Other Talks

Elijah: "Where's Urbana?"
Me: "It's in Illinois."
Elijah: "Speaking of Urbana, what do you think Anton is doing?"

Elijah: making grossed-out face
Me: "What's wrong?
Elijah: "I ate a chick-pea shell."
Me: "A chick-pea shell?"
Elijah: "Yes, but I did not eat a turtle's shell."

Elijah: around midnight, fast asleep in his room
Me: insomnia
Elijah: cracking up in his sleep
Me: smiling

Lumberjack series

Another funny conversation . . .

I picked up Elijah from school yesterday and he wanted to play in this little book area they have in the lobby. There were two older kids there (maybe 4), working (I think) with a speech pathologist. Elijah was curious and was sort of hanging around them listening in. At some point one of the kids said "I can run fast!" and the other said "I can run really fast!" and Elijah said (really loud) "I can run really slowly!" He said "slowly" very very slowly. Then the speech pathologist turned around and said, "Really?" And Elijah said "Underwater, actually."

Lately

A few stellar conversations I've been having:

Elijah in the backseat: "I need to go to the emergency room. I just broke my leg."
Me in the front seat: "No, you didn't break your leg. If you broke your leg it would hurt really bad and we would have to go get a cast for it."
Elijah: "What's a cast?"
Me: "It's like a shell that would go around your leg to keep it still and safe."
Elijah, after a pause: "What happens if you break your leg?"
Me: "You have to get a cast."
Elijah: "Like an island castaway?"

Elijah, eating strawberries in the dining room: "Mama, can you put on Maceo Parker?" (pronounced May-thee-oh Paw-kew)

Today when I picked up Elijah at daycare he wanted me to pick him up and he said: "I like you Danielle Sabrina Dutton."

A few days ago I asked Elijah if he wanted watermelon. He said no. I told him I was going to go into the kitchen to have some. Then he started bellyaching upstairs and Marty asked him what was wrong. He said he was sad because he wanted watermelon. Marty asked if I'd asked him if he wanted some. He said yes. Marty asked him what he's said. He said he'd said no. Marty asked why. He said: "Because I'm a little boy and I say 'no.'"

First Words

Elijah and I have been in California for a week and he's been sleeping in a "nest" on the floor of the guestroom where I'm sleeping (in the bed). He likes his nest and it seems to be working well (fyi, he's sleeping in his own bed back home, at long last). Anyway, every morning we've been here he's woken up and said "Mommy?" and I've crawled down to snuggle with him a little. Each morning, after another minute or two, he's said the most hilarious thing. Now I'm sort of waiting for it each time. One morning, he said, out of nowhere: "I like fish sticks." (He'd had one the night before for the first time.) One morning, he said, out of nowhere: "I am thinking about Grandpa Frank. I am thinking about his fire truck. I am thinking about his hose." (This was my maternal grandpa, who was a fireman in NYC, and whom I told E about, like, once.) Then this morning he said: "I have a question for you Mommy: what color is Grandma Lene's fan?"

Urbana, we will miss you . . . (Carle Park / yoga moms)

The park, from the path . . .








Katrin and Julius on the rocket-ship playhouse . . .











Oscar, almost . . .








Elijah, swinging, reflective . . .











front: Oscar, Allison, Noah, Mary, Evangeline, Anton, Me, Elijah
back: Helen, Celine, Marie, Katrin

Sunny Days

Recent Pics (click to enlarge)

See-Saw in Snow










Me and Elijah (silly with glasses)










Marty in Birthday Hat (knit by sister Julie)













Elijah and Anton on E's 2nd Birthday

Busy Winter

Seriously, busy. Ridiculously busy. There's been DAP stuff, of course. I'm still going in a couple of mornings a week. And Naropa stuff. I have two sections this semester. And Dorothy stuff, although I've been largely ignoring that stuff for a while. And mostly there's been interviewing stuff, which feels like it has consumed the last few months of my life. Some of this has been interesting and useful for me, as a person, as a writer, etc. Some of it, though, has been upsetting if not plain ol bewildering . . . and I find myself sort of spiritually at a crossroads. I seriously dislike presenting myself as a CV, as a series of accomplishments or (depending on who is examining it/me) a failure to accomplish. It's icky. It has little to do with who I am or how I feel about writing. And the worst of it is that I have had no time to write, which would connect me back somehow to what in all of this matters to me in the first place. Or once mattered. I hope it still does. I mean, I hope it still matters to me. On a whole other level: does it matter to anyone else? Yeah, so, a little lost. Of course I'm aware that this isn't just about writing or job-seeking. Having a kid disrupts everything. Everything. I know I need to be doing yoga and meditation, but when? I know I need to be writing and reading, but when. I know I need to be getting together with friends, but when? It doesn't help that the weather has been horrible. The older I get, the more clear I become to myself, the more I realize I need to live somewhere beautiful and temperate. N E E D. When we visited SoCal for my visiting writer thing in December, I was immediately a happier person. So, well, add that to the list of things to figure out.

