Sunday, February 27, 2011
Double-sided photograph
Grafton, Neva, and I were looking at a framed photograph of Neva walking off into the distance on a beach on Cape Cod. Grafton was holding the frame in his hands, intently studying the picture when he commented, "That's Mommy on the beach". We confirmed his observation and then he asked "Where's Daddy?" We told him that Daddy wasn't in the picture because he was the photographer behind the camera. To verify our claim, Grafton flipped the frame around to see if his Dad was on the other side. (Or maybe he just wanted to see if his Mommy's face could be seen on the flip side?)
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Today I had fun...
Today, I had fun...
...playing hockey with my Dad in Northampton (fallen tree branches for sticks, a block of ice for a puck)
...crawling back and forth under a changing room door while my parents tried on clothes
...running up and down a "hiking shoe test ramp"...backwards
...practicing my ice walking skills on MHC campus
...simulating low-gravity skipping and hopping while holding my parents hands during our walk
...repeatedly singing all the words to "Down by the Bay" (a song my parents have never heard before)
...sitting in my Dad's lap while we ate lunch at a restaurant
...eating French toast for breakfast...and dinner
...playing hockey with my Dad in Northampton (fallen tree branches for sticks, a block of ice for a puck)
...crawling back and forth under a changing room door while my parents tried on clothes
...running up and down a "hiking shoe test ramp"...backwards
...practicing my ice walking skills on MHC campus
...simulating low-gravity skipping and hopping while holding my parents hands during our walk
...repeatedly singing all the words to "Down by the Bay" (a song my parents have never heard before)
...sitting in my Dad's lap while we ate lunch at a restaurant
...eating French toast for breakfast...and dinner
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Zillow
Dad was looking on Zillow.com to see what houses are for sale in our area.
Grafton, sitting in his high chair, eating lunch says, "Are you buying new house?"
Dad: "Yes, well, we're looking for a new house."
Grafton: "You move to new house?"
Dad: "Maybe, if we find one we like. But you'll move with us."
Grafton: "You don't want this house. This house broken."
(It appears Grafton has been picking up on our complaints about our house)
Grafton, sitting in his high chair, eating lunch says, "Are you buying new house?"
Dad: "Yes, well, we're looking for a new house."
Grafton: "You move to new house?"
Dad: "Maybe, if we find one we like. But you'll move with us."
Grafton: "You don't want this house. This house broken."
(It appears Grafton has been picking up on our complaints about our house)
Riding the PVTA 38
Every time Grafton sees a bus waiting to pick up passengers on the Mount Holyoke College campus, he asks us if he can get on too. Of course, we had to keep telling him "no" because we weren't actually prepared to go on a bus ride. But finally Dad planned for the occasion this past Friday by picking him up from school in time to make the 4:55pm departure of the 38 bus to Amherst, where Mom would meet us after work. Grafton definitely enjoyed the ride. See for yourself!
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Winter Catch-up
We'll it's been over three weeks since our last blog entry, and I'm using the same excuse that every New Englander has a right to these days--I've been too busy shoveling frozen water crystals off of our driveway and roof. Fortunately, we kept a few notes about some of Grafton's latest antics and developmental milestones. Very random and miscellaneous stuff, but these are the little things we didn't want to forget.
Tina, one of Grafton's daycare teachers is pregnant, and we've discussed what that means with Grafton. I think he must have talked about it a bit at school as well, since one day he came home telling us all about the "babies in my belly". As Grafton often does, he later mutated this into "I have junk in my belly", which he would repeat on occasion after eating a meal. Not sure why exactly he settled on the word "junk", but maybe he heard others talking about eating junk food!?
Grafton is now well aware that he is no longer a baby. Sometimes, just for a laugh, we'll pick him up and cradle him like a baby (which is no small feat, since he's so large now), and tell him "You're our little baby Grafton". He instantly rebuttals, "I'm not a baby--I'm a big boy!" He likes to spontaneously remind us of this fact at various times.
One day Grafton comes home from school and starts reciting some simple rhymes:
"I drink, I wink"
"I drink, I wink"
"I drink, I sink"
"I drink, I puff"
We have no idea where he picked this up, but I posited that he must have been watching an episode of Mad Men at school, because all I could picture was Don Draper sitting at a dimly lit, smoke-filled bar.
