Toddlers are awesome!

I mean, they are not always awesome.  Often they totally suck.  But mostly they're awesome.  For instance, this morning I was unwrapping a new book sent to Elliot by his mimi (thanks, mimi!!).  I held it up for Elliot to see, and said, "Look, Elliot!  A Christmas tree!"  And he said, "OH!!!!  A Christmas tree!  WITH MONKEYS IN IT!!!" and grabbed the book and ran off.  

I don't know where he got the idea that christmas trees come decorated with monkeys--certainly there are no monkeys in the tree on the book's cover--but I must say I think it's a fantastic idea.  

well.

we continue to be just...busy.  but that's boring to talk about.

i did want to pop up, though, and ask, "how do we do this crib-toddler bed transition thing?"  Elliot tonight almost successfully plunged out of his crib, which to me is the clear sign that we need to break the fourth wall, as it were, and admit that it is full-on toddler bed time.  I mean, that's what this toddler bed thing is for, right?  But on the other hand, Elliot seems in no way ready for a toddler bed, and I don't say that in a nostalgic, "oh, my baby!" kind of way.  I say that in a "but really, he doesn't know how not to kill himself kind of way."  

If we take off the side of the crib, what will he do in the morning when he wakes up?  this is a VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION.  I am partly worried about my own sleep, of course, because there are days when elliot still wakes up inordinately early, and he sort of rely on that crib to contain him while he (hopefully) goes back to sleep. 

But even if he wakes up at the right time, what if he decides he wants to do something besides wake us up?  what if he decides that first thing in the morning would be a great "dive bomb off the couch" time?  this is entirely likely!  I don't want him up and loose when I'm sleeping anymore than I want him home alone.

But maybe this is fine?  maybe they just always always wake you up?  Reassure me, fine people.

in other news, I talked to a friend today who is just home from the hospital with her newborn baby.  she is in that Very Tired Place.  Send her thoughts of good sleep, and easy nursing, poor dear.

  

Nov 4

VOTE!

Everybody's doing it!

Autumnal stuff

After a hiatus of about a month, we're back in the picture-taking business. It's really fall now. We've got haybales, snuggly robes, apple-picking, apple pies, butternut squash soup, apple cider donuts, and some Mario Kart Wii: these are the things of autumn.



Sarah is busy, busy every night til bedtime, with her books and papers, job applications, letters, writing samples, second writing samples, and marked-up drafts of all of these, in a revolving cycle of edits. What with that, student papers to grade, Elliot trying to climb on the counter to get to the blender, and an election to win, Sarah is totally booked. Good thing there's a set of grandparents on the way in less than 24 hours.

Elliot is booked, but in a different way. He has a new jones for reading books. In bed. Alone. It's the darnedest thing.

He simply informs us sometimes, out of the blue, that he wants to get in bed and read books. (Seems to have cooked this idea up on his own at some point.) So we obligingly drop him into the crib, and he points out the books he wants, and we slip them through the bars of the crib. Then he asks us to leave, so we leave. He reads silently for sometimes as much as half an hour. Meanwhile, Sarah and I tiptoe away and open the champagne.

Our burning glee is tempered by the nagging idea that he will try to climb out, unassisted, and that it will go poorly. It would definitely go poorly. Maybe he needs an actual bed now?

Famous Plum

UPDATE: Here's the official press release. Note my weird blinky photograph eyes. Elliot is definitely the star around here.

UPDATED AGAIN!: Okay, here's our 2 minutes of fame, and never say I don't tell all. Things to note: Elliot being totally overwhelmed and exhausted; Brandon being confused because he was not, originally, supposed to be on air and thus hadn't showered; Alexi being super suave; and me being all shiny (I don't really own much make-up? so just put on extra tinted moisturizer, which I sometimes use instead of foundation? but which apparently, under bright lights, makes you look like a greased pig?); and especially me being all, um, what's your question? when clearly the question was supposed to be totally vague so I could give whatever canned sound bite I was evidently supposed to have ready.

I will tell you that immediately upon leaving the studio, Elliot really perked up and was all, "I was on tv!!!" And this morning he said, "I on tv? again?" So apparently he felt that it was, overall, a positive experience.