Meanwhile, Elijah is certainly the light of my life right now. He astonishes me. He is so totally and utterly lovable. And he's also a bit of a stinker lately. But, oh well, I'm sort of a stinker lately too. He says so much. He seems to notice and understand everything. He is really into his friend Anton right now. At least in theory . . . he talks about Anton and likes to look at Anton's pictures and when I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday he said he wanted Anton to come over and play and take a bath and share Rubber Duckie. But when push comes to shove (and it often does with two-year-olds) he mostly plays independently even when Anton is there to play with. In general, E seems to be a bit shy, even a little shier than some of the other kids he is around so often (at day care, for example). Or am I just nervous and imagining this? The exception to it is: cousins. Holy crap does that kid love each and every one of his cousins, all five of whom are WONDERFUL with him: loving, fun, generous, careful. He talks about each of them every day. But when I got to pick him up at day care (which he loves! loves Miss Tina) he is usually off on his own. One day I saw him go up to another kid and that kid hit his arm pretty hard and E just held his arm and walked quietly away and it BROKE MY HEART. I'm teaching him to say "Please don't push me."

Mostly, though, he is a very happy kid. He loves trains, still, and trucks, still. Loves books. He is always pretending to be an animal. This morning he told me he was a blue octopus. He is often a pelican. He can sing the whole alphabet song and recognize pretty much all the letters and tell you words that start with those. And he's very careful with what he says. He conjugates all his verbs correctly, uses correct pronouns and prepositions, etc. In fact, I think he's a little fastidious in general. Kooky, yes, but neat. When anything is dirty he gets a little bugged out. He doesn't like to look at pictures of himself in which he is messy. Weirdo!

I wish I could think of the funny things he says to record here. I want to remember so many of them. Hmmm. I'll try to remember and post some soon. Look at that handsome boy! Oh, yeah, one thing is that since he stopped nursing he tells me he is a "big young man."



I'm off to Maine tomorrow for another interview. Whatever happens, I will be happy when interview season comes to a close this year. I'd like to try to pull myself back into focus. Collect myself together in one spot.

How could I have forgotten to mention . . .

Pretending!

Yowza. This has really taken off in the last month or so. I sort of thought he was pretending a little here and there back in November, but it was confirmed for me when we were visiting in Visalia. One afternoon Harper and Elijah and I went to a park to play. Elijah was just running around like a nuu-nuu, but Harper had an elaborate narrative going the whole time. At some point, she was a mama bird and she was building a nest for her babies. The nest was a pile of playground bark stacked neatly on a bench. Elijah observed for a minute and then he started gathering leaves for her. Okay. But then we started running around in the grass for quite a while, and I picked up a yellow ginko leaf and gave it to Elijah, and he held on to it for several minutes and when we got back over near the benches he went running up to a bench, the wrong one, and said, perturbed, "Nest?" We pointed out the other bench and he ran over and put a leaf on it for Harper-Bird. So, that's when I was sure.

Now that we're back home, he's been pretending up a storm. This morning he spent about an hour (an hour!) getting in and out of the cupboard in the kitchen along with his fire-truck. He told me the fire-truck lived there, and that they were in the fire-truck's backyard (he said this from inside the cupboard with the door shut). When I asked what he could see he told me there were: frogs, doggies, kitty-cats, airplanes, helicopters, beavers, and zebras.

Another thing he just started to do is to want to repeat scenarios (endlessly). So if I react in some amusing-to-him way to something he does, he wants us both to reenact the reaction and the events leading up to the reaction (over and over and over). And he's wanting me to pretend to be "other kids" (his terminology), which is sort of heartbraking! Sad little lonely sack.


He's also getting good at preparing and eating fake food. He makes a mean pretend applesauce and he makes a delightful little noise when he pretends to eat.

But he also uses these newfound powers for evil: the morning after the first night that I wouldn't nurse him throughout the night, I overheard him pretending that his toucan was asking for "ninnynilk" and he was telling it "No!" very firmly, kinda mean actually, and he hit it once. Okay, never did I tell him that whole night "No!" like that, and never did I hit him. I was horrified! But everyone insists he was just processing it, the new no-ninnynilk-nighttime thing, which I guess is right. He doesn't seem traumatized (just me).

Right now he is holding my watch and pretending that it is, in turn, a garbage truck, a backhoe loader, and an excavator.

And so it goes . . .

Also, in case I didn't mention this before. He calls Marty "Uncle Daddy."

Happy new year for reals now!