Stinker

To J and I, the dink is a lively, bright, silly, super-busy little boy who loves to dance, scream, and smile. But somehow, in the presence of others, he becomes an emotion-less, unresponsive toddler with incredible levels of shyness that prevent him from saying hello or goodbye, interacting with other humans, and really doing much else than burying his head on my shoulder or looking off blankly into the distance. It’s purported that when J or I leave the dink with said “others” that he returns to the land of the living and drops the act. When picking the dink up from daycare the other day, I stopped and chatted with one of his “old” teachers, and the whole time D laid his head on my chest and looked down or to the side…anywhere but at the teacher’s face. She tried to talk to him, and he smushed his whole head into my armpit. I told her that I couldn’t believe he was acting so shy, and she said “That’s okay, he gave me a hug and a kiss this morning.” Stinker!

I guess we all do this to an extent—act differently with our parents than we do with others. But it’s hard to believe that the dink has caught on to that already. Is he putting on a show to protect my feelings? Is he afraid I’ll get upset if he shows affection for other female figures in his life? Or is he really just painfully shy? I don’t buy that he is. The kid stands at the end of the driveway in the afternoons and waves and yells “hi” to all of the kids walking home from the bus. My mom says that my sister and I were similar as children. Granny used to take us around town to the makeup store and country club, trying to show off her smart grandkids, and supposedly all we would do was stare dumbly at the floor are barely even say hello. We may have even picked our noses. I think at one point Granny threatened to stop taking us anywhere if we insisted on acting like idiots. So I guess it runs in the family. I hope one day the dink switches gears and takes after his daddy's love for showing off and being in the center of attention. Can genetics work like that?

Events

The poor dink is being introduced to what promises to be a ritual performed thousands of times over in the next ten years or so: the slathering of sunscreen over his cheeks, forehead, ear lobes, chest, and his crown of his head, where all of his blond hairs swirls out in a fashion that’s remarkably similar to his dad, his Pop, and even his little cousin.

Over the weekend, we went to the Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival and our church’s crawfish cooking competition. The dink thoroughly enjoyed his time spent outdoors, although the highlight for him, I think, was avidly watching children bounce up and down through the window of a Space Walk (a.k.a. The Bouncy Castle). He was totally mesmerized by the whole scenario (who isn’t?), and quite taken by a charming 3-year-old little girl who quit bouncing now and then to talk to J and the dink through the window. She told J “I like your baby” and “I know how babies are born.” We’ll probably limit the dink’s time with her at the next church function.

This time of year, when spring is in full force and festivals and summer vacations and birthday parties are lining up quickly, it’s easy to live from event to event, getting through the in-between days of regularity and routine by looking forward to the next thing. But ever since the dink turned one, and I looked at him one day squatting to play in that butt-poised-ever-so-slightly-above-the-floor position that only toddlers can tolerate, and I realized that he is not my little baby anymore, already…I can’t bring myself to look forward to the next thing. I’m afraid that if I focus on what’s coming up, even as soon as next week, that I’ll somehow make these lingering days of baby cheeks and bedtime rocking pass even more quickly than they already do.

Kisser

Declan is quite the kisser. There is nothing sweeter than when I ask for a hug and a kiss, and he comes running from across the room, arms wide open, with a giddy grin on his face, cheeks bouncing with each step and all. I usually squat on the ground to receive him, and then we stand up for the kiss. After months, the child has finally learned how to pucker his lips when leaning in for one, instead of coming at you with a wet mouth wide open. And lately, he’s picked up the “I’m about to kiss you”—mmmmmWA! The best is when the kiss is his idea. Sometimes, when I’m holding him, he’ll surprise me suddenly by turning his lips up and mmmm-ing. Love it. I caught him giving his Papa three unsolicited kisses in a row over the weekend, which was just too sweet to even describe. And the latest event in the dink’s kissing evolution is the three-way family kiss that makes him laugh and squeal with delight. J holds him, starts “mmm-ing,” which makes dink lean down to kiss me, and then J jumps in to meet our lips at the last minute. It’s the ritual family kiss, and let me tell you, you can’t have just one of those… If you forward to the second half of this video, there’s some footage of the dink giving night-night kisses to his daddy and his cousins after staying up too late at Maman and Papa’s.

Easter

In a perfect dichotomy, my sister had her baby on Good Friday. We don’t have any goofy nicknames for her yet, so I’ll just call her E. She weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces, and was 20 inches long. We spent Friday morning at the hospital, taking turns visiting M and the baby. She has really long feet and a very small face. Her nose is quite distinguished, however (for her age), and I still haven’t really seen her eyes open yet. My favorite part of the whole day was when my mom was holding E, doing her classic rocking/bouncing combination move, and S (proud big brother #1) ran to her side, concerned, and said “Maman! Don’t rock her too hard!”

