Love Post

Playing in the backyard: I said it was time to go in and started to walk to the back door. E ran up to me and asked me to stop. He said: "I want to put my love all over your face." I bent down and he rubbed his cheeks on mine and hummed.

At dinner: I'd cooked, was tired. E wasn't eating much so I asked him to take a bite, which he did. I asked him if it was good. He said, in a sweet little voice, "Yes, it's good Mommy, but also a little bit yucky."

Making Pumpkin Oatmeal cookie together on the kitchen floor: "Mommy, do you want to know how I love you, let me count the waves."

After visiting the new pediatrician: E got to go to a little candy store and pick out a lollipop (possibly his first), which he quickly proceeded to crunch up in the car. When the crunching had quieted, I asked, "Did you like your lollipop?" He said, with great seriousness: "How can I find another one?"

All the time: "Pick me up like a piece of cheese."

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!

Happy New Year!

It's been a long time since I posted . . . we've been busy, yep, but I have to say life is getting easier in a way because Elijah is rapidly transitioning out of baby mode and into little boy mode. Rapidly. Some days Marty and I will talk about how it seems like he made some enormous developmental leap overnight. Speaking of which, we've also successfully night-weaned him, which is a major change for all of us. Last night he slept from 8:30 until 4:00 without waking! And he's super sweet. He says "love you" a lot. Even "love you so much," and he likes to be tickled, and give hugs and kisses, and laugh and laugh and laugh. Anyway, here are some of the things he's been doing recently that impress us with their total radical amazingness (they might not sound impressive, but I swear that somehow they are):

• he has started saying "um" when he's not sure what he wants to answer in response to a question (neither Marty nor I says "um" that often, so I'm not sure where he got this . . . it's peculiarly adult)
• he's crazy with the prepositions and the pronouns . . . he gets gender right, under right, over right, etc. . . . one very funny thing he's been doing is saying "somebody's" when he sees an object that isn't clearly "Elijah's" or "mommy's" or "daddy's" . . . so we'll be looking at a book and he'll point to things and say "somebody's bowl," or "somebody's helicopter," or "somebody's cup" etc. he continues to LOVE books and we read and read all day long.
  
• he can count to 12, and he's not just reciting the numbers . . . at least he seems to understand that he's counting . . . he'll count blueberries on his plate, or steps at the library, but after he gets to 12 he reverts to six. everything after 12, so far, is six: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 . . .
• he can almost sing the entire alphabet song, recognizes many letters (and numbers and shapes), and can tell you what words begin with certain letters (he seems partial to D and P and C and E). he also sings a lot of nursery rhymes all by himself: the "baa baa song" and the "star song" the "sabo song" (sabo = spider), and he asks for the "muckus" song a lot, which is his daddy's jewification of "little miss muffet": little miss muckus / sat on her tuchus / eating her matzo brei / along came a spider / who sat down beside her / and frightened miss muckus bye bye. he likes to dance. he likes to play piano with his dad or all alone. he asks for songs all the time, so much so that we're constantly making songs up. one duet we made up together is about a caterpillar. it goes: the green and fuzzy caterpillar moves along the stick / he moves a lot like an inchworm, which is just like this / we don't touch the caterpillar because he's delicate (E sings "delicate") / and he's busy! he's off to build himself a chrysalis (E sings "chrysalis") / and he'll stay inside that chrysalis for approximately two weeks (E sings "two weeks") / at the end of which time he'll emerge a beautiful butterfly (E shouts "butterfly") / a butterfly, big, and flapping its wings!
• he occasionally speaks in complete sentences: "I want apple juice" was the first. he also said to me once: "Aunt Ruthie loves everybody, everybody!" and he often says little random things like "Squirrel is under here" or "Thomas is cozy."
• he's a good eater. he loves applesauce, mashed potatoes, (soy) hot dogs, broccoli, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, blueberries, bananas, Lara bars, cheese, pancakes. he says "more yummy yummy" when he wants more of something particularly delightful (a muffin, for example). and he has started saying "delicious."

His birthday is coming up (only two months(ish) to go) and I'm thinking it'll be a seagull-themed hot-dog party.

