Week in Review

Grafton has made a number of small developmental leaps over the last week or so, which we thought would be worth recording.

Starting with the most important (at least to his parents), Grafton has learned to identify the feeling of a lumpy diaper.  While most questions these days are met with an immediate "No!", on occasion, Grafton will now respond to a diaper change query with a reserved, drawn out, "yeeeaaahh", and a shy smile.  Just yesterday he was introduced to a training potty, and started acting out appropriate usage techniques with his small baby doll.

On the academic side of things, Grafton has started to learn and recite, in ascending order, the first three members of the set of positive integers.  We're not convinced he understands the meaning of each number's value, but he is able to count homogeneous set of objects of size N, where N <= 3.

But enough about mathematics.  On Father's day, Grafton enjoyed his first experience in a pool.  Nana and Mama took him to the community pool on Harrington Road.  After some initial trepidation, he warmed up to the idea, and eventually he was flying over the surface of the water in a plastic, floating airplane.  Six days later, he relived the experience with Nana.

Grafton's memory and recall of people and events is becoming more apparent every day.  On Thu, we were explaining to him that it was his last day with his current teacher, Rachel.  We asked him if he knew who his new teachers would be and he told us "Grayson", which was exactly right.  So he really is  beginning to understand non-trivial questions and conversational ideas.  When we reminded him about his second new teacher, Mitch, he told us "tar", which of course meant "guitar"--the instrument that Mitch plays everyday at school for his toddlers. (Grafton got a preview of this during recent "transition" days.)

We've started to let Grafton play in our cars while they're parked in the garage.  He really enjoys sitting up in the front seat, and even climbing over to the driver's seat.  Every time he does this, though, he demands us to "go!"  Once, while he and his Daddy were sitting in the back seat together, I tried to explain to him that we couldn't go because I would have to be in the driver's seat in order to make the car move.  Unprompted, he exclaimed, "keys!", so somehow he's already learned this association.  (Probably because every time we get into Mama's car, with Daddy driving, Daddy asks Mama for the keys.)  Somewhat related, Grafton likes to walk into the garage and point out which car is Mama's and which one is Daddy's.  Yesterday, while in Otis, he attributed the white Subaru to Nana, saying "Nana's car".  Oh, and of course, he counted three of its four wheels, as we walked around it with Nana.  On Wednesday, Grafton's maternal grandparents arrived at our house.  Grafton, coming home from daycare with Daddy and Baba, was refusing to get out of his car seat.  Daddy, seeing that the grandparent's car was in the driveway, knew that it might provide the necessary excitement to convince Grafton to agree to a car seat extraction and egress maneuver, and said "Look! Is that Baba and Grandpa's car over there!?"  Smiling, he put his arm up to be lifted out, and then ran over to the silver Honda, and commented how "Bab's car" was "shiny".

This morning, Grafton gave us a few insightful one-liners.  While bouncing up and down on the couch, Mama explained that he needed to exercise caution, lest he fall off the edge and hit his head.  Clearly, he understood the warning, and remembered a similar lesson from one his books, because he retorted "No moaw monkeys jumpa da bed", while simultaneously waving his pointer finger at Mama.  The same morning, Grafton found himself engaged in an audit of Daddy's wallet, which started with a complete emptying of its contents.  With dollar bills strewn all over the floor, he began performing his accounting task by collecting them all again.  Worried that his accounting techniques would ultimately result in a financial loss for us, Mama requested that he turn over the cash.  Unwilling, he explained "No money", and then "Going shopping".

Finally, today is June 26th, which marks the one year anniversary of Grafton and Nana's two hour tour of Boston's Wang Medical Buildings, on foot (and stroller).

South Windsor to Amherst

Grafton had full day today.  In the morning, he headed down to South Windsor with Neva to visit a friend that she used to work with.  Later in the day, once Andrew returned home from his bike ride, we all headed north for a Taste of Amherst.  It was a beautiful evening, and we ate lots of food, ice cream, and cookies. We met up with Grafton's daycare pal, Joe, and his parents Liz & Bennett. Grafton enjoyed running around in the crowds, weaving in and out of people's legs, occasionally stopping to check out a dog or another toddler.  After eating, we sat down in the grass to listen to some live music, and Grafton and Joe had a great time dancing together. After a few songs, we headed home for a quick bath and long night's sleep.