The dink, however, was not so receptive to the new little one. In M's room, J held the dink on his lap while I held little E across the room. And when I say the dink made the saddest, pouty face you could ever imagine—it actually might be sadder than you can imagine. He just looked at me, with those big blue eyes so round, his eyebrows raised, and the perfect frown with his bottom lip stuck out so far. He was looking at me like I had just slapped him or told him that I didn’t want to be his mommy anymore. He kept burying his head in J’s chest, and after a few minutes, started crying softly. It was so sad. J and I have been trying to get pregnant with #2 for what seems like eternity, and one friend recently told me that maybe the reason it hasn’t happened yet is that God knows that the dink needs undivided attention from J and I for just a little longer. I thought that was a nice way of looking at it. And if that scene was any indication, the dink may not be ready for quite a while…

Ducky

The dink is getting to the point where he’ll attempt to say almost anything. The result is usually about 40% accurate (with the exception of choice favorite words), but he usually gets the intonation right when he tries.

The other week, we started trying to get him to say his name. He tries really hard, but it comes out as “Ducka,” or sometimes even “Ducky.” So Ducky is the dink’s newest nickname. What loving parents we are, making fun of our 16 month old’s honest attempts at communicating with us. Sometimes, he tries to say “D,” which is one of J’s nicknames for him. He likes to attempt “Good job, D” after helping me snap him in his carseat, pick up Cheerios off the floor, or Velcro his shoes. He is quite the self-congratulator. I picture him one day as an over-confident teenager, combing his straight-as-a-board blond hair to the side in the mirror and smiling at how good he looks. What am I talking about—there is no such thing as an over-confident teenager. But at least I don’t think he’ll be much for self-flogging later on.

The best thing he said recently was “whoa” used in such perfect context. J and I got a new rug for our bedroom, which we placed at the foot of the bed. D usually plays in that area in the mornings while we get dressed, so I knew he’d be excited to see something new. I called him into the bedroom, and he came running in, took two steps on the rug and screamed “whoa!” with the perfect intonation and energy, like “what the heck is this new, amazing thing doing here?!” I say amazing, because he immediately starting flopping himself on the rug and rolling over side to side, like he had been waiting his whole life just have a soft surface to get silly on. We really need to get some carpet in the house.

Eggs

This morning I left home to what I think is commonly referred to as domestic bliss. I guess it would have been more blissful if I hadn’t been leaving it and had played more of a role that morning than making the dink cry in hysteria when he saw me put on my shoes and kiss him bye-bye for the next seven hours…but the recovery scene that I caught through the screen door from the carport had me leaving with a smile on my face. J knew just the trick to calm down D, which is one of his favorite “let me help” activities—cooking eggs. J was standing there at the stove in his boxers, holding D on his hip (still in his fleece pajama snuggle suit). Daddy let the dink help open the carton of eggs, and then break each one in the bowl. The report I got later was that D no longer lightly taps the egg in the bowl and hands it off to be cracked for real—no, now he smashes the whole thing fearless onto the counter or whatever the nearest hard surface is. (So fun to rinse albumen from your child’s hand before breakfast.) And then comes the beating of the eggs, pouring them into the pan, and don’t forget grabbing the stick of butter from the fridge to grease the pan first. It’s amazing what kind of stuff that kid has picked up from watching us. Last night I had to fuss at him for throwing his bib into the trash can, but you really can’t blame him. He watches me cooking and cleaning in the kitchen all day, throwing away endless amounts of high chair refuse, wet paper towels, and empty cartons, jars, and bottles (that’s correct, I live in the only city in the world without recycling). I really hate leaving him in the mornings, when he’s bright-eyed and hungry for stimulation and adventure, and especially lately since he’s started clinging to my leg from the moment he wakes up, knowing that I’ll leave him if he lets me alone long enough to put on makeup and shoes. But recovery scenes like that, when you realize that you’re seeing your husband in the exact position that you dreamed about years ago before you even got married…that goes a long way in making up for it.

Misunderstandings

Just a week ago, I declared that “go, go-gee” was the dink’s quirky little way of saying “go.”

Turns out I underestimated him. The kid was giving me direct orders: Go get it! Or maybe he’s just directing himself when he says it. Either way, there are many things in our house to be gotten—his sippy cup of milk when he wakes up (an urgent go-gee!), his Jane’s Great Adventure book (once again, urgent), daddy from bed (“let’s go-gee him”), and a multitude of toys, kitchen items, and other inanimate objects that the dink loves to point to while he’s on my hip. I’ve found myself, more than I’d like to admit, turning circles around the kitchen as we go-gee the vent over the range, the Keurig coffee maker, the red cast iron dutch oven…until I realize that if I don’t stop, these directions may one day turn into “Give me some juice now!” or “Get your ass out of bed” Oh, but my dink would never.

