Kids' songs for the musically (but not linguistically) inclined

Cloud has learned to sing songs by himself. The results are hilarious. He skips words and sometimes groups of words, but always leaves an adequate pause in their place, as if mentally counting off the syllables.

For instance, "C is For Cookie" goes like this:

"Hee... kiki... ... ...me,
Hee... kiki... ... ...me! Nom nom nom nom."

The Alphabet Song has a different twist:

"Bee bee bee bee bee bee...
Emm emm emm enn..." (At which point I interrupt and sing it with him correctly, because I am thrilled at the idea that he's interested in the alphabet.)

Today I overheard him tackling Old MacDonald:

"EIEIO... meow meow meow... meow meow meow... meow meow meow meow meow meow meow... EIEIO."

I'm impressed at how well the kid can carry a tune! I'm also excited at his improvements in sentence structure. And his use of pronouns. He uses pronouns incorrectly - and by that I mean 90% of the time he uses the wrong pronoun - but I'm working hard to teach him which pronoun applies to which person in each context. (I find this really frustrating. When I'm not correcting his use of pronouns, I'm dwelling on his use of pronouns. It's such a tangled mess! I don't know how to untangle it! When my young cousin had the same problem, he was much more easily corrected. When I try to correct Cloud in the same way, he just laughs.)

(Don't get me wrong - I love that he laughs so easily. That's one of his defining traits.)

(Another defining trait is the way he tries to yank me off the couch, whining and crying, when I lie down to take a rest. That trait is less endearing. Yes, I know that I'm experiencing an acute, chronic energy deficiency lately. I know I'm boring when I'm tired. I know I'm Cloud's only possible playmate when we're chillin' at home. I'm sorry. I'm tired. That's life.)

In other news, summer arrived suddenly today, which made Cloud very happy. Not only did he get to go outside without a jacket, but I actually let him wear shorts. OMG. Life is just so good.

AwesomeCloud and the random exhortations

Hi.

I haven't posted in a while.

Today is my birthday. The weather was dreary, and nobody was in exactly a good mood. Yesterday we had a vendor table at the Maine Comic Arts Festival, which was in MAINE, yo. It was a fun show, but the trip was looooong, and now everyone's tired.

Here, have some coyote pups from our new minicomic, Unpopular Species #3:


AwesomeCloud's vocabulary has been growing exponentially. He blurts out the strangest things for no apparent reason. Sometimes he takes on our mannerisms, saying, "Oh my goodness" or "suuuure" just like mama or dad. And some things he says... I haven't figured out yet.

Daddy got him to say "arbitrary" today. After we praised him for attempting to say it, he said it repeatedly until we reached Friendly's (for a birthday ice cream cake).

Arbitrary!

The ice cream cake was a big hit, although I'm not sure the kid noticed it was for me. He waited impatiently for Daddy to sing "Happy Birthday," and then he streeeeetched over the table and plunged his spoon into the cake.

He has also learned to lick the ice cream off the bottoms of candles. That was my doing. Oh well.

He likes to lick serving spoons, too. When he asks, "Yick? Yick? Yick?" sometimes I get confused about what he wants, but I'm learning.

At some point he'll learn to speak in complete sentences.

Oh! Also, he ate his first corn dog. While we waited for our meal to arrive at the table, I drew a corn dog for him with crayons so he'd know what to expect. I think it really helped. When he received the real corn dog, he picked it up with a decent degree of confidence.

Kung fu promotion

Kiddo is learning a ton of stuff at kung fu. Here he is surrounded by blonde girls. There used to be boys in the class, too, but they either joined the older kids' class or dropped out.

At this age, showing up is more than half the battle. Therefore, it's already time for Cloud to get promoted to his orange belt! He gets an A for effort and an A+ for showing up, and that's all it takes.

Apparently the promotion ceremony is a big deal. Sifu told us that people invite family, friends, and even teachers. Now I feel bad. I don't think we have anyone to ask. The people we're close to emotionally, aren't close enough physically. And I feel a little silly explaining to my few local friends that I want them to come to a... thing... to celebrate my son showing up to his kuan for eight weeks straight.

He may as well get used to having a fan club of two people... at least until he makes some close friendships himself. Anyway, at age 3 he's unable to differentiate between parents who surround themselves with all sorts of intimate BFFs and parents who mostly just have each other. The important thing is that he gets to learn martial arts, and he'll probably excel in it, especially if we can afford to keep sending him.

