECTLY TO THE POTTY