Telling Tales
And now for your reading pleasure, some recent Nathan stories:
Nathan didn’t wait until his second birthday to fully embrace his toddler-ness, and with it, every toy in site. “Mine!” or even better, NO – MINE!” started sneaking into his vocabulary early this year. They’ve taken such strong root that one morning when he bumped into his ridding horse while zooming around the house on his scooter, Nathan got off the scooter, went up to the horse and quietly said “no horsy, my scootah.” And later in the day when a little toy car drove into the box of legos – “No! Mine! My Legos!”
———————————————
When the first bad cold of the winter hit, Nathan stopped being interested in breakfast, and then he was only interested in oatmeal cookies for breakfast. So that’s what we gave him. As the cold ended, Nathan had to learn the hard lesson of “no cookies for breakfast.” After a week of asking first thing in the morning for “cookie?” followed immediately by the sad and then, as the week went on, authoritative statement of “no cookie fo bekfast” Nathan woke up one morning and asked Daddy for “lunch?”
“What do you want?” “Lunch.” “Are you asking me for lunch?” “Ja. No cookie fo bekfast. Lunch?” “OH. No, sorry, breakfast is a time of day. You can’t just ask for lunch so that you can have a cookie.”
Nathan is too smart for his parents.
———————————————
And finally, in the last week or so Nathan has started saying “I” as in:
“Mama, I foun a penny.” or “I did it!”
I can’t remember if that’s some developmental milestone, but I think it’s really exciting. Especially since “I want it” has not yet entered the collection of “I” phrases.
Sleep in soggy peace
Well, it’s finally happened. The season of Wubbanubs has ended in our house. After the disappearance of Nathan’s elephant wub – Wubby - and the slow disintegration of three giraffe wubs – Raffie, Raffie Jr. and Raffie the third – the pacifier, which has really only been a plastic ring for the past month, finally broke off of Bup (a blue bear, originally named Chewy). But over the past few months as Nathan has chewed holes in the pacifier and Mama has snipped away at the broking pieces so they don’t become a chocking hazard, new night time friends have come into the picture. And we’ve also been practicing the idea that “yes, Bup is broken, but he can still snuggle.” So this morning when we woke to find Bup’s pacifier (or what remained of it) had broken off, Nathan gave Bup’s nose a little chew, and got on with things. And this evening he chewed on Bup’s nose a bit more, tried out a foot, then lay a now very soggy Bup on the pillow next to him, snuggled with his dolly and went to sleep. But don’t get too jealous of us that bedtime is no longer tied to a pacifier - we’ve just entered the stage of asking for specific animals in bed. And those animals, and their location in the house, change nightly, and are known only to Nathan.
Saturday Night Karaoke and other performances
So Nathan now sings pretty much nonstop. I swear it’s not our fault. Really.
This morning he was sitting reading the instruction manual for his farm yard Lego set and singing Ba Ba Back Sheep to himself. Loudly. Some time in the first few months home with Nathan, Tim made up a song about wearing pants. The song has slowly expanded to include any article of clothing that Nathan is refusing to wear – most recently his shoes (you know, those really important things that make his legs the same length?). Now Nathan’s picked up the anthem and will wake up from his nap sing “shoes! need shoes! each a day!” (shoes, you gotta wear shoes, you gotta wear shoes, each and every day) And these days when Nathan sings along with us he’s picking our key and often staying in tune, or at least getting all the weird intervals you’d except him to miss.
On Saturday night he asked to read “Mahvis Toy?”, an illustrated book of a song I grew up with, and for some reason I asked Nathan if he wanted to sing along with us. “Mama sing. Sing wif Mama.” So I started singing and Nathan jumped right in and sang the whole first verse at the top of his lungs (I had to bail out to keep from laughing). After we finished the book Daddy was asked to read “Mantee Book?” (thank you Alyson) and Nathan jumped in at the end for a boisterous “Das MEEEEEEEEE!”
We also have a Ba Ba Black Sheep book that expands on the traditional story, so your just as likely to hear Nathan asking the sheep for hay as wool. Or, since he's figured out they all share the same tune, he'll weave together his own version of A B Black Sheep Little Star.
Nathan's also been known to sing himself to sleep. Which is probably the only preventing it from becoming a never ending concert around here.
Hosanna in the Highest
In church school on Palm Sunday the two year olds decorated paper palm fronds and learned that Jesus is My King. Nathan played with his palms off and on for the rest of the day, took them to bed with him and asked for them first thing the next morning:
Mama: Can you tell me the story of the palms?
Nathan: A sing!
M: We sing?
N: Ja. Sesus.
M: We sing to Jesus?
N: Hosanna! Hosanna!
As we get ready for the Three Sacred Days, Nathan is still waving his palms and singing Hosanna. It’s amazing the stuff kids pick up. It makes me think maybe we should be a little more careful with our theology (not more Clean up, clean up for Jesus. He does not like a mess. Clean up, clean up for Jesus and be forever blessed...) and reminds me of that well loved story of Harvey the Pirate on the cross. (What do you mean you don't know that one?) It also makes we wonder what the adults in our house are doing to get ready for the Sacred Triduum. At this point the only thing I’m sure of is we’re buying ice cream for tomorrow night’s Maundy Thursday neighborhood potluck. That’s a good way to prepare our hearts and make space for God, right?
Maundy Thursday
Jesus said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another."
Nathan sang, "I love you yeah, yeah, yeah."
I think he's got the gist of it.
This Friday Which We Call Good
Before going to the children’s stations of the cross, we spent the morning reading It’s Mine! The book is about three selfish frogs, but Nathan was obsessed with the toad who also lived on the pond. I’m sure there’s something to be said about exploring selfishness and how to share on the day we remember Jesus giving his life for us, but I was mostly focused on the fact that Nathan’s pronunciation of toad is quite German, giving us Tod or Death, which seems also appropriate for Good Friday.