Speaking of smoke, we smoked ourselves out of our house one evening a couple of weeks ago, while trying to start a fire in our wood stove. Just after we got it going, it went out, then smoldered, and quickly began filling our house with smoke. After a few unsuccessful attempts at trying to control the situation, Dad ran upstairs and yelled out to Mom, "get me some water!!!" Grafton, hearing the urgent call, sprang into action, ran to the pantry closet, and pulled out a bottle of olive oil and white vinegar (thinking they were water) and handed them to Daddy. Mom got the water, Dad threw it on the smoldering ashes, and the situation was under control. We tried to air out the house, despite it being the coldest night of the year. But at 10:30pm, after realizing we couldn't sleep in the acrid air, we packed a bag, hopped in the car, and drove to a hotel. While in the car, Neva and I started discussing what had gone wrong and how we might have avoided the disaster. At one point I asked her, "so what did we learn?" Grafton, hearing the question, chimed in with a precocious and lucid answer, "Don't do it again, Daddy!" Smart kid.
Grafton, after all, is now a fully-trained fire fighter, thanks to his latest favorite book, "Big Frank's Fire Truck". He now knows just about everything there is to know about fire safety, fire equipment, and extinguishing fires. He knows how to "stop, drop, roll". He knows that Big Frank drives a "pumper engine" that "holds 1000 gallons of water". He knows firemen need to wear helmets, to "protect his hair", as Grafton explained it. He knows that oxygen tanks and masks allow firemen to breathe when surrounded by smoke. He understands what sprinklers are for. He's really spent some effort learning everything in this book. As an aside, when Grafton is on duty as a fire fighter, he likes to wear his own plastic yellow hard hat and orange winter coat--he actually looks like a real firefighter (boy, we really need to get a photo of this).
He's also pretty much mastered his "shape ball"--a sphere with an assortment of openings that only accept pieces of the correct shape. I like to watch him pick up a piece, rotate the sphere around until he finds the right opening, and then confidently pushes the piece through. He gets bored after a few pieces, even though I always hope to see him finish the whole puzzle.
I think we watch too much news on TV. Last week, he told us, "I wanna watch the news!"
One morning while getting Grafton dressed, Grafton told me that his "feet hurt" and next that his "shoes [are] too tight". He was trying to let me know that had grown out of a pair of his shoes. The next day we were all in the car on our way to Marshalls, and Mom and Dad were discussing what they needed to buy. Hearing this, Grafton revisited his earlier topic and began explaining that he needed to go shopping to buy new shoes, because his brown shoes were too tight, which he proceeded to explain over the course of 4 or 5 sentences. (This stood out to us as one of his longer multi-sentence thoughts.)
Dad and Grafton were off to school one recent winter morning. After Dad opened the car door, Grafton refused to let me place him into his car seat. He insisted that he would climb in by himself. And that's exactly what he did, demonstrating a level of climbing dexterity that made it clear I've been doing the heavy lifting for much longer than I've needed to. Even more recently, after a walk in the snow, he was climbing into my car and I asked him to get in the seat without placing his wet, snowy shoes in the seat. Somehow, he climbed on up, kneeled in the seat facing backwards, and then swiftly flipped himself around, kicking his legs out, so as not to get his seat wet. It was an impressive maneuver.
A few weeks after Christmas, Dad and Grafton went to the dump to get rid of the Christmas tree. I explained to him why we had a big tree in the back of the car and where we were heading. On the way there, we saw a school bus and I commented that it was odd to see a school bus heading towards the dump. Grafton then asked if it too had a Christmas tree inside. I told him that it might, but that more likely it was bringing kids to school. Later, after pitching the tree, I pointed out the big garbage trucks that were driving to the top of the landfill mountain. He immediately asked if we could drive up there too. But after explaining to him that we weren't allowed and that it wouldn't be very pleasant in any case, he understood and repeated "only big trucks, not Daddy's truck." A week later, we headed back to the dump to get rid of a computer, and he told us again that Daddy's truck wasn't allowed to go up the hill.