The joy in the pointing and inspecting ritual is the special sound of excitement that D makes. It’s onomatopoeia at its finest. He puts the tip of his tongue between his teeth, barely sticking out, and hardly moving it, makes a strong “s” sound. For those of us who learned that making an “s” sound involves smiling, this would be very difficult. But it comes natural to him, and it’s a sound J and I try to repeat to each other when pointing to things, but as we’ve learned time and again, there are many, many things that are adorable when children do, yet annoying, inappropriate, or stupid when adults do…like stuffing as many strawberries as possible into one’s mouth, inspecting one’s genitalia in the bathtub for ten minutes, or my recent favorite, running in place as fast as possible on one’s tiptoes as a form of dance.

Papa

I always figured this would happen one day, but it still caught me off guard that it happened so soon. At 16 months and 2 days, the dink has officially declared his profound adoration for his Papa (pronounced paw-paw). On Friday evening, I met my dad in Covington to pass off the dink for the night so J and I could go out, get a decent night’s sleep, and talk to some Chinese people about renovating our kitchen. I was feeling hesitant about the whole episode, since we haven’t left the little man since our 5-day trip to the Dominican Republic exactly the day after his first birthday. But alas, my worry was for naught.

The dink spotted Papa as soon as I pulled him from his carseat, and he begged to get down. He started whining, and my dad reassured him “She’s not leaving you yet!” but then realized that the purpose of the whine was to be picked up…by Papa. From there, the dink wouldn’t let Papa put him down. Dad had to uninstall my carseat and reinstall it in his truck, all with one hand because the dink was permanently attached to his hip. When the carseat was finally installed, that dink happily let Papa buckle him in and looked at me like “See ya!” as I kissed him bye-bye and they pulled off. It was utterly unbelievable. Two minutes later, I called my mom to tell her about the dink’s newfound obsession with his Papa, but she had already gotten off the phone with the adored Papa himself, who had told her smugly, “Well, I think D likes me!”

I won’t say that it was bittersweet or anything dramatic like that. But it kind of was. Sure, I’ve realized before that the dink really liked his daycare teacher when he learned how to say her name (Kee---lly) and chanted it the whole way home, but this was an attachment that I’ve truly seen with no other (excluding Daddy). The most amazing this about it is that he doesn’t even see Papa that much! Maybe once a month, and always when I’m there as well. It was like he just felt some sort of instinctual connection to this grandfather-figure in his life. It’s like Susan at work always says about kids: “They get it. More than you think.” I guess before long he’ll be peeing outside with Papa on the compost pile.

Go!

Guh, Guh, Go-gee. This is the dink’s way of telling me it is time to go! Lately, he’s been waking up super early, as early as 4:45 a.m. and can’t figure out how to go back to sleep. So J and I try to enforce bogus rules, like “he can’t get out of bed before 5:30.” While waiting, the dink divides his time between trying to go back to sleep and practicing his words---mamaaaa, dadaaa, bye-byyye, yeah, yeah, yeah! (usually repeated with increasing emphasis). There’s also uh-oh and night-night, and maybe even calling of the cats (clicking his tongue). Finally, when he’s had enough of this routine, he stands on the door side of his crib and whines loudly and emotionally…and I stumble into his room and try to find a balance of praising him for playing alone for a while and also letting him know that it was still too early for him to wake up. This balance, of course, is inachievable and ridiculous, which is why this insanely early routine has persisted for the past few weeks. J and I are stuck, tired, not in the mood for tough love, and holding out hope that daylight savings time beginning is going to save us this weekend.

This morning, when I walked into the dink’s room at 5:29 a.m., he crawled quickly toward me, unsure of whether or not I would tell him to go to sleep or pick him up. As I reached my hands toward him, he leaned in to be lifted, and as he was rising out of the crib, he threw his lovey back down inside of it and say “bye-byyye” in that low-pitched, sing-song way of his. Then “uh, uh” pointing to the light switch so I’d let him turn it on, then down on the floor to look at me, making his baby sign for eat/drink (fingers bunched together, tapping mouth), and then marching toward his bedroom door, saying “guh guh, go-gee” all the way to the kitchen. The amount of instruction that I take from a 16 month old (today!) just blows me away. I wouldn’t stand for anyone else in the entire world directing me around like that, except maybe in prison or under some sort of kidnapping. But this life under the dink’s direction is the farthest thing from prison. I’d run laps around the house outside totally naked in the morning if his laughs and smiles were my reward.