About the Boy

The drive home

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. Here's a quick shot of Will on the drive home after spending the day in Des Moines on Sunday.

A Day of Experiments

We took Will to the Science Center in Des Moines, which is great. Right after getting our tickets, we walked into an open hall filled with chairs. A quick demonstration was about to begin. "Do you want to watch The Critter Show?" a staff member asked us.

We took our seats. A tiger salamander, a box turtle, and a corn snake were brought in quick succession. Kids were invited up to pet the last two. Will was probably a little too deferential waiting his turn to pet the snake.

Post-birthday-party smile

This was taken Friday night after a truly good party. I'll have more details to share about that but on our way out of the rec center, Will spotted one of these Herky statues and wanted to check him out. As we were walking over, he said casually, "That was fun." No exclamation, just declaration. He's amazing.

Polly Want a Cracker

pollywantacracker by trevorjackson

One more day of Will audio. Before Halloween, Will learned to be a pirate.

How Reading Begins

ReadingPanda by trevorjackson

With memorization. He's going through a book he's heard a thousand times, but it's long and he's using visual cues to work his way through it. But eventually that memory will tag with the pictures of the words and not just the depictions of the animals themselves.

More Bath Audio

Bathdialogue by trevorjackson

It's tricky to get Will uncensored. The raw Fire Eagle. He's very conscious of putting on a performance, whether it's for a photograph or a video. So, kudos to Nicole for surreptitiously recording this bath commentary, which went on for pretty much the length of his bath. This is just a snippet of Will, alone with his crazy. When he says "Ow!" it's in character. Don't be alarmed.

Halloweening with Henry

Pre-trick pose. Monkey & Robot.

Birthday party bouncy house!

Will and the Pants

Sorry I shot this lengthwise.

At the end he says "This is embarrassing" and falls down. Then says, "I said 'This is embarrassing' and then I fell down.'"

Never. Not. Talking.

Post-library Dinner on the Ped Mall

Death and Dinosaurs

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Always."

"Are we going to die?"

"Yes. But not for a long time."

"Jack doesn't know that."

"He will. But it's not your job to tell him about it. OK?"

"..."

"Do you think about dying a lot?"

"Yeah."

"What other questions do you have about it?"

"I don't know."

"Are you worried about it?"

"Sometimes. Are you going to die before I die?"

"I don't know, sweetheart. But I know that neither of us is going to die for a long, long time. We can't know exactly when, but as long as we're careful and watch out for danger, we can keep it from happening."

"I'm not going to die for a million years. Dinosaurs will come back before I die."

"I hope you're right. You'll need to be ready for them."

"How?"

"Eat your breakfast."

More Ball Chasin'

Drive-Time Talk

Silence from the backseat for a few blocks. The radio is chattering about a hurricane bearing down on the Barrier Islands. Then, he says: "Do you know what I was just thinking about?"

I switch the radio off. "Tell me."

"Jack, Gabe, and me were standing on the playground? And, and, and. We were superheroes."

"Cool!"

"And then, we flew right up into the air!"

"Wow! How high did you go?"

"Outer SPACE."

"All the way to the moon?"

"Sure. And, and, and. We flew up out of Iowa City. Everything got small."

"Sure, you were really far away."

"But not really, Dad. It was just what I was thinking about. It was something that I imagined."

"That can be just as good, right? To do things in your mind that you can't do for real?"

"Yeah. The harder I think about it, the realer it is."

"That's right. I'm going to teach you a word for thinking that kind of hard."

"What?"

"Sensory details. Your senses. What you see, what you hear, what things smell like, feel like. They're all things you sense. You imagine with your senses." I'm going too fast, too excited about how close he is to this idea. A writer, I think, he's going to be a writer. "So, some sensory details might be about how cold it is in space or, like you said, how small everything looks from way up high. Maybe you hear the wind screaming past your ears if you're flying really fast. Those things help you imagine it better. Picture it in your head."

"..."

"Then what happened?" We're pulling into the parking lot.

"Are there Gummy George's in my lunch?"

"Yup. And some apple. And a juice box."

New Meets Old

Sorry for the shaky camera work.

Runnin' the Register

Two Pals Pallin' Around with Tech Stuff

Court jester

Ready for His Close-up

Don't call me Shirley.

Will and the Goats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0PHKy7ZTNU

One more from the park

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVkyCfgP4B0&feature=youtube_gdata

Dr. Goose

Trainin'

Will knew

He had it figured out before I did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJu0ruBPkk0&feature=youtube_gdata

Some Kind of Truth

There's a meaning here, some kind of larger conclusion to be reached, but damned if it isn't elusive.

Snow Day

First Day of Preschool

Tire Horse

Who thinks of these things? Hilarious.

Tire Maze

Will and Henry took a break from winding their way through the tractor tire maze.

 

Perfect Fall Day

Lots of pictures from Sunday, but let's just say that we got into the holiday spirit. That's Will's pal Henry peeking over his shoulder on the left.

Last Day at the Park

Piano Man and Mom

Role Play

A lot of our games these days boil down to pretending to be animals. "You be loyin, and I'll be shark!" What we do when we're animals usually involves reuniting babies with their mommies or daddies or, for a few days last week, trying to eat each other. But usually, what we do is less important than who we are. Will spends most of the time figuring out which animal Nicole or I will be, often assigning us an animal he later decides he wants to be. The role-playing also generally involves moving around little animal figures, of which he has soooo many. There's a lot of handing over and back of plastic cheetahs or open-mouthed hippos or kangaroos as we sort it out.