Grafton really enjoys the cartoon series, "Dinosaur Train". He's asked for it a lot in the last week or so. It basically puts him in a trance. But not tonight. He had a change of heart when we offered to let him watch it, telling us, "No dinosaur train! I want to watch a movie!"
Grafton can finally move unimpeded around our house, now that he can operate door knobs (for better or for worse). Sometimes he'll just repeat going in and out of doors (and up and down stairs), just because he can. After doing this for a while tonight, his forearms must have grown tired, because he started having trouble turning the knobs fully. He tried and tried, but just couldn't get the door to the den open, and he refused our help saying, "I do it myself!" After a number of failed attempts, he grew very angry and started running around, pumping his fists in the air, and finally ran into a corner and yelled, "I'm fruhhhstrated!" Indeed, he was. It's quite a spectacle when he gets this angry. But he came around quickly, and we tried to explain that not everything in life is easy.
We're considering hiring someone to help us keep our house clean, and tonight we had a woman come over for a consultation. The first thing the woman asked us to do was to show her around. Grafton considered this his full responsibility and with great enthusiasm led the way through each room of the house, naming each room in turn. "This is the kitchen", "this is my room!", etc. He seemed so happy to have the opportunity to give a tour.
Grafton is one step closer to brushing with real toothpaste, now that he has learned the fine art of spitting.
Grafton loves dancing with his guitar. He also still loves dancing without it.
Tina, one of Grafton's daycare teachers is pregnant, and we've discussed what that means with Grafton. I think he must have talked about it a bit at school as well, since one day he came home telling us all about the "babies in my belly". As Grafton often does, he later mutated this into "I have junk in my belly", which he would repeat on occasion after eating a meal. Not sure why exactly he settled on the word "junk", but maybe he heard others talking about eating junk food!?
Grafton is now well aware that he is no longer a baby. Sometimes, just for a laugh, we'll pick him up and cradle him like a baby (which is no small feat, since he's so large now), and tell him "You're our little baby Grafton". He instantly rebuttals, "I'm not a baby--I'm a big boy!" He likes to spontaneously remind us of this fact at various times.
One day Grafton comes home from school and starts reciting some simple rhymes:
"I drink, I wink"
"I drink, I wink"
"I drink, I sink"
"I drink, I puff"
We have no idea where he picked this up, but I posited that he must have been watching an episode of Mad Men at school, because all I could picture was Don Draper sitting at a dimly lit, smoke-filled bar.
Speaking of smoke, we smoked ourselves out of our house one evening a couple of weeks ago, while trying to start a fire in our wood stove. Just after we got it going, it went out, then smoldered, and quickly began filling our house with smoke. After a few unsuccessful attempts at trying to control the situation, Dad ran upstairs and yelled out to Mom, "get me some water!!!" Grafton, hearing the urgent call, sprang into action, ran to the pantry closet, and pulled out a bottle of olive oil and white vinegar (thinking they were water) and handed them to Daddy. Mom got the water, Dad threw it on the smoldering ashes, and the situation was under control. We tried to air out the house, despite it being the coldest night of the year. But at 10:30pm, after realizing we couldn't sleep in the acrid air, we packed a bag, hopped in the car, and drove to a hotel. While in the car, Neva and I started discussing what had gone wrong and how we might have avoided the disaster. At one point I asked her, "so what did we learn?" Grafton, hearing the question, chimed in with a precocious and lucid answer, "Don't do it again, Daddy!" Smart kid.
Grafton, after all, is now a fully-trained fire fighter, thanks to his latest favorite book, "Big Frank's Fire Truck". He now knows just about everything there is to know about fire safety, fire equipment, and extinguishing fires. He knows how to "stop, drop, roll". He knows that Big Frank drives a "pumper engine" that "holds 1000 gallons of water". He knows firemen need to wear helmets, to "protect his hair", as Grafton explained it. He knows that oxygen tanks and masks allow firemen to breathe when surrounded by smoke. He understands what sprinklers are for. He's really spent some effort learning everything in this book. As an aside, when Grafton is on duty as a fire fighter, he likes to wear his own plastic yellow hard hat and orange winter coat--he actually looks like a real firefighter (boy, we really need to get a photo of this).
