The M&M Story

Up until this week, I've blogged the way some of my colleagues take a smoke break--I'll just take ten minutes when I need a break from editing and take a deep breath. The metaphorical deep breath of recording stuff about the boys refuels me the way a literal deep breath of noxious fumes refuels my fellow cube farmers. But it's been tougher in the new job. For one thing, my workspace doesn't lend itself to blogging. My team is getting new digs soon, and in the meantime I have a makeshift work area in the middle of another department. Or sort of to the side of another department. The northwest wall of my "office" is the electrical panel for Elsevier Building 1000. Nothing like absorbing electromagnetic radiation eight hours a day. At least cubicle 2240 was a safe distance from things that might cause sterility. It was also far away from my new neighbors, the People Who Talk Loudly. I've learned more in the last couple days about the girl scouts, skin

I'm changing jobs this week, so the blogging may be brief. Lots of tales to tell, but no time--so here's a quick exchange between Ace and Mommy at naptime yesterday. (note: for those who joined us late, Ace is a nom de plume. Mommy, however, is her given name.) Mommy: Who are your friends, Ace? Ace: B, CP, LM, KP, KP, JDP, CB. (pause) Mommy? M: Yes, Ace? A: Mommy Ace's best friend.

Miscellaneous tidbits today. Think of this as cleaning out the fridge before the weekend. 1. Miraculously, after several months of ettiquete tutulage, M. has suddenly become polite. For weeks we've been prompting him to say "thank you" and "please," but he's been inconsistent at best. Two days ago Susan handed M. a granola bar, and he turned to walk away and said "thanks!" over his shoulder. We gave each other pleasantly surprised did-he-just-say-what-I-think-he-said looks, and Susan asked, "What did you just say, buddy?" M. stopped and thought. "Thank you ," he said, apparently interpreting our pleasant surprise as a rebuke for casual speech. Since then, he's used please and thank you constantly. He even said "thank you" when I opened the door for him, even though we'd only explained "thank you" as something to say when you are given something. He must have picked up the wider usage from

Ace can open the cabinet, grab a cup, and--on tiptoes--dispense himself a few moon-shaped pieces of ice and some water from the front of the fridge. It usually works with only minor spillage (unless the water hits the ice in a certain way and he gets sprayed). The other night, he ran out of water while we were reading in bed, but I told him the ice cubes would turn into water. So we read a few more books and sure enough, he had some more water. He was fascinated by it, and we had a toddler lesson on states of matter. This morning, he drank the last cup of Kefir (drinkable yogurt), and asked for more. I had to tell him we were all out. Without missing a beat, he perked up and looked at the fridge. "Ice turn into Kefir??"

Scene: Tuesday morning, 7:30 am. Maynor basement/playroom. Enter Ace and Daddy. A: Dark! Turn light on, peez. D: [flips switch]. A: Dark! Turn light on, peez. D: I already turned it on. A: Dark! D: Take off your sunglasses. A: [lifts glasses] . Light!

It's fascinating to watch linguistic development. It's tempting to think that M just parrots back our words without full understanding, but I think that happens a lot less often than I sometimes realize. As he's forming more and more sentences, for instance, it's clear that he understands sentence structure, including direct and indirect objects : "My give B. booberry." (B. is not old enough to eat a blueberry, btw.) He's been experimenting with pronouns. The use of "My" above was incorrect--he should have used "I", but it was close. He's used "me" for several months, but is just starting to get "you." If he wants me to play baseball, for instance, he'll say "Me and Me play baseball," pointing at Daddy for the first "me" and pointing at himself for the second "me." He still refers to himself as his name (and not me, myself, or I) about 80% of the time. I've wondered how

Ace is more and more obsessed with the alphabet song. He's got almost every letter, but he lost the ellemenopee. Now he just sticks in a series of N's. "H I J K L N N N N P" I think it was my brother Allen that thought the song went, "H I J K Allen and a P" Ace has also had a problem in the last couple weeks with waking up in the middle of the night, upset. Sometimes we can go in and give him some water or read him a quick book, but usually he wants one of us to crawl into bed with him. Which would be kind of nice occasionally if he would actually sleep with one of us in the bed. Example: The other night he woke up screaming at 3:30 AM and I went in and gave him water and crawled in bed with him and scrtached his back. He seemed to drift off after five minutes, so I scratched a few more times and gently removed my hand. "back, peez." Darn it. So I scratch for a good ten minutes, he's snoring, and my actual scratching turns