He learned to kick today. Like, really kick with his foot flying up in the air and everything. Something must have clicked during his lesson today, and all of a sudden he was kicking. Then when we came home I tried to teach him to dance in 4/4 time, and he showed signs of understanding what I was getting at.

That lady is a BAD influence

Do you ever find yourself coaching your child while they play? In and of itself, it's not an unreasonable act. It feels perfectly normal to stand next to the slide and tell your kid, "Go slowly. Let the little boy go by. Be careful." But when you have twenty parents standing over twenty children in one playground, step back a little and listen. See if it doesn't sound a little weird.

AwesomeCloud and I were the first ones to arrive at the playground this morning. Soon a mom and her two-year-old daughter joined us. It was the most natural thing in the world to coach Cloud, "Don't push the baby. Wait your turn. Watch out you don't kick her when you do that. Gently, now."

"Oh, don't worry," the other mom assured me. "He's fine."

Yeah, he's just friendly and competitive at the same time. Which is a great way to be when he's playing with boys his own age and energy level.

Fortunately, as the playground filled up, AwesomeCloud's potential playmates diversified. He ended up latching onto a group of three other boys, two four years old and one three years old. The two older boys began competing with each other, jumping off a part of the playground structure that was about three feet off the ground and had a kind of ladder thing for toddlers attached to it.

I started exclaiming "Nice jump!" to them after they had landed.

AwesomeCloud and the other three-year-old boy wanted to join in too. They couldn't jump down that far, but they could climb up. And there was a lower landing right next to that spot that they could jump off. So they started taking turns jumping off the lower landing and getting in the bigger boys' way.

"Great jump!" I'd say to one or another or the next boy in rapid succession. "A bit of a wobbly landing there. Good one! A little more practice and you'll get it. Good landing! Good one! There you go! Swing jump, woohoo! Whoa, nice running jump!"

The boys ate it up. They glanced expectantly at me before and after every jump or climb, their eyes shining. I stood there with a coffee mug in one hand and a sippy cup in the other and shouted out encouragement.

Joey, Kieran, Theo, and Cloud.* I'd already met Kieran's granddad on the other side of the playground; he was definitely the type to park himself on the nearest bench and gruffly coach his grandson's play. At first, at the same time I was saying, "Great jump!" he'd bark out, "Kieran, don't jump!" Kieran, don't do this. Kieran, don't do that.

Joey's father, or possibly grandfather, was on the same bench with a coffee and a newspaper. His coaching was just as gruff. "Joey, watch out for that little boy," he coached, while the little boy's Mama said to Joey, "Oooh, nice dodge, and, jump! Good one!"

Theo's mom was more of a classic micromanager, being concerned about injury, or risk of injury, or suggestion of risk of injury. I think that parents of pale children are more cautious, although that may be a prejudice on my part. Or maybe, when the very sun can injure your child, you justifiably have more to worry about. Anyhow, Theo obviously didn't want to be fragile, and took some wild jumps off the low end and some careless risks up the toddler ladder, and his mother was at a distinct disadvantage because she was on the wrong side of the structure, attempting to coach him through the bars and not getting very much of his attention.

Instead, he was all about listening to me as I shouted gratifying praise at his antics.

None of the parents said anything to me about thwarting their efforts to get their kids to be careful. So I kept doing it. The boys were just being boys, and amid the chorus of parents coaching, it struck me that boys at play was a beautiful thing. Like a couple of warblers among grackles. I was disappointed that none of the other parents were moved to utter something positive to their children, but as the two dads/granddads gradually gave up, and Theo's mom stopped trying so hard, I tried to say enough positive things for all of us.

Of course, there was one inevitable moment when Joey bumped into Theo and all the other grownups caught their hearts in their throats. But Theo, possibly empowered by his inclusion in some real boys' play, caught himself with his hands and stood proudly back up. The kids endured a little verbal scolding, and that was it.

When Cloud and I left, Theo's mom said goodbye to us.

I don't want Cloud to become careless to the point of being a danger to himself or others. I want him to be aware and considerate. I want him to learn the physics of hurling his body around on playground equipment. It seems to me that the best way to accomplish that is not to ride him all the time, but to gently remind him to be aware and then let him experience real play with real kids. Let him learn by doing. And a little positive reinforcement won't hurt. I don't want him to feel like he's under the microscope every time I accompany him to the playground.