Grafton's puzzle skills continue to improve. To our surprise, he is now able to find and connect jigsaw puzzle pieces. On two separate occasions, Mom and Dad each were trying to teach him how to "solve" a jigsaw puzzle. "Grafton, do you see how this bit of color on this piece matches the color on that piece?", and so on. But he wasn't really listening to us. Instead he was busy staring at the jumble of pieces and then on his own accord would reach over to grab a piece and slap it down in the exact right spot, stating something like, "this one goes there." I guess there are some things you don't really teach.
He's also pretty much mastered his "shape ball"--a sphere with an assortment of openings that only accept pieces of the correct shape. I like to watch him pick up a piece, rotate the sphere around until he finds the right opening, and then confidently pushes the piece through. He gets bored after a few pieces, even though I always hope to see him finish the whole puzzle.
I think we watch too much news on TV. Last week, he told us, "I wanna watch the news!"
One morning while getting Grafton dressed, Grafton told me that his "feet hurt" and next that his "shoes [are] too tight". He was trying to let me know that had grown out of a pair of his shoes. The next day we were all in the car on our way to Marshalls, and Mom and Dad were discussing what they needed to buy. Hearing this, Grafton revisited his earlier topic and began explaining that he needed to go shopping to buy new shoes, because his brown shoes were too tight, which he proceeded to explain over the course of 4 or 5 sentences. (This stood out to us as one of his longer multi-sentence thoughts.)
Dad and Grafton were off to school one recent winter morning. After Dad opened the car door, Grafton refused to let me place him into his car seat. He insisted that he would climb in by himself. And that's exactly what he did, demonstrating a level of climbing dexterity that made it clear I've been doing the heavy lifting for much longer than I've needed to. Even more recently, after a walk in the snow, he was climbing into my car and I asked him to get in the seat without placing his wet, snowy shoes in the seat. Somehow, he climbed on up, kneeled in the seat facing backwards, and then swiftly flipped himself around, kicking his legs out, so as not to get his seat wet. It was an impressive maneuver.
A few weeks after Christmas, Dad and Grafton went to the dump to get rid of the Christmas tree. I explained to him why we had a big tree in the back of the car and where we were heading. On the way there, we saw a school bus and I commented that it was odd to see a school bus heading towards the dump. Grafton then asked if it too had a Christmas tree inside. I told him that it might, but that more likely it was bringing kids to school. Later, after pitching the tree, I pointed out the big garbage trucks that were driving to the top of the landfill mountain. He immediately asked if we could drive up there too. But after explaining to him that we weren't allowed and that it wouldn't be very pleasant in any case, he understood and repeated "only big trucks, not Daddy's truck." A week later, we headed back to the dump to get rid of a computer, and he told us again that Daddy's truck wasn't allowed to go up the hill.
Grafton really enjoys the cartoon series, "Dinosaur Train". He's asked for it a lot in the last week or so. It basically puts him in a trance. But not tonight. He had a change of heart when we offered to let him watch it, telling us, "No dinosaur train! I want to watch a movie!"
Grafton can finally move unimpeded around our house, now that he can operate door knobs (for better or for worse). Sometimes he'll just repeat going in and out of doors (and up and down stairs), just because he can. After doing this for a while tonight, his forearms must have grown tired, because he started having trouble turning the knobs fully. He tried and tried, but just couldn't get the door to the den open, and he refused our help saying, "I do it myself!" After a number of failed attempts, he grew very angry and started running around, pumping his fists in the air, and finally ran into a corner and yelled, "I'm fruhhhstrated!" Indeed, he was. It's quite a spectacle when he gets this angry. But he came around quickly, and we tried to explain that not everything in life is easy.
We're considering hiring someone to help us keep our house clean, and tonight we had a woman come over for a consultation. The first thing the woman asked us to do was to show her around. Grafton considered this his full responsibility and with great enthusiasm led the way through each room of the house, naming each room in turn. "This is the kitchen", "this is my room!", etc. He seemed so happy to have the opportunity to give a tour.
Grafton is one step closer to brushing with real toothpaste, now that he has learned the fine art of spitting.
Grafton loves dancing with his guitar. He also still loves dancing without it.
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