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After Dinner with the Boy

Tuesday 28 October 2014

We’re creatures of habit, the Boy and I. After dinner, there’s really only one place to go. I could say it’s an effort to get exercise, but I’m the only one really moving: the Boy, he’s just laughing, chatting, fussing — being a typical two-year-old.

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We move in shapes — triangles maybe — from the driveway to the swing to the sandbox, back to the driveway.

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There are always interruptions. A siren sounds in the distance, draws closer. The Boy stops and watches.

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After a bit more digging, he declares it’s time to go in. But on his way, it’s time for a little work, and I get a glimpse into his bilingual reality. In typical E fashion, he begins raking and explaining what he’s doing.

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“To rake” in Polish is grabić. Before we head inside, he declares, “I’m grabing!”

Fast Forward

Thursday 18 September 2014

Sometimes it seems life with the Boy and the Girl is on fast forward. This is especially true of the Boy, now that he’s talking and giving us more than the mere glimpses we used to get into his developing intelligence and personality. This morning, as I was preparing coffee to take to work, I hear,

“Daddy, can I try it?”

It’s a common refrain: the Boy wants to try everything. In that sense, he’s the polar opposite of L, who hates to try anything new.

“No, little man, this is coffee. It’s hot, and it’s got caffeine. You’re too young to drink it.”

He thought for a little while, then asked hesitatingly, as he often does when he’s turning something over in his thoughts as he speak, “But when I’m bigger?”

Fast forward to the post-dinner cleanup. K was talking to the Boy and for some reason — some of those little conversations start so harmlessly insignificantly that it’s difficult to recreate them in the evening — said something like “B, as in bottle, as in big, as in…” At which point the Boy took over, with boy, baby, and a few others.

Echoes

Wednesday 3 September 2014

The Boy is in bed, trying to fall asleep. The cat jumps onto the bed and begins pestering the Boy, who stands up and says, “No, Bida!” When the cat doesn’t listen, the Boy says sternly, “When I say ‘No,’ I mean ‘No.'”

I See It!

Saturday 9 August 2014

chocomilkThe Boy toddles toward the stairs down to our transforming basement, cup of chocolate milk in hand. He gets a little excited and the milk soon splashes all over the floor. As I’m cleaning it up, I mutter to myself that this was avoidable “because I foresaw it.”

“No, Daddy,” E corrects. “I saw it.”

Garbage Truck

Wednesday 9 July 2014

The Boy loves cars. I mean loves cars. He has a sizable collection of matchbox cars (yes, that is a brand name but like Kleenex, it’s come to represent the object in general), mostly thanks to Nana and Papa, and among these cars is a garbage truck. A favorite. And that explains his interest in the following exchange.

The Boy
Garbage truck coming today?
The Tata
No, not today. Tomorrow.
The Boy
Tomorrow? Tursday?
The Tata, in mild shock
What did you say?
The Boy
Garbage truck not coming today?
The Tata
No, no, what day did you say tomorrow is?
The Boy
Tursday
The Tata
And today?
The Boy
Wesday

In the car, I tell K about this conversation.

“Really? Where did he learn that?” she wonders aloud in Polish, turning to E in the back seat and asking, “E, who taught you this?”

“E!” he squeals.

Jazz 2014 and Puppies

Tuesday 20 May 2014

Tonight was L’s jazz concert. Greenville Ballet divides the two forms into separate lessons (unlike our former school, which had half an hour of ballet followed by half an hour of jazz), and this year they had two separate shows. If last night’s performance was any sort of standard, it was certainly magnificent.

Meanwhile, at the house, the Boy and I had our own adventure: a walk to the drug store, some swinging time, some up-the-stairs, down-the-stairs time — everything a boy and his father needed to make a perfect evening of it.

To CVS
The swing
Contemplation
“Up!”
Up and down and up and down
Heading home
Big man

Bedtime presented its own challenges. As I was dressing the Boy for a hopefully-long, hopefully-restful evening, I slipped his puppy pajama bottoms on without thinking about the fact that the matching shirt was nowhere to be found. He was fine with it, but started asking a little later about the top: I’d laid him on the bed to slide him into his sleeping sack when he began asking, “Sapappies?”

“We don’t have the top, E,” I reassured him. “I don’t know where it is.”

Despite this reasoned explanation, the protests grew more frantic: “Sapappies! Sapappies!”

I tried explaining again, but it was not no avail: he slid off the bed, marched to his chest of drawers, and began opening them one by one. Look in, he’d exclaim, “No!” before slamming the draw closed (I could just hear the screams if he caught his finger in one) and opening the next. The third attempted was successful. “Tu! Tu!” he shouted (“Here! Here!” in English). He pulled out a pair of socks and cried, “Sapappies!”

(Note to non-Slavophiles: “socks” in Polish is “skarpetki,” so in typical dual-language fashion, he applied a bilingual double-plural to it in addition to the ineffably charming pronunciation.)

On the Couch

Thursday 1 May 2014

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His lips vibrating in a blur of motion, he makes a put-put-put sound for all his vehicles, pushing his tractor in circles and stopping the sound effect just long enough to proclaim, “Tata!Kosi!” How he knows that large tractors can be used to mow is another of the mysteries of a toddler, chief among them the babbling, chirping, squealing, and shouting mix with his improvised words, a mix of Polish, and English and apparent nonsense, a most rudimentary language that only he can understand. Only he and perhaps other toddlers, equally fascinated with the sounds that come from their own mouths and the miracle of adult speech seems to accomplish miracles through mere utterance.

Bilingual Homophones

Wednesday 23 April 2014

The Boy has been learning to talk for the last few months, and like all kids his age, he has begun extrapolating to amusing results. When indicating that he wanted a bit of chocolate once, K told him he could have pół, which is “half” in Polish, pronounced “poo.” You can probably already see where I’m going with this: when the Boy sees chocolate, asks for pół, and then excited realizes that he’s going indeed to get it, he starts repeating it obsessively, often in pairs. Which makes it difficult to know when he wants chocolate and when he wants to go to the potty chair…