Incidentally... at some point Theo said to his mom, "I'm having lots of fun!"

"You're having lots of fun?" his mom repeated, as if it weren't a phrase her child used every day.

And maybe it wasn't.


*Not their real names, but close enough.

Ticks

I'm sure AwesomeCloud doesn't want me writing about ticks. He's been getting a little paranoid about them lately. I don't really want to write about ticks, either. So I'll just say the bare minimum.

It's a bad year for ticks - unless you're a tick; then you'd consider it a good year.

Two weeks ago, we went to Audubon to start the year's work on the butterfly garden. Lots of ticks found us there - at least a dozen. Then, between being squicked by ticks and all the rain we've been getting, we avoided going back to the garden for the past two weeks.

We went today. It was cold and windy, although finally not rainy. We pulled a few weeds. We saw a prairie warbler and a gigantic green frog. AwesomeCloud took pictures. And when we came home, we found two hangers-on.

I'm sure there'll be more of them.

You know, I never had any strong objection to them... until I found them on my kid.

And that's all I'll say about ticks.

Cat people, dog people, weird people, and birds

Last Friday morning, when Cloud and I went outside, we saw a car parked on our front lawn. This wasn't unusual; it was on the very edge of our property, in a little alcove type area that allows people room to pull over on a street that is largely not conducive to pulling over. We watched the car for a minute, but it didn't do anything, so we went about our business of digging in the dirt.

Then a tow truck pulled over. The tow truck driver got out, spoke to the person in the car, and then shouted at us, "She got a flat tire! May we use the entrance of your driveway?"

"Sure," I said.

The tow truck driver added, "She didn't want to get out. She was afraid there might be a dog."

"Um," I said.

Then the driver of the car peeked her head around the juniper bushes and said, "I was afraid there might be a dog."

"This is our dog," I replied, pointing down at Riley. "She says meow."

"Meow," said Riley. She's helpful like that.

The woman didn't seem very amused by my remark, nor did she light up upon the recognition of a fellow cat person. But she was distracted with her flat tire, so I can't blame her. Riley, who in spite of being the most doglike of all of our cats is still very much a cat, disappeared under the juniper bushes.

Later on, I started thinking about dog people versus cat people. I don't put a lot of credence into the idea. Sure, some people love one and hate the other. Some people adore one and tolerate the other. But ultimately, cats and dogs are both animals, both mammals, both domesticated, and their similarities far outweigh their differences. For many people, the issue is whether or not they care to include an animal in their household. If they do, then the choice between cat and dog is just nuance.

A friend of mine recently confided that now that she's owned a few cats and a few dogs, she feels somewhat more affinity for the cats. I can relate to that. I like the idea of taking walks with dogs, and playing Frisbee with dogs, but when it comes to the day in, day out responsibility of dog ownership, I'd like it a little better if it were like owning a cat. I'm not always very affectionate, I don't want to take walks several times a day, and I hate drool. OMG, I absolutely hate drool.

My friend treats her dogs like I treat Riley, anyway, so in that respect having Riley is a bit like having a dog. They both wait at the door to go out, and all I have to do is open the door and then watch for her to be ready to come back in again. They both try to eat people food, so shooing Riley off the counter 50 times a day is like having a dog... a dog who jumps like a cat, which is worse than having a real dog. (Fortunately she's only 8 lbs. A dog 30+ lbs who jumps like a cat would be terrible.)

AwesomeCloud was enraptured by the presence of the tow truck, and he also enjoyed observing the tow truck guy change the lady's tire.

We saw a Baltimore oriole in the backyard, so we filled a birdfeeder and also put a half grapefruit out for the birds. Now we have grackles, woodpeckers, a goldfinch, and English sparrows in addition to our orioles. It's funny how quickly the birds come back. I've been neglecting the birdfeeder ever since AwesomeCloud came home, a year and a half ago; it didn't seem worth the effort when he wasn't interested in looking out the window. Now, however, he's thrilled to see birds of all different colors - yellow finches, red cardinals, orange orioles, blue jays - and maybe I can get myself to keep the feeder filled this year.