One thing he still needs to work on, which we're all quietly working on, is that he gets kind of stressed out around other kids, particularly at the library (where we go to play almost everyday). He will push people, but it seems more out of a sense of space than aggression. And he gets really stressed out and will shout a bit and come running to me when little kids play near him or come up to him at all. My thinking is that it's something about his personality, a bit defensive, a bit private, and also a phase. I don't want to make too much of it, but we do talk about how when we see other kids we don't push or yell we just say hi and try to share. Yesterday, in fact, he did a great job at the library. He said "hi" to every kid he saw (followed up with "go away" once) and only pushed one kid (who, frankly, was a little jerk) and shared really really well. So, yeah, hopefully it's no big thing. What upsets us isn't so much the behavior itself, which isn't really all that bad, but how stressed out he seems by other kids. Except, of course, his BELOVED Harperjack and Johnjeffnate!!! He also has a few little boys he likes to play with at day-care and whom he talks about at home: Kendall and "Heepo" aka Hooper. The teachers, Miss Tina and Miss Diana, say he's never a behavior problem but that he does like to do his own thing. Aunt Ruthie mentioned that she thinks he'd really like Montessori, and I think she's probably right. So, need to look into Montessori . . .

Anyway, new pics are up at Shutterfly. I got a pretty awesome camera from M for Xmas, so at some point in the December pics you should see a shift to better quality. They're so good you can actually see the individual boogers in his nose! Here's one as a tease:













In other news, there's not much other news. It's been cold and snowy here. We had a quiet little happy Christmas, except for that moment when I cut my finger opening a plastic toy packaging for Elijah. Ouch.









Elijah's day-care has been closed for the holidays and he's really missed it, which is good, because it makes me feel less guilty about sending him to day-care at all. I got vegan cookbooks from everyone, it seems, and so I've been cooking up a vegan storm. A delicious storm. We've been traveling a lot: PA and NY in November, CA and Bloomington-Normal in December, back to CA in January, then to DC in February. I've been doing readings for my book. One very weird one at a bar in NYC. A really lovely one at CalArts. I think I've finished my new book. Almost. Very close. Getting ready to teach a brand new class at Naropa this spring, on "first books."

New Photos Up at Shutterfly

In which Elijah plays with Thomas and Grammer Lynda and Grandpa Pow, and enjoys putting his mama's clean undies on his head, and discovers the biggest leaf in the world, and arranges his trucks into various formations around the house . . . here.

Catch up

Colds. Two in two months. Everyone sick. Blech. Snot. Poor us.

Words. So many words! I've been writing and teaching with em. Marty's been writing em too. Elijah's been learning new ones every day. Some favorites (of mine, of his): smile (which he pronounces "saba"), caterpillar (calpidah), Grandpa Paul (Gampapow), Dumptruck Duck (adum aguch aduch), Thomas (the Tank Engine, which he pronounces "tahps"), cozy (which he pronounced "coze" until very recently). Some favorites of his (or at least things he talks about all the time): bulldozer (bullo), bus, truck (guch), kitty cat, airplane (aybaden), helicopter (helcloppah), KK (my frined Karla), necky bath (this is pics of him in the bath with cousins, which he asks to look at every day at least once . . . in general he is pretty into nudity, wants to be naked, is happy when we're naked, shouts out "necky" whenever he sees people outside in tank tops or shorts or photos in magazines where the models look undressedish). He also talks about all of his grandparents a lot and his cousin Harper (although sometimes he calls her hippo and he also named his hippo Harper). He also modifies things all on his own "Big truck" or "Loud motorcycle" or "Brown leaf" etc.

Ideas. I'm amazed at how much Elijah thinks and conceptualizes (one night at dinner he said "rocket ship" so I asked him where it went and he said to the sky [sykah] and I asked him what else is in the sky and he gave me a long list: moon, sun, airplane, cloud . . . ) and remembers . . . not just that he remembers things but that he remembers orders and minute details. He will tell me stories about what he did or what we saw together and he's very particular to put things in chronological order. He's started watching Elmo's House on Sesame Street after naps (I have two DVRed episode that he watches) and he will start to talk about Mr Noodle (missa noonul) and all the things Mr Noodle did on the episode and puts them in the order he did them in (hop like a kangaroo, waddle like a duck, leap like a frog, etc.). Yesterday, he saw a new episode (the second one, which we hadn't ever gotten to) in which Elmo plays a steel drum on a beach in the Caribbean and he completely freaked out. He demanded to be let out the front door and stood on the porch saying "Elmo? Rum?" Rum is his word for water, and so I guess he wanted to go to wherever it was Elmo was and see that sparkly blue water. It was super weird and he's never mistaken a picture for reality before. Maybe he was a Caribbean drum player in a former life? Whatever it was, this kid needs to see the beach!

Pics. I put up photos from September. October soon.

