ya-yas

Graham loves ya-yas. It was his first word for Elmo and the entire Sesame Street gang. Every character had the same name, Ya-ya. Then, he discovered his second love, one for which he finds endless passion. "Ya-ya" became the electronic device, mainly cell phones, but not limited to anything with a button. Once, in the car, Graham played with a toy cell-phone and (I counted and timed) said "ya-ya" seventy times in ten minutes. He loves his ya-yas.

The other morning, he was playing in my bed. He picked up a little toy Big Bird and said, "ya-ya." Now he has learned to say, "Bi-buh," for Big Bird. I reminded him of this saying, "Graham, that's BIG BIRD, not a ya-ya." He replied, "Ya-ya." I countered, "No, B -ig B- ird," enunciating for educational purposes.

He put the Big Bird to his ear and said, "He-yo," a la me with a cell-phone.

I guess I'm the ya-ya.

Kisses for bugs

Graham is at such a sweet, innocent stage. He loves everything. This morning he took off his own wet diaper. I found him toddling through the door in the nude and asked, "Where is diaper?" He ran into the kitchen and found it and said, "Da-pa. Da-pa," as he clutched it in his arms like a long, lost love.

Yesterday he looked for and leaned over to kiss all of the bugs that he found on the swingset.

So much love.

more than peaches

"Mom, do you want to know what I'm interesting in?"

This came after my long-winded attempt at explaining what non-fiction is to Greta. She clearly got it when I started with it as books that are not about characters, but about real things. But, I had insisted in lising every non-fiction topic that I could. Well, that is, non-fiction topics that I deemed interesting and appropriate to a three-year-old, mainly flora and fauna. The AH Memorial Library spawned this conversation with its summer reading program's assignment to read a children's book of non-fiction.

"We could read a book about ladybugs, or flowers, or space, or . . ."

I was interrupted. "Mom, do you want to know what I'm interesting in?" (Of course, she meant "interested," but I found it too charming to correct.)

"What are you interesting in, Greta?"

"I really, really want to know, 'What is a stranger anyway?' And I need to know about California."

Suppressing a laugh, "Yes. Strangers are important to know about. And so is California. What do you already know about California?"

"It has peaches."

"Peaches? What else?"

"That's all. That's why I need to know more."

This, of course, was followed by about fifty other things she'd like to know about, but the rest of them were essentially a laundry list of things that she could see as we parked in the basement of the library and took the elevator up (What are pipes? How do you build pipes? How do you build a house? How do you drive a car?)

Oh, and we can applaud our local library for not only having a book about strangers written for a young audience, but also a DISPLAY about travel, including a child's book about California. Wahoo!

pestilence and paints

Graham and I have been struck down from some pestilence that, no doubt, sat brewing in Pewaukee Lake just waiting for fresh prey. And what excellent prey we are. The virus, one of the many that cause the medical disease entitled Herpangina -- a vile term that is not a form of herpes, has had a hey day in us causing everything from entire body aches, high fevers, and a wicked sore throat that makes one think that they should give up sword swallowing for good, until she remembers that, in fact, she hasn't swallowed a sword, just some murky lake water.

To be fair, I'm not sure that the Lake is what made us ill at all; it just adds to the romance of being ill to imagine catching in a Lake. I like imagining it creeping up from the sludge and slime rather than flying across a room on someone's spittle, or worse, entering my son in the "oral-fecal" route. I saw that on a website. Does that mean that it's possible that he ate poop, or just tiny poop fragments? And, did I get sick because I didn't wash my hands well enough after changing him? Oh dear, not romantic at all. That paints us as dim-witted slobs for whom vile diseases were created to further along natural selection.

We've been sick for a week. The low point, what will quite possibly be remembered in the future as the high point, came yesterday during a nap hour. It was not time for Ms. Greta to sleep, but Graham was asking for a nap, so I got him to fall asleep in my bed. Then, I crept out to read Greta a story. Even sitting to read made my body hurt, so I told her that I needed to lay down with Graham. I knew that I needed to think fast to find a great activity for her that would occupy her time. I'm sick, remember? I wasn't thinking so clearly. I chose water color paints to tempt her into silence so that I could get some needed rest. I set her up on a towel in her room with a mug of water, a full set of of paints and some coloring books. It seemed innocuous enough. What could a three-yer-old do with paint? (Stop laughing at me. Stop shaking your head.) Of course, she chose this half hour to paint every visible part of her body within arm's reach. Yes, her entire face. She even had used the brush as a backscratcher to paint the harder-to-reach areas of her back. When I looked up from my bed, my little angel looked like the woman in Wicked. Even after a 45 minute bath, a chartreuse tint continued to linger on her face. A day later and she's still got brown around and under every nail. The hardest part was not photographing her. I knew that if I rewarded it with any attention, anything remotely like laughter, that it would surely happen again. She will do anything for a laugh.

My first post

Well. Here we are on a blog. Let's give it "a go."