The cat is a problem. I know. I don't have any brilliant solutions to that problem.

Baby steps toward bilingualism

It was the best of days; it was the worst of days. The 'worst' part is me suffering from multiple simultaneous health problems, the most presentable of which is a chest/throat/head cold that is threatening to choke me to death. It's a secondary infection, which makes me think of pneumonia, but it probably isn't real pneumonia. (If it is, you can all admonish me later on for not seeing a doctor.)

The 'best' part involves AwesomeCloud speaking Hanyu (AKA Mandarin Chinese).

I can't explain my reasoning, but it seems that somehow, once speech therapy started, I began to develop an inordinate interest in speaking Hanyu to him. He's had Early Intervention speech therapy, but it ended last March, and nothing like this happened then. But now we have him in preschool-related speech therapy. His first session was Monday; his second session was today.

This morning, I put a Chinese cartoon in the DVD player. It featured Lan Mao (Blue Cat), an obnoxious character played by a man who speaks like himself and doesn't even try to do a cartoony voice. Lan Mao's face is apparently used on a lot of merchandise in China, like baby formula and plastic toys. His voice may make him sound as if he probably has a cigarette in one hand, but apparently he's popular with the kiddies.

There were also lots of CGI dinosaurs.

I don't know what that was all about; don't ask me. It was entirely in Hanyu. (Interestingly, the subtitles were also in Hanyu.)

Anyway, whenever I heard a phrase I recognized, I'd repeat it to Cloud. Sometimes Cloud and I would also imitate unfamiliar phrases. I think we're learning something. For instance, I learned 'lan mao'.

Then we went to the park, because if I can't spend the whole day in bed, I may as well go to the park. I sat on a bench next to the little playground, nursing my tea, while Cloud more-or-less played by himself. He also wandered off a teeny tiny bit. Wandering off by himself is not his strong suit; in fact even leaving me on the bench to play on a slide 6 feet away from me has been a challenge until recently. Today, however, he went on the slide, then to the edge of the woods, then onto the baseball field where he found a stray ball, played with it a tiny bit and then abandoned it, and even threw our empty snack wrapper in the trash all by himself. It was nice - a foretaste of free-range parenting. :)

But he also sat with me on the bench quite a bit. And while we sat, I was moved to tell him, "Zhe shi niao." (That's a bird.) And some other phrases that popped into my head. Cloud didn't repeat any of them - he wanted to call a bird a bird, and that was fine.

Later on, we went to our local Chinese take-out for lunch. The young woman there is the one who gave us the Chinese cartoon DVDs. I haltingly spoke a little Hanyu to her, just for practice, and she helpfully responded in kind. Then we sat down and ate.

As we were leaving, I turned to the woman and said, "Zai jian!"

"Zai jian!" she said. "Can little boy say zai jian?"

"Cloud," I prodded. 'Say zai jian to our friend."

He turned around, looked her square in the eye, and said, "Bu dong."

That means 'I don't understand.' It was very unexpected; he knows zai jian at least as well as he knows bu dong. I've only started saying bu dong to him in the last week. But still, it's the right language, and I'm proud.

Whiny McCriesalot

I feel like I go through the day, moment to moment, trying to find ways to get the kiddo to stop whining and crying.

I think he's going through a phase. My husband claims he's not having the same problem, but when the boys are out together, they're always DOING something. I am not always DOING something. I spend awhile each day expecting Cloud to entertain himself while I wash dishes or dig dandelions or fold laundry.

But even when I am doing something with him, the kid manages to find some reason to treat life as one grand tragedy. Often about food.

What complicates things is that he's started to say "no" when he might actually want to say "yes." He might be preemptively bracing himself for disappointment in these cases; but while he's doing that, I'm trying to get a straight answer out of him as to whether or not he would like to do X.

It's a good thing he's only three years old, because most of the time I can just force his shoes on and march him into the car and take him to X, where he'll enjoy himself because he actually really likes X.

(X could be the playground, Trader Joe's, the library, the beach... the list goes on. It could be the bank. He likes the bank. The bank has lollipops, and lots of doting female bank tellers to hand him the lollipops even when Mama tells him that 8:30 AM is too early for a lollipop.)