---

OK, so. . . . the State of Illinois runs a college-savings program, called a 529 plan. To promote the program and encourage people to save for college, they held a contest. Our friend works for the state treasurer, and she prompted us to submit something. So we submitted a classic Elliot video, which was shot about 6 months ago with a beat-up little pocket camera. (We had blogged it here:
http://thelittleplum.blogspot.com/2008/05/few-elliot-video-tidbits.html)

The next thing we know, #1 sweet-potato-smearing son is going to be part of a statewide marketing campaign. He also won $1000 for his 529 account (to be contributed post-crash -- whew!). (Barring further crashes.) (Try not to think about it.)

I don't have the footage of us on the local news today (except on our Tivo). But we do have the TV commercial spot which they created around our home video. It's at

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/146180/BrightStartCommercial.mov

Request from the commercial universe

[Note: this post was all small and tidy, and then I started adding pictures and it got all big and complicated. Ah! Irony!]

So, Whitney just posted a NYT story about the number of families who are choosing to live, with their children, in small, dense spaces. The story is particularly about people who choose to stay in Manhattan, but I like to think there's a larger trend (maybe not much larger, but still) of people who are realizing that having a huge huge house is not necessary for family happiness. One of the things I like about my life is that it doesn't involve a lot of suburban sprawl: there are lots of reasons why I've made that choice.

But what I now need is some toy companies to understand this.

We just got a toy catalog in the mail yesterday--back to basic toys. It's a perfectly fine catalog, successfully walking the line between practical and affordable (it's not all hand carved wood or something) and aesthetically reasonable (it's not all battery-powered elmo toys). Most of the toys seem designed to ellicit activity and imagination. So, good, right?

But what I need is a "back to basic" toys that is filtered down for small spaces.

As I see it, small spaces need toys that have at least two qualities:

1: even if they get big, they can be stored in small containers

2: getting the toy out of the small container and putting it together is PART of the fun, and something kids can do themselves.

So, for instance, Elliot's wooden train stuff. This is not ours, but you get the idea:

Elliot has a mix of Thomas, Brio, and Ikea railroad tracks and trains, but they all fit together and they're BRILLIANT. When he's playing with them it is a BIG IMPRESSIVE TOY--they cover the floor of his whole room--but they store really compactly. He can put them together in any number of ways, and no one way is wrong or right, and then when he's done he loves to throw them in a box--they're basically indestructable.

Also, here's one that Nana got Elliot for Christmas last year, which has been a hit. It is BIG and exciting:

But it folds up really small! Really small. and then when you untie it, it pops out all excitingly. Great.

Compare to this:

Which I'm sure Elliot would love. But it's huge! And it's always huge. It is one big huge thing, always the same big huge thing. There's no stowing it away and bringing it out later when you need something new and exciting. It's just always sitting there, all huge, in my living room.

Anyway, perhaps there are already a number of "cool toys for small spaces" catalogs out there, and if there are, I wish someone would let me know. Because Elliot loves toys and I love to buy them for him, but I'm not willing to move to accomodate them.

"I go see it"

A couple things Elliot doesn't quite understand:

A hissing, steaming radiator.  He knows that it's a hot thing, and hot things are dangerous.  Because they cause ouch.  He knows that he's being "carefully", as he puts it, by not touching.  His deference and respect are a little bit comical.  But it's the noise that bewitches him, the rumblings, hissings, and poppings.  He says, "What's that sound make?"  He knows something powerful is happening, and he's not convinced that where he is is where the action is.  "I go see it."

The moon.  We all four trundled downstairs into the street to see the (full?) moon rising over the lake a few nights ago, just after I got home from work.  Ada was all stirred up and dashing around -- we never just stand in the middle of the street like that.  She was acting like it was fire drill day at school and she'd just eaten a whole box of Nerds.  Elliot was placid in my arms.  We talked in circles about how the moon was coming up and the sun had gone down -- a familiar theme for us, these days, because little boys go to sleep when the moon is up, and they play with trains when the sun is up.  He liked the enormous yellow moon, but were we there yet?  "I go see it."

It's fall

It really is: today was so chill and sideways-lit. The afternoon was lovely, but there was a lot of bluster and I wished I'd had a scarf.

Which makes it hard to remember that just last Sunday we were doing this:



Because it was SO SO WARM. Everyone was out sun-bathing by the lake. And me, because I am the daughter of one Barbara Mesle, which means that I am hard core, did this:


I enjoyed my swim, though maybe not as much as enjoyed the idea of my swim. It was cold out there.

Chicago weather has a terrible reputation, but it always sort of irritates me to hear people complain about it. There are always these great warm days interspersed through things, and I love the fickleness of that, just like I love cold days in summer.

