Monkey boy
Kidlet has been changing again, becoming more and more a little boy. I realize I say that a lot, but he really is - I can't believe just how much and how quickly he changes as I am constantly noticing it.
This weekend he discovered a new way to make Mommy's heart stop in her chest. We were at daddy Michael's company outing and little Michael was hanging out with a coworker's 3-year-old son, Owen. They were so cute together, tooling around like a little boy pack. They were playing on a jungle gym thing that had a couple of slides, and Owen grabbed onto a bar above the slide, kicked his legs, and swung out over the drop. Michael watched him for a moment, then jumeped up, grabbed the bar beside him, and did the same thing! I gasped and readied myself to catch him but he was having a grand time. Since that point Michael will grab onto anything that's off the ground and try to swing on it. My little monkey boy.
He's also become very good at problem-solving, even we have been surprised on occasion at what he comes up with. Sunday night after swimming we went to the frozen custard place and Michael and Thomi immediately noticed the water fountain, which was nothing more than a hose attached to a spout about four feet off the ground. Michael wanted more than anything to reach that water, so he stacked up two bricks at the foot of the hose and stood on them, but still couldn't reach. Then he called Thomi over (amusingly, the same way he calls the dog, patting his leg and shouting, "Omie, c'mere! 'Ere!") and coaxed her up onto the bricks. She could almost reach, but didn't really care to reach the water. Then Michael picked up some pebbles and put them on the bricks and tried to stand on those to get more height. Finding them too wobbly, he added a few more stones and tried again. Watching him go through this process was fascinating. We finally had to stop him when he started climbing on the railing of the nearby pavilion to gain higher ground and, I'm guessing, make a leap for it like a 25-pound flying squirrel.
Heide mentioned something to me about how she used to believe that gender roles were primarily determined by environment, but that now she didn't feel that way. I tend to agree. We don't treat Michael "like a boy", per se, in that we don't push stereotypes on him and expose him to a wide array of things that are associated with both the male and female gender. However, he is totally a boy, so whatever drips and drabs of testosterone are coursing through his body are doing their job.
Personally I can't wait until he's coordinated enough to teach him spinngng and knitting and making things with his hands. He loves playing with crayons and markers (when he's not trying to eat them) and has begun drawing balls. Before he'd just make scribbles and say, "Mommy," "Daddy," "Michael," "Brigid," etc., but now he'll say "Ball" and draw a ball. Granted a ball isn't all that hard to draw, but it's neat to see his connection from the word to what he puts on paper. He also likes to emulate what we draw when we color with him - daddy Michael will draw stars slowly so kidlet can see what he's doing, and then kidlet will draw small angular shapes in the same style. It's obvious he hasn't mastered the hand-eye coordination to make the lines go in the right directions, but the intent is there. It's so cool.
Last night was another very pleasant discovery. I picked him up from daycare and were on our way home when I accidentally hit the volume button on my cell phone, producing an abbreviated ring (my ringtone is the theme to the Smurfs, incidentally). Michael immediately said, "Phone! Mommy get it!" I laughed, then decided to play with the ringtones on my cell phone to see what he'd say to each one. When I got to Vivaldi's Spring, he perked right up and nodded his head in time with a big smile on his face. The excerpt goes through the first theme, a repeat, and then slows down to complete at the end. When the music started to slow in tempo, Michael raised his hands in the air and waved them in time, then held them out, palms up, as the last sustained note played. I couldn't believe what I was seeing! I don't think I've ever conducted for him before, if I did at all it was when he was a very young infant. (I was a music performance major, just to clarify.) He spontaneously mirrored the last four beats of the piece, complete with a change in tempo and a hold at the end! While I'm certainly not saying I've got a prodigy on my hands, I was very surprised and pleased. It looked to me like he was just doing what felt natural to him.
Later that night we went out to see Jenn and Leonard and on the way home he was a little fussy so I turned on the radio and found a classical station. My #1 favorite piece of music, Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain was playing and I watched Michael to see his reaction. He really seemed to enjoy it! I asked him "Do you like this music?" and he shook his head yes. When we got home I found my New York Philharmonic disc of Pictures at an Exhibition and Night on Bald Mountain and put it in the CD player in the darkened living room. Michael sat quite thoughtfully through the Promenade, holding a bottle of water, and when it ended, he looked up and me and said, "Again?"
This whole experience affected me greatly...I don't listen to many of my classical discs these days as I haven't played in over a decade and it hurts too much to remind me of the talent I once had (and, I'll admit at the risk of sounding too egotistical, was a significant amount of talent that I feel I wasted utterly). However, sitting with him listening to these two pieces which never fail to bring tears to my eyes even after years of avoidance I told myself that perhaps I should make the time to polish and clean my euphonium, then commit myself to a scant one hour a week to play. Something instead of nothing. We'll see. In the meantime, it made my heart swell that my son likes classical music. It seems that he has inherited many of the interests of both Michael and myself. I don't know where he'll go with them as he grows, but I want to make sure that he is always exposed to these things and has the opportunity to explore them if he wishes.
He nursed for a while listening to Pictures at an Exhibition and fell asleep around The Hut on Hen's Legs (Baba Yaga). I shifted him a little and said, "Are you ready for bed?" to which he unlatched and whispered, "All done," without even opening his eyes. I was able to bring him to bed and lay him down without issue.