Having a cow (over cows)

We stopped by Cook Farm after dinner this evening for some ice cream and to let Grafton check out the cows on the farm.  The thing is, Grafton loves cows.  He loves talking about cows.  He loves songs about cows.  He loves pictures of cows.  He loves saying the word "cow".  And so you can imagine how much he enjoyed seeing a whole farm of real cows, all walking around right in from of him!  What a grin he had when we first got out of the car and stepped up to the fence.  He then went off, non-stop, telling us all about cows:

Grafton: "Cows!"
Parents: "Yes, look at all the cows!  Do you like cows?"
G: "Cows! Eating"
P: "Yes, they're eating--what are they eating?"
G: "Grass"
P:  "Those are huge cows"
G: "Huge cows!"
P: "Do you see the brown cows?"
G: "Brown cows!"
P: "Look, that cow needs to be milked!"
G: "Uda"
P: "What's that Grafton?"
G: "Uda!"
P: "Yes, cows have udders!"  (how did he know that!?)
G: "Milk!"
P: "Yes, cows have milk in their udders!"
G: "Cows!  No shoes!"
P: "That's right--the cows aren't wearing shoes.  They have hooves."
G: "Hooves.  Tail!"

...and this went on for a long time, as we had an in-depth talk about all the cows, with Grafton teaching us all about the finer points of cows.  He particularly enjoyed watching them go to the bathroom, and when they were done, he demanded "more! more!"

Well, by the time we were done watching cows (and by "we", I only mean us parents), we decided to skip the ice cream, and headed home to put Grafton bed.  I think I know what he's dreaming about tonight.

Strawberry Fields

Grafton is now an experienced strawberry picker!  We took him to Dickinson Farms, in Granby, MA, for a warm, sunny evening of strawberry harvesting.  He made the long walk to the fields pretty much on his own, and only stopped once or twice to acquire some rocks on the way out.

As we started filling up our cardboard tray with berries, he removed them nearly as fast, stuffing them in his mouth, red juice flowing down his chin and forearms.  He satiated himself in time, and then started helping us pick.  First, by taking the berries that his parents plucked and placing them into the tray, and before long, by finding and extracting the berries on his own.  Not all of his were juicy and ripe, so we tried to teach him the qualities of strawberries worth picking, and in the end he found some really nice ones.  When he tired of the chore of picking and stowing berries, he had fun romping up and down the narrow aisles, and occasionally hopping laterally between the rows.  He found an irrigation sprinkler and made sure he understood how it worked before resuming his explorations.

After picking as many as we could conceivably consume in a week's time, we headed back to the farm stand to weigh our harvest and pay up.  It's a good thing the farm did not have a policy against eating berries in the fields, because Grafton definitely would have been caught "red handed".

Blueberries will be ready in early July, and Grafton and his parents will be out there picking!

Imaginary Play

This afternoon when Mama asked me to pick up and hand her some toys on the floor, I intentionally passed the toys and pretended to pick up something else on the floor and handed it to her. Mama caught on quicker than I expected, as she put those imaginary items in my toy box. So I immediately asked her if she wanted some tea. After I delivered a steaming cup of tea to Mama, she asked for some cookies. And the game continued...

I repeated this game with Daddy, when he returned from his bicycle ride.

Otis 200th

Nana and PopPop invited me to partake in the 200th birthday of Otis, a three-day celebration, starting on Friday.  My parents agreed to take me.  We drove over after daycare, but since there was no food at the Friday event, we skipped it and went out for pizza in Great Barrington.  I ate a whole slice.  I met a couple next to us that drove to the pizza shop on their Harley Davidson.  I impressed them when I told them "motorcycle".  I think they liked me!  They left before us and showed off just how loud their motorcycle was when they drove off.  At Nana and PopPop's I got to stay up very late, waiting for them to come back home, but I finally got to see them before going to bed.