Today we did manage to go to the library. Then we crossed the street to visit the horses. Well, Cloud wanted to visit the horses. I knew that if we walked just past the horses, we'd find ourselves on the grounds of the old abandoned elementary school. (It's only been abandoned for a year and a half, so mostly the grounds and the playgrounds were quite nice, if a bit litter-strewn.)

At age 3, Cloud is firmly in that awkward stage of independence where he can't do much of anything by himself, but he wants to. Well, it's healthy for him to want to. Sometimes I fully expect him to want to do things himself, but instead he plunks down next to me and bawls until I do it for him. He can bawl for quite awhile.

And I'm in that awkward stage where I don't know how much I should interfere. Should I stand back and let him discover the new playground all by himself? Or should I get in with him and teach him how to play? If all he wants to do is kneel at the foot of each slide and ask me to take his picture, should I just snap pictures over and over or should I encourage him to climb on something else?

Ultimately, I tried a mix of both approaches. I went down the widest slide, which was made of metal but still somehow not the least bit slippery. But there wasn't much else on the playground for a person of my size and skill set. So I spent some time sitting on the bench, watching, and then I used the wooden perimeter of the playground as a giant balance beam, an act which intrigued Cloud but was too difficult for him to emulate.

And then we saw the horses again on our way back to the car.

And then he asked for yogurt, and when I told him there would be a whole big lunch when we got home, he cried.

However, once I put the bowl of elbow macaroni and sauce in front of him, he devoured it, happily saying, "Elbows," over and over again, and asking for seconds.

Today's notable moments - boogers and bunnies

Woohoo! I'm back into blogging, it seems. Blog entries several days in a row.

This morning at breakfast, AwesomeCloud said, "Here." And then he handed me a booger.

"A booger," I said. "Hmm. Uh. Thanks." Then I did the "Ew ewwy eww" fuss and dance all the way to the kitchen sink and washed it off.

After breakfast I took him to the "BIG playground." That's the playground that was designed and built for disabled children, with all the latest bells and whistles and playground technology, that Lenore Skenazy would probably mock because of its numerous safety features, but AwesomeCloud loves it. It's just so BIG. Also, it's right next to a baseball field, so parents can let their kids roam free if we want to.

(On the other side of the baseball field is a rusty old fire engine thing, and a real, authentic, vintage metal slide, just like the kind I grew up with, and it is probably almost as old as I am. I hope nobody comes along and removes it, because I want to show it off to AwesomeCloud in a couple of years, when he's old enough to appreciate the phrase, "When Mama and Dad were little...")

It was only 8:00 AM when we arrived at the playground, and we were essentially alone except for two siblings whose parents also thought it would be cool to bring them to a playground at 8:00 AM. It was a bit of nature out there. We graaaked like the grackles, whistled with the cardinals, and then...

...we saw rabbits.

Four of them.

I let Cloud try to sneak up on them. He was awesome. He moved slowly and quietly and he got pretty close to one rabbit before it bolted.

Then he forgot himself and shouted back at me, something about how wonderful it was to be close to wild rabbits, I'm sure, although it sounded more like, "Dee daum!"

"Yes, I know!" I replied in a stage whisper. "Rabbits are pretty cool!"

Then he turned in time to see the last of the rabbits disappear into the tangled underbrush.

Then we ran the bases on the baseball field.

Easter and the 5th birthday party

We just got back from my family's house, where we'd eaten Easter dinner for 5 and a half hours straight.

Not to boast or anything, but Italian-Americans know how to throw a holiday feast. I cannot imagine belonging to a better family. Or eating better food (even though I didn't get any of the ham or the eggplant parm - I meant to grab some, but there was just too much other stuff). Or raising my kid with a better bunch of relatives.

Here's AwesomeCloud receiving his 5th 3rd birthday party - a month after his actual birthday, but hey, the family was together and they brought gifts. And they gave him chocolate and other snacks, which was nice because Rick and I didn't buy any Easter candy this year. No chocolate eggs to hide; no basket full of goodies to wake up to. I don't know why we didn't make the effort, and I guess we could've, but maybe it seemed kinda pointless to patch together some Easter Bunny surprises when we had the Family Feast to look forward to.

Cloud also got a toothbrush. Many thanks to my sister! He loves it, incidentally. He digs toothbrushes.

The very bad day

Everybody has bad days. Today is becoming a fairly typical bad day for AwesomeCloud and me.