Autumn. It's cool and pretty here. This is Elijah in autumn gear:

Words, words, words

There's sort of no point in keeping track of Elijah's new words at this point . . . he's starting to come out with them too fast to track, several each day at least. So, here's the last list I'll make, just to remember the "first" of his words:

Please
Thank you
Flag
Broccoli
Avocado
Quiche
Apple
Ballerina
Love
Lid
Lap
Grass
Touch
Push
Backhoe
Motorcycle
Airplane
Roller
Ship
Lay down
Sit down
Blue
Green
Kiss
Bedroom / room
Oval
Diamond
Ladybug
Monkey
Snake
Hippo
Elephant
Caterpillar
Giraffe
Eye
Backyard
Big
All done

He also can tell you what all the letters of his name are if you point to them ("Elijah, what's this?" "E." "Elijah, what's this?" "H" . . . ) and I just realized the other day that you can turn the tables and ask him what everyone and everything on the bus is doing ("Elijah, what do the wipers on the bus do? "Swish, swish." "Elijah, what do the babies on the bus say?" "Wah wah wah.").

New Batch

Elijah has a whole new batch of words. He's also been saying some pretty awesome sentences. 3am the other morning: "Mama, help . . . more ninny-milk." He tells long stories with what he's got. When he and his dad go out in the jogging stroller early in the morning he comes back and tells me: "Dada, lolo (stroller), honk honk (geese), mmmmm (moon), guck (truck) . . ." I'm also pretty amazed at how much he remembers. We passed a school bus and then immediately after it a fire truck on the corner of our street last week and now whenever we go in the front yard he says: "Bus, weeooo weeooo weeeoo." Also we checked a book out of the library and read it a few times and the next time we went back to it he knew the noises for "how each animal eats": bear = grum grum, cat = lippity lap, beaver = crunch munch, giraffe = rip-scrunch, etc. And his problem solving skills are sharpening. At the library last week he was holding a piggy bank toy and went up to the Playskool playhouse wanting to open the window shutters. He realized he'd need his hands, but wouldn't give up the pig, so he put it between his chest and the house and leaned on it. Problem was, he was then leaning on the shutters, which open out. So he put the pig back in his hands and thought. So then he put the pig on the floor, opened the window, picked up the pig, threw the pig through the window, shut the shutters, end. Anyway, here are the words I can decipher (there are of course many more that I can't yet figure out):

stroller (lo-ler; cute, but can't really compete with cousin Jack's amazing stro-ler-ler)
wind
close
bean
noodle (a very emphatic nhoo-nul)
rice
seeds
raisins
bunny rabbit
butter
yuck yuck (for any stray hairs, spiders, or spider's web, of course)
snacks
belt
grrrr (for scary face)
la la la (for song)
pillow
light
wall
bed
shirt
bulldozer
helicopter (says "clop")
bath
scissor
Pat and Pat's house (our neighbor)
penis
bare butt
back
belly
bear
zebra
blocks
umbrella
yes
off
in

PS - Pics up at Shutterfly for August.
PPS - He is still the world's worst sleeper. Last night he was awake from midnight to about 3:15. Cries a little, snuffles, rolls around, can't get comfortable, sits up and talk, complains, laughs, talks some more, whispers to himself, eyes wide open, rolls around, can't sleep, sits up, crawls down the bed, repeat. New plan is to cut off all nighttime ninny-milk cold turkey (except for nursing to sleep). It's getting drastic. A year and a half later and none of us is sleeping. Still. For shit's sake.

Some S P R A W L reviews

I told Dad I'd be sure to post reviews here, when I got some. So here is one at Bookforum. And here is the start of one at The Believer.

For the record . . .

Elijah says:

hi
bye bye
mama
dada
baby
Loretta
Elijah
stick
dirt
rock
yuck yuck
bear
truck
car
bus
choo choo
neck
necklace
mouth
cheeks
knee
water
cup
pancake
olive
watermelon (see previous post)
grape
apple
spoon
walk
glove
out
sun
moon
cloud
no
balloon
kitty cat
ball
hat
hot
cookie
cracker
bread bite
egg
ninny (nursing)
flower
up
down
grandma
pat pat
round (a verb)
sock
shoe
clock
booger
gate
dump
book
bike
boat
bonk
rip

He signs:
more
all done
nursing
buttefly

He makes animal sounds for:
cat
dog
sheep
horse
cow
pig
pigeon
peacock
goose
donkey
monkey
lion
dinosaur
tiger
bear
fish
snake
bee (bug)
owl
bird
duck
squirrel
rooster
chicken
dolphin
turkey
frog

That's all I can remember right now.

Oh, and he has been trying like the dickens to say "ballerina" because of a small plastic figurine on the shelf. The closest he gets is saying "ball" + "watermelon," which actually makes sense, I think, from a musical standpoint (but then again, I am the proud mama).

Watermelon Man

Watch him in action here.

Rocking the indie bookstores!

Awesome little write-up about S P R A W L on their website. Scroll down to find it.