The next day, I ran all over the house and then overslept during my afternoon nap.   So we missed all but the tail end of the big parade.  Even though Daddy jogged me down in the backpack carrier as fast as he could.  But I still was able to enjoy the rest of the events, which included a petting zoo, a tractor ride, live music, and plenty of running around.  There was a riding mower sitting in a field with the key in the ignition, so I decided to give it a ride.  I never figured out how to get it started, but I was able to climb up and down off the seat.  Later on, I got to sing on stage with Nana and her group of Red Hat singers.  I also tried the jungle gym, and started to figure out how to climb up the bars (avoiding disaster thanks to my parent's quick reflexes).  I also enjoyed running through a puddle when my Daddy wasn't looking and getting my shoes and pants muddy and wet.  I was too busy having fun to eat anything.  I think I got to meet just about everyone in Otis, since Nana introduced me to all the people she knew at the celebration.  On the walk home, I saw a truck which I remembered seeing at the mall earlier this week, and so I shouted "Jeep!" to let me parents know.

Back at the house, I exercised a lot, running around all over the house (and making it known by yelling "Running! Running! Running!").  I figured out that I can get others to stop and go by calling out "Stop!" and "Go!".  Nana taught me how to do stretching and back exercises while laying on my back.  Everyone seems to get tired of exercising so quickly, but not me!

Mommy and Daddy decided we'd stay another night, so who knows when I'll be back home!  I like going away for the weekend.

Here of some pix of the Otis 200th birthday celebration.

Double Decker Buses

Today at school (daycare), Grafton was trying to stack and balance one toy bus upon another.  He tried and tried, but the bus on top would always fall off.  Finally realizing that the bus on the bottom did not provide a stable stacking surface, he figured he would need to try a new approach.  So, after some careful deliberation he called out to his teacher, Rachel, "Tape!".  She brought some over, helped him the tape the buses together, and a double decker bus was enjoyed by all.

Later in the evening we headed to the mall, in order to let Grafton run off the excessive energy he must have amassed during a rainy day at school.  He must have run a full mile in the mall (and so his Dad did as well).  Our last stop in the mall was at Borders, and Grafton honed in on a picture book about buses, which also doubled as a toy, thanks to the wheels attached to its cover.  Fittingly, the last page of the book highlighted double decker buses!

A Card from my Grandparents

Grafton received a hand-written card from his maternal grandparents yesterday!  We read it to him a couple of times, but he has yet to write back with a card of his own.

Shadow Play

While Grafton was in his high chair waiting for his food to arrive, we caught him moving his arms around his head.  He had noticed that his arms would block the light coming in from the glass doors behind him, casting shadows on the wall in front of him.  He enjoyed controlling something that was so far away from him.

Pulmonary Checkup A-OK

We took Grafton in for his 2nd pulmonary checkup today, and all is still well.  We mentioned Neva's theory to the doctor regarding the possibility of Motrin causing his wheezing, and she's going to look into it with the allergy specialist.

Mostly, Grafton had fun with his waiting room friend, Nathan, with whom he practiced jumping and pushing chairs around the waiting room.

ABC...P

While singing the ABC song to Grafton this morning, he knew to interject the "P" exactly at the right time.  I tried it again to make sure it wasn't a fluke, and he filled in the missing "P" right on cue.  Later, he did the same with "Z".  Since he already knows the first three letters, he's only got 21 letters to go!

Charlie Parker Be Bop

This morning we heard reference to Charlie Parker on the radio. I turned to Andrew and said, "Charlie Parker is the book that Grafton likes at school." Grafton then said "Be Bop", which is part of the book title--"Charlie Parker Plays Be Bop"

Castle Architect

Here's my latest castle, which I designed all by myself:

Daddy Stole My Bike

Daddy participated in a Downhill Cycling Event...and he used my bike!  But I enjoyed watching him race downhill.

Reading a book...about me!

Dear Nana and PopPop,

Thanks for my book!  I enjoyed reading it with Mommy.

Love, Grafton

Creative Time

Not long ago Grafton put his artistic talents to use at his toddler picnic table, painting a picture for his Mommy:

Grafton Paints 

Hanging out with Augustus today

Photos: Grafton Morning Cycling

Grafton Morning Cycling 

Stacking blocks

Grafton is now able to stack blocks four or more high, and create non-trivial structures, such as the one he just created with a large base, smaller mid-tier rectangles, and a triangle top.  We call his structures castles.

My Age

Neva was trying to teach Grafton how to communicate that he was one year old by putting up one finger when asked "how old are you?"  After showing him a few times, we asked him "how old are you?" and he said "two!"