Anyway, this second video is unrelated to weather or swimming, but I suppose it does have a tenuous beach connection. Here's Elliot's current version of "row, row, row your boat." In it's own way, it too is rather hard core. I love the idea that it's sort of pump-up football music.

Art Appreciation for Toddlers

Well, because we are our demographic (and because it's good) the Fleet Foxes album is getting a lot of play around here this fall. It's really excellent kitchen music, and I recommend it.

But this album has a special bonus for us, because Elliot is fascinated by the cover. I had never thought about it, but it makes sense that he'd love Pieter the Elder--big crazy scenes, so much going on, animals and interactions of all kinds.

Things he likes best about this picture:
Birds
Boats
The man who spilled his soup
Windows
Fish

His favorite thing is clearly:
THE BUTT!!!

Thing most confusing:
The saint. How to explain this one? Difficult.

Things he has not yet noticed and thus we have not yet had to explain:
What the man is doing on that ball?
The pig butchering (which I think we will fold into the catgory of "sheep getting a haircut" for a while yet)

Citified Us

Not our greatest picture evarrr, but it does capture a certain something about who we are, where we are, and what we do. Like go around asking various establishments for a small glass of milk with a lid and a straw, for example.

Song! Song!

This song went on for half an hour. It went on down the stairs, down the sidewalk and down the block; at a stoplight and across a busy street; and into the front yard of one Zella Rose. Then there was a pause. Then the song moved into Zella Rose's backyard. It even became about Zella Rose, briefly. Here is a picture of the troubador and his instrument at that evening hour, as he bellowed from the shadows of what looks to be a woodchipper?

Overheard

Elliot's response to hearing our neighbors sing Happy Birthday:

Birthday.  Elliot birthday!  Elliot want birthday.  Cake.  Hot.  Birthday cake, hot.  Elliot want candles.  Chocolate.  Elliot want chocolate candles!  Hot birthday candles!  Cake!  Mama?  Have birthday candles?  Cake?  Happy Birthday to yoooouuu...!

FUN! FALL MUSIC!

As a big believer in seasonal music, I was thrilled to see Beck's post asking for suggestions for autumnal music. You should all go stop by and see the fantastic hodge podge of suggestions--from Yo La Tengo (yay me!) to the White Stripes to Earth, Wind and Fire to a lot of interesting folky things with which I am sadly not familiar.

So anyway, yes, you should go there, but I was actually thinking about her request this morning when I heard this song, WHICH I LOVE, and it occured to me that this song captures some of what I also love about Autumn, which is that all endings are also beginnings, necessarily, even if the newness is cold and unknown.

How's that for a Very Bloggy Sentence? Okay. I'm going to stop now. The song is really good, though; you should listen to it.



PS: contrary to what my suggestions of Yo La Tengo and the Mountain Goats might suggest, I do also like music not sung by earnest and nerdy men with endearingly reedy voices. I SWEAR.

Life with toddlers is metaphor city

Elliot, these days, is prone to worry.  About the lion, as well as other things.  Partly he is worried about this concept "worrying."  What is that?  What do you do about it?

I don't mean to give the impression that he's not also his normal cheerful little self.  Right now he's giggling and looking at pictures of "pooh bear" and rabbit and running around.  All is well and good.

But then there are these moments.  Like this morning, we were both sitting cross legged on the coffee table reading the new yorker (there's some backstory that explains why that's this is a reasonable thing to do; just trust me).  Elliot was pondering the nuances of the cover pictured above.  After some assessment, Elliot determined that the man was going to "fall in water."  I'm not sure where that came from, but I conceeded that that was basically right, but that there was a ladder.  "for climbing!"  Yes, Elliot, for climbing; after the man falls into the hole, there will be a ladder for him to climb out.  So don't worry!  It's okay!

Elliot was non-plussed.  "Laddar?" he queried.  "Laddar?"  Then he threw the magazine on the ground discontentedly and said, "man fall.  Man fall DOWN."

So it's just Elliot and everyone, being all "laddar?  laddar?" and all us  moms here saying to all those men standing over those holes: put down your cell-phones, you fools you fools, and start paying attention to the warnings, the worries, of my small child. 

****

A more cheerful postscript: I seriously was just pondering that last sentence there when out of the blue Elliot wandered over and said, real cheerful like, "fist-bump, mama!  Fist-bump!"  So we had a "yes we can" sort of fist bump, which is not to make this all pro-Obama (totally not the point), but just  a reminder that life is fine in lots of incarnations, with lots of fist-bumpy laddars in it, probably, after all.