But occasionally we ditch the figurines and just become the animal. Like our friend the tiger, here:

First Snow

Progress. Last year, if a flake landed on him he burst into tears. This year, he was dazzled, watching it fall all around him.

Hangin' with Horton

Lion Roar and Lion, Post-snack

Once the tail was in the proper place, it was easy for Will to fall into character.

And, of course, the lion had to go to his cave. And after eating a chipmunk all that was left was its acorn.

Slowing Down

Take 2 of the lion costume is coming soon. First, I wanted to share something from a short story I read last night. The last time I read the story was years before Will was born. I remember being struck by the quality of the writing, but was unmoved by the quality of the afternoon that Lewis spends with the toddler Caroline. Now, I'm more envious of the pace than I am of the writing. The challenge of parenting these days is forcing myself to move at the speed of a toddler. I'm learning and re-learning this all the time.

From Kevin Brockmeier's "These Hands":

Lewis planted Caroline on her feet and, taking her by the hand, walked with her to the playground. A framework of chutes and tiered platforms sat in a bed of sand and gravel, and they climbed a net of ropes into its gallery. A steering wheel was bolted to a crossbeam at the forward deck, and when Caroline spun it, they beeped like horns and whoaed from side to side. They snapped clots of sand from a handrail. They ran across a step-bridge swaying on its chains. A broad gleaming slide descended from a wooden shelf, its ramp speckled iwth dents and abrasions, and ascending a ladder to its peak, they swooped to the earth. They jumped from a bench onto an old brown stump and climbed a hill of painted rubber tires. They wheeled in slow circles on a merry-go-round, watching the world drift away and return--slide tree parking lot, slide tree parking lot--until their heads felt dizzy and bouyant, like the hollow metal globes that quiver atop radio antennas. Beside a bike rack and a fire hydrant, they discovered the calm blue mirror of a puddle; when Lewis breached it with a stone, they watched themselves pulse across the surface, wavering into pure geometry. A spray of white clouds hovered against the sky, and an airplane drifted through them with a respiratory hush. "Look," said Lewis, and Caroline followed the line of his finger. Behind the airplane were two white condensation trails, cloven with blue sky, that flared and dwindled like the afterlight of a sparkler. Watching, Lewis was seized with a sudden and inexplicable sense of presence, as if weeks and miles of surrounding time and space had contracted around this place, this moment. "My God," he said, and filled his lungs with the rusty autumn air. "Look what we can do."

Halloween Costume, Take 1

A Passenger, This Time

Last week, Will and I were on our own for dinner so I thought we'd go the Children's Museum at the mall and check out the new aviation exhibit. While we were there, I figured we could get dinner and maybe some new shoes, since the Panda/Zebra Sandals weren't going to be that warm for much longer.

When we got to the museum, I saw a bunch of adults standing around in business wear. First warning sign. When we walked in, a rep approached us. "Were you guys here to tour the museum?" No, my toddler and I are here to mingle. "Yeah, are you guys closed for a private thing?" They were. She apologized to me. "Don't tell me, tell him," I nodded to a confused-looking Will.

I knelt down. "Buddy, I'm really sorry. The museum's closed." His eyes narrowed. "We'll have to come back another time." The rep handed a Will a token bag with a disassembled airplane and a bag of pretzels inside. Cute. I thanked her. "Can we see the turtle?" Will asked. I looked up at the rep from my kneel. "Do you mind? He really wanted to show the turtle his gorilla tattoo." Pause. "Don't ask." She smiled and waved us over to the museum lobby's tank.

After a moment or two of laughing at the turtle's webbed feet, Will wanted his pretzels. And to ride the carousel. And, strangely, to get new shoes. Once we finished the pretzels and some crappy mall food court spaghetti and meatballs, it was on to the rides. Will rode the cat with a fish in his mouth on the carousel. I rode a horse. Then he spotted the individual motorized rides.

We ended up having a pretty good time, anyway. Even took a move tie-in friend for a ride.

Wide Line Between Fiction and Reality

Will could read about Elmo going on the potty all day. Especially when it uses the second-person point of view and Will's name. But he's still not so interested in going on it himself. Thanks for the book though, Great-Grandma!

Reflecting

The one semi-science-y thing that Will dug at the science museum was the Hall of Mirrors. Thankfully, he avoided the creepy clowns around the corner.

The Heart Wants What It Wants

Over Labor Day, we visited Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. What did Will spend most of his time doing? Crawling over rocks containing "uranium" and calling himself a mountain goat. Then crawling all over this cow in the Farm Science exhibit.

Duo, Part 2

Harder to get him to pose for pictures these days. Still, look at these beautiful people. (Not the lizard.)

Duo

Thanks to Nicole for the picture. It's so much easier to dump the stroller in favor of the shoulders.

Driver, Surprise Me

Close Up

Tryin' Real Hard, Ringo.

The gecko, not the camera

What holds Will's interest.

Summer's Over

Our Lady of Perpetual Smirks here welcomes you to the fall and to a more regular posting schedule.