First he cried about his oatmeal for breakfast. So I put the uneaten oatmeal in the fridge, and he asked for yogurt. He cried over his yogurt. I put the uneaten yogurt in the fridge, and he asked for some of my leftover sausage and penne. "No," I told him. "Go play," I told him. So he cried over that.

Then we went outside, after crying over jacket and shoes, and he wanted to rake. So we raked. I'm glad AwesomeCloud likes to rake, even if his idea of raking is to actually watch ME rake. Then I was tired, so I sat on the front stoop with a book and told him to play. More crying.

At this point, it was only 9:00 AM and I'd had enough. So I decided to not become emotionally involved. I went all Zen-like and meditated on the idea that being outside was good for the kiddo's health. I got him to sit next to me and crumple up some dry oak leaves. We made a nice pile of oak leaf bits on the front walk.

Then I got him to eat his oatmeal by pretending I wanted to eat it myself, which wasn't much of a stretch, because it was Trader Joe's Blueberry Oatmeal, which happens to be really good.

Then Cloud wanted to take a walk, in the stroller, which didn't thrill me because I was more tired than he was so why should I have to do all the walking and pushing while he just sits there? Our walk was very, very short, and perhaps a little disappointing to the passenger inside the stroller. When we got home, I flopped on the couch, while AwesomeCloud... cried. Of course.

Then I changed the bedsheets and let him jump in the pile of dirty sheets. He pulled out some Legos and played with them for about 90 seconds, and then when he wanted to go out and I told him to pick the Legos up first, he cried.

His drama over picking things up frustrates me. He enjoys perfectly well the act of putting the toys in the box, but he acts as if it's going to be torture. Typical, I suppose.

So. More crying, then we get it all done, then we go outside.

Where he bursts into tears because I won't find his rake for him. I had sat down to weed around the hostas, and as soon as I stood up, I saw the rake. "It's right there," I said. "On the ground. It's red. Look for something red."

This was followed by a crying jag at least ten minutes long, probably longer, as I told him, "It's right there. No, get your own rake. Go back over there. You're practically standing on it. No, don't turn around. Look down. Look down on the ground. Down, like this. No, it's over there. Go back over there. Look for something red."

FINALLY he found it, and then he sat down beside me and watched me pick weeds.

Then he got an early nap (slightly) but I let him take his book into the crib, so it should be all right. Now I only have to get through this afternoon and evening. (My husband is at Anime Boston with a vendor table, all by himself.)

If I had a huge heaping bowl of ice cream... alas, there are no decadent snacks in the house. I've been making an effort not to buy them. There are Cheezits, but those are not decadent. I have already had a Cheezit and it did nothing for me.

Dong bu dong? D@mmit! (or, baby's first cussword)

The inevitable has happened. I'm sure most parents have an equivalent story. It's the story of baby's first cussword.

Daddy was very frustrated about something and shouted, "Dammit!"

"Dammit!" Cloud happily repeated.

"Oh no," said Daddy, realizing what he'd done. "Hey Cloud, don't say that. Can you say 'censorship'?"

"Dammit!" Cloud crowed. "Dammit!"

"Censorship," said Daddy. "Censorship!"

"Dammit!"

"Cloud," I tried, "Say, 'Don't say that, Daddy.'"

"Dammit!" said Cloud.

Fortunately, he wound down and hasn't said it since. Seriously, though, who made that word up? It is way too toddler-friendly.

***

In the meantime, something else inevitable has begun: I have started giving Cloud Mandarin lessons.

You may be wondering whether I speak Mandarin. No, I don't. We're learning together as a family.

I'm starting very slowly, because he's so delayed in English that I don't want to set his speech back by introducing too much Mandarin all at once. (Ha ha, like that would ever happen.) So far, all I've done is count to ten, which requires a bit of effort on my part as I struggle to remember the order of the numbers. I always get stuck on lìu, which is six.

I have also begun to shrug my shoulders and say, "Bu dòng," which means "I don't understand." I've started saying that a lot, because while Cloud's vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds, his pronunciation hasn't improved much at all. I'm having trouble keeping up with all this new Toddlerese. So I say to him, "What? What? Shen me? Bu dong."

He finds this endlessly entertaining, and gives up on whatever he was trying to tell me to say, "Bu dong! Bu dong!"

It's a start. A slow start, but a start.