Chronicles of Elliot Jude: November 2012

Oh man did I let too much time go by between posts, Elliot is a new man! Well into toddlerhood, he's a walking, running, jumping, trouble-making machine with a mind of his own.

If you ask him whether he wants something, he'll say 'yes, no' and whichever direction you proceed in, he wants the opposite. Seems like that's mostly due to his wanting to experience ALL the possibilities ALL the time. I wonder if that's because he's still connected with the primordial all-knowing consciousness of pre-existence and it's really our trained and brainwashed minds that must now force upon him the limits of carnal being? Or maybe that's just how the human brain develops and it's the precursor to decision-making, either or :)

Seems like every other thing I say to him is 'no, don't do that' or 'Elliot, you can't..' and sometimes he drives me crazy when he deliberately does what he shouldn't. But then he looks at me with those blue eyes, or cries MAAAAAAAHHHHHMMMMMMMAAAAAAHA, and what can I do but willingly wrap myself around his little fingers? The disciplinarian in me comes and goes. Sometimes he ignites a fire in me to teach him lessons about life, and other times I just don't have the energy to make him care about picking up all his toys and silently do it myself with full acceptance that he is, after all, a child who has little control of his impulses. Is inconsistency bad? I do the best I can. Oddly enough, Josh is the one who seriously lays down the law!

Elliot even knows how to negotiate, oh yes! When he learned what "one more" means, he cleverly decided to use that to squeeze more of whatever he wants from us. So if we say no more snacks until dinner, he'll say "1 More!" (actually he says "mere" instead of "more" for some reason), and uses that for pretty much anything we try to take away, and he always wins, because really, what's just one more? And then one more, and one more after that..

He loves Sesame Street (which really is the awesomest show ever) and the movie CARS, man does he love that movie (he loves it so much that Josh got Cars2 and the first Cars in Russian just so he'd have something new to watch). And the Lightning McQueen car from the movie is his first attachment object. He takes that thing everywhere, sleeps with it, and gets upset when it's lost.

He can count to 10, and knows a bunch of letters thought not all, and goes to pre-school for 75 minutes 3 times a week. He has already learned all the fun kid songs like itsy bitsy spider (which, when he sings it, it sounds like he's saying PT Fired UP!), twinkle twinkle little star, I'm a little teapot, and row row row your boat, which he's singing here in his own special way:

Teaching someone language from scratch is also making me realize how confusing it can be, there are so many double meanings in the english language! (park a car vs. go to the park, two/too/to, head on your neck vs. head in that direction, right direction vs. right - being correct, etc.).

He refers to himself as me (as in "me spin around" "me hungry") which is kind of funny, although at just over 2 years old he already knows how to conjugate verbs, and how to do things that make us laugh (and then say "me funny!"), such as earlier today when we tried to put him down for a nap and after a minute of silence he started yelling "water mama, water papa, me want WATER people!!" Naptime is no longer a daily occurrence (much to our dismay) but he still takes the occasional daytime snooze a few times a week.

Speaking of water, Elliot is way past complete toilet training and uses the regular toilet when he has to "peeps" or "poops"and I've even got him hooked on herbal tea. We rarely give him juice to limit the sugar he consumes since he eats lots of fruit and dried fruit for snacks. He doesn't always eat the healthy food we make but he does like kale these days, and I'm hoping he'll be so unused to processed junk food that he'll recognize it for the cardboard-tasting chemical non-food that it is when he gets introduced to it by his friends later on. I'm just happy he's eating some amount of vegetables daily, even though that variety of vegetables is often limited to avocado ("cado").

Have I mentioned that he's a... people person? This kid has no qualms about approaching strangers in any setting. When we go to restaurants and he's done eating, he likes to walk around to every table, stand in front of it looking adorable and smiling, waiting for the people to turn to him with enthusiasm and greet him, at which point he gets what he wants and runs over to the next table to get the same reaction. Is this a politician in the making? I hope not! When we passed a Hare Krishna band in Union Square recently, he first danced around in front of them, and after one of them gave him an instrument an invited him to sit, well it was all over, he joined the band and so did I for about half an hour, as the tourists watched us and clapped.

This kid is a real boy through and through, and I'm certain it was no nurturing of ours that made him that way. He loves trucks and vehicles of all kinds; he's destructive, sometimes violent, and lacking in fear; he's messy and hates cleaning up after himself; he challenges authority; always wants to explore; and is completely engrossed in tv when watching it so don't even try to talk to him during a Disney movie.

Which bring me to technology!! Holy moly how in the world do these kids figure it out so fast? He's 600 times better at it than my grandmother who has 80 years of wisdom and has witnessed the rise of the modern technological age. He can do things on an iPhone like open the camera and take a picture, or turn music on speaker with barely a touch. I'm seriously talking about things that take us at least a few clicks or swipes. And when I looked over at what I thought was him playing a game on the iPad recently, he was browsing apps!!! Kid apps! It's wild how he's 2 years and 2 months old, and without even trying we're teaching him how to interact with the technology that is the foundation for all the advanced media that will be around 20 years from now. Just goes to show that you're really doing very little teaching as a parent, you're sort of just co-existing and care-taking and they absorb everything they need to be fully functioning humans.

Oh and... we may have traumatized him a little with a recent bed bug situation. Apparently the two apartments on both sides of ours had them right before we moved in last year, and they made their way into our bed. Luckily they didn't spread anywhere else, like Elliot's bed or the couch, and we handled the situation with all the necessary measures. But he's clearly not immune to our frustrations and paranoia and occasionally talks about there being bugs around when there definitely are not. If he becomes an entomophobic adult, we'll know why :(

Despite all the crazy boyness though, this kid can be so ridiculously sweet it'll melt your heart. He loves babies and understands that they're special, he can be really affectionate and give hugs and kisses, he understands when you're sad and is more likely to listen and abide if you say it will make you happy, and he's good at playing with others and sharing (sometimes requiring the occasional reminder to do so), and yes he sometimes hugs trees (I wonder who taught him that!).

I have to admit that family life is pretty much what I expected it to be, there's lots of love, occasional yelling, and never enough quiet time, but fun as hell and I can't imagine life without my boys :)

That concludes this exceedingly long post, here are some more pics!

2nd birthday party