This weekend he discovered a new way to make Mommy's heart stop in her chest. We were at daddy Michael's company outing and little Michael was hanging out with a coworker's 3-year-old son, Owen. They were so cute together, tooling around like a little boy pack. They were playing on a jungle gym thing that had a couple of slides, and Owen grabbed onto a bar above the slide, kicked his legs, and swung out over the drop. Michael watched him for a moment, then jumeped up, grabbed the bar beside him, and did the same thing! I gasped and readied myself to catch him but he was having a grand time. Since that point Michael will grab onto anything that's off the ground and try to swing on it. My little monkey boy.
He's also become very good at problem-solving, even we have been surprised on occasion at what he comes up with. Sunday night after swimming we went to the frozen custard place and Michael and Thomi immediately noticed the water fountain, which was nothing more than a hose attached to a spout about four feet off the ground. Michael wanted more than anything to reach that water, so he stacked up two bricks at the foot of the hose and stood on them, but still couldn't reach. Then he called Thomi over (amusingly, the same way he calls the dog, patting his leg and shouting, "Omie, c'mere! 'Ere!") and coaxed her up onto the bricks. She could almost reach, but didn't really care to reach the water. Then Michael picked up some pebbles and put them on the bricks and tried to stand on those to get more height. Finding them too wobbly, he added a few more stones and tried again. Watching him go through this process was fascinating. We finally had to stop him when he started climbing on the railing of the nearby pavilion to gain higher ground and, I'm guessing, make a leap for it like a 25-pound flying squirrel.
Heide mentioned something to me about how she used to believe that gender roles were primarily determined by environment, but that now she didn't feel that way. I tend to agree. We don't treat Michael "like a boy", per se, in that we don't push stereotypes on him and expose him to a wide array of things that are associated with both the male and female gender. However, he is totally a boy, so whatever drips and drabs of testosterone are coursing through his body are doing their job.
Personally I can't wait until he's coordinated enough to teach him spinngng and knitting and making things with his hands. He loves playing with crayons and markers (when he's not trying to eat them) and has begun drawing balls. Before he'd just make scribbles and say, "Mommy," "Daddy," "Michael," "Brigid," etc., but now he'll say "Ball" and draw a ball. Granted a ball isn't all that hard to draw, but it's neat to see his connection from the word to what he puts on paper. He also likes to emulate what we draw when we color with him - daddy Michael will draw stars slowly so kidlet can see what he's doing, and then kidlet will draw small angular shapes in the same style. It's obvious he hasn't mastered the hand-eye coordination to make the lines go in the right directions, but the intent is there. It's so cool.
Last night was another very pleasant discovery. I picked him up from daycare and were on our way home when I accidentally hit the volume button on my cell phone, producing an abbreviated ring (my ringtone is the theme to the Smurfs, incidentally). Michael immediately said, "Phone! Mommy get it!" I laughed, then decided to play with the ringtones on my cell phone to see what he'd say to each one. When I got to Vivaldi's Spring, he perked right up and nodded his head in time with a big smile on his face. The excerpt goes through the first theme, a repeat, and then slows down to complete at the end. When the music started to slow in tempo, Michael raised his hands in the air and waved them in time, then held them out, palms up, as the last sustained note played. I couldn't believe what I was seeing! I don't think I've ever conducted for him before, if I did at all it was when he was a very young infant. (I was a music performance major, just to clarify.) He spontaneously mirrored the last four beats of the piece, complete with a change in tempo and a hold at the end! While I'm certainly not saying I've got a prodigy on my hands, I was very surprised and pleased. It looked to me like he was just doing what felt natural to him.
Later that night we went out to see Jenn and Leonard and on the way home he was a little fussy so I turned on the radio and found a classical station. My #1 favorite piece of music, Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain was playing and I watched Michael to see his reaction. He really seemed to enjoy it! I asked him "Do you like this music?" and he shook his head yes. When we got home I found my New York Philharmonic disc of Pictures at an Exhibition and Night on Bald Mountain and put it in the CD player in the darkened living room. Michael sat quite thoughtfully through the Promenade, holding a bottle of water, and when it ended, he looked up and me and said, "Again?"
This whole experience affected me greatly...I don't listen to many of my classical discs these days as I haven't played in over a decade and it hurts too much to remind me of the talent I once had (and, I'll admit at the risk of sounding too egotistical, was a significant amount of talent that I feel I wasted utterly). However, sitting with him listening to these two pieces which never fail to bring tears to my eyes even after years of avoidance I told myself that perhaps I should make the time to polish and clean my euphonium, then commit myself to a scant one hour a week to play. Something instead of nothing. We'll see. In the meantime, it made my heart swell that my son likes classical music. It seems that he has inherited many of the interests of both Michael and myself. I don't know where he'll go with them as he grows, but I want to make sure that he is always exposed to these things and has the opportunity to explore them if he wishes.
He nursed for a while listening to Pictures at an Exhibition and fell asleep around The Hut on Hen's Legs (Baba Yaga). I shifted him a little and said, "Are you ready for bed?" to which he unlatched and whispered, "All done," without even opening his eyes. I was able to bring him to bed and lay him down without issue.
posted by Jen at
12:12 PM
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