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!

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).

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.

Playing the Joe Card

I finally won a battle in our ongoing food war with our son.When Grafton decides "All done! [eating]", it's pretty much a lost cause for us to get him to eat another bite. He pulled this one on us this morning over breakfast, after having only a few bites of his cereal, "All done!" Since it was almost time to go to school, a new strategy formed in my mind.  I calmly replied to Grafton, "Should we bring your cereal to school and give it to Joe?" For those unaware, Grafton and Joe had a history of claiming each others' toys as soon as one of them would lay claim to one. This was a healthy and harmless rivalry, and one that would subside within a few minutes of the two's daily introduction.  But in Grafton's mind, this idea of sharing his cereal with Joe elicited the expected response of possessiveness and he instantly declared, "No! I eat my cereal."  And he did.

The Big Dig

While official estimates are around 20" of snow accumulation, I think we received closer to 2'.  We tried to use Grafton as a measuring stick but soon realized we didn't know how to convert 0.5 graftons to inches.

In any case, we spent a long time digging out by hand, and Grafton helped us quite a bit--mostly by playing on his own, and not requiring our attention! But of course, since Dad had a shovel, Grafton needed one too, and he seemed quite proud to be able transfer snow from one point to another. In terms of snow clearing, Grafton's net work was about zero, but he was having a good time helping out.  He spent a considerable amount of time outside with us, and never so much as complained about being cold. Grafton seemed entirely comfortable in the snowy, blustery weather, even when the wind picked up and blew frosty bits of water into his eyes. He trudged through the powder willingly, falling occasionally, and sometimes decided to just stay there in a reclined position to enjoy a quiet, reflective moment.

And then there were the plows--oh yes, the plows! Grafton loved watching the big municipal plows rumble down the street, spraying snow up into the air.  As soon as one would pass, he'd immediately demand, "more plows!" And he didn't have to wait long for another to come along and answer his request. At one point, the driver of an enormous, plow-wielding dump truck, seeing that we had only a few feet of snow left to clear (both depth- and height-wise), slowed down as he approached our driveway and busted through the wall of snow.  Grafton was delighted. And Dad was thankful. We both waved to the driver when he returned down our street, in the opposite direction.

Here a few moments of video from the morning shoveling (I think we had about 12-14" by then, with another 8-10"  still to come):

Contrails? What?

Grafton's bedroom has a skylight, which provides a fairly wide view of the sky above and the street below our house...if you place your head right up to it.  Often, just before bedtime or right after being lifted out of the crib in the morning, I'll carry Grafton over to the skylight to "see what we can see" of the world outside.  (This used to be my secret technique for getting him to settle down when he refused to sleep.)

This morning we walked over to the skylight together in our pj's.  Dad saw some smoke emanating from the neighbor's chimney and pointed it out to Grafton, thinking he would find it interesting.  But he was too busy looking up at the sky. Uninterested in the chimney smoke, he pointed way up asked "What's that line?"  At first I didn't understand his question, but after he repeated himself, I realized he had spotted a contrail from an airplane that had flown overhead.  I explained to him all about airplane exhaust, atmospheric temperatures, and frozen vapor, and he listened intently.  I then noticed that Venus was bright and visible just below the contrail and told him about the planet that was up in the sky.  With our morning observations complete, we proceeded to get dressed and ready for the new day.

For me, the interesting thing was that I realized Grafton has started to ask the question "what is that?"  He had asked this "what" question a few times already in the previous few days, but it didn't register with me that it was a new form of inquisitiveness for him.  

I must also note that he hasn't asked the "why?" question much recently, but I have a feeling that one will start again soon.

Restoration

Just noting that Grafton's injured fingernail has finally grown back fully, after losing the damaged fingernail altogether.  The finger is back to normal.  This is well ahead of schedule, as his doctor indicated it would be Feb or Mar before the damaged nail would be regrown.  He has a small scar and bump above the finger nail, which will likely be a permanent reminder of the incident.  But all seems to be well with his right middle finger.

While we're on the topic of healing, the bump he has just above his nasal bridge is considerably diminished and hard to detect now.  Perhaps this injury was not as permanent as we had thought it would be.

Grafton's Song

Grafton was sitting on the couch, with his new guitar (well, ukelele) in his lap, and started playing a song.  He declared, "This is Do Re Mi song".  After he played a few notes, he realized it didn't quite sound like the song he had intended to perform.  To rectify, he quickly explained, "This is not Do Re Mi.  This is Grafton's song."

Grafton's interest in music and dancing continues unabated.  He's often found with an instrument in his hands, including his ukelele, recorder, harmonica, and accordion.  He likes drumming along with Daddy as well, using any objects we can use to bang together and make a rhythm.  His rhythmic timing is really coming along, and he can continue producing a steady beat while Daddy drums alongside or plays the harmonica.  And, of course, Grafton dances whenever there's music in the air.  He still frequently demands that we play music for him on the stereo.