6:35 AM.
Waiting.

Math or Verbal?

Since enrolling in full-time daycare six months ago, Miles's counting and speech skills have developed from barely existent to fairly elaborate.

My three-and-a-half-year-old now counts like this:
"...ten, eleven, fourteen, nineteen, two-teen."

He can recite days of the week very fast.
"Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Sixday."

I heard Miles sing-screaming this last week. I was in the kitchen, he was two doors down in the toy room.
"...Buckle your shoe! Three, four, pick up sticks! Five, six, close the gate!"

Clearly he's balanced. He's not annoyingly strong on either the verbal or math side, just perfectly centered somewhere in the middle. Yes, he's perfect.

He has learned so much in daycare, things I couldn't single-handedly teach him. The teachers insist Miles is an enthusiastic helper and a great listener. More than one teacher has noticed that Miles can cut square and circle shapes with the precision of a boy months older. But what I find most endearing of all his recent changes, is how being in a large, multi-room facility, under one enormous roof, can shape my boy's language.

Our home is a quarter-mile away from a house with a barn and a horse. Miles will ask me once a week: "Want to take a walk down the hallway and see the pony?"

Prepositional Confusion

The post-Thanksgiving sales commercials came on last night.
"Toys For Us," Miles yelped, recognizing his favorite store.

Miles learns new songs at day care every week.
"Who let the dogs down?" he hoots now while in the shower.

One of his favorite pre-schooler shows is The Backyardigans. "It's O-tay to me," he might say, "if we watch Back-on-agains."

Other popular nomenclature mishaps:

The very hungry caterpillar, according to author Eric Carle, eats and eats and then builds a little home from which he will emerge as a butterfly. This home, according to Miles, is called a Racoon.

 

Since I last posted, we moved out of state, bought a fish fry restaurant, and had a baby boy.

To help us find our way though some of these transitions, my sister Eileen visited over the weekend.

On Saturday morning, Eileen took Miles blueberry picking at the farm down the road.

When Miles came rushing home, he was holding a basket of blueberries in his left hand, and a small shiny thing in his right.

“Momma, I have a shiny thing for youuuu,” he said, passing in front of my eyes what looked like part of a snap for a garment.

I thanked him and told him I loved small shiny things.

A few minutes later he rushed into our bedroom where Charlie was sleeping.

I had learned in a college psychology class that sometimes toddlers and preschoolers give inappropriate gifts to their newborn siblings. A salt and pepper shaker was the example the professor gave.

Remembering this, I grabbed my camera.

“Smell my finger Mommy.”


I should have known better.

I had been at the computer for almost 30 minutes. Miles had been sitting on the potty, watching a TV show. We were making great toilet-training progress that day last week. And at the time, my son’s finger looked clean enough.

I leaned toward his extended index and inhaled an unmistakable odor.

“Was this in your heinie?” I asked, knowing the answer.

YES, he said, with the same amount of enthusiasm he would have used if I had asked, “Miles, cupcakes for dinner?”

I suggested he take a whiff of his own finger. “Pee-yew,” my son said. “Stinky.”

I guided him to the bathroom to scrub his hands and talk about dirt and germs.

Later I chastised myself for not suggesting a bubble bath. That would have been the ultimate clean fun activity, since we could have chatted more about hygiene, and I could have scrubbed his heinie and his hands at the same time. Sort of.

Yesterday I got a second chance to teach in the moment.

Miles stole my computer mouse while I was online. I chased him laughing through the living room and out to the deck. He tossed the mouse under the picnic table. I grabbed it, turned my back to my son, and shoved the mouse down the front of my trousers.

Miles was baffled. He grabbed my wrists and examined my hands. He searched behind the curtains inside the sliding glass doors.

The mouse began to creep down my 7-month pregnant belly, bypassing my crotch and lodging on my right thigh. I threw my hand down my pants, rescued the mouse and held it high in the air, triumphantly.

“You hide it, Momma!” Miles shouted, sounding proud of me. “You hide it in your ja-eye-na!

What? I asked, knowing the answer, just needing to hear him repeat it.

“You hide it in your penis!”

No, I corrected, I put it in my pants.

“Pee-Yew,” Miles said, running away from me, “You have stinky ja-eye-na!”

I halted. Since the dawn of my puberty I have lived in fear of stinky-vagina-osis. Now that I’m pregnant, and in my opinion, more susceptible to the condition than ever, I bathe twice a day. Apparently, it’s not often enough.

But thanks to our recent smelly finger incident, I was prepared for any odorous orifice situations.

“Well, if I’m stinky, then I’m going to take a bath.” I headed upstairs toward the master bathroom, my head held high.

“Me take bahsh too,” my son announced, grabbing my hand to ascend the stairs together. “I have stinky penis toooo.”

I am sitting at an intersection on Long Island in rush hour traffic and someone inconveniences me by not signaling.

“Nice using your blinker, asshole,” I say in my voice reserved for tri-state driving.

From the backseat Miles recognizes my tone and instantly asks:
“Fucking drivers, Ma?”

At least that’s what I hear him say, and I choke on my laughter because he’s done it again: He has dispelled my anger by imitating me at my ugliest. It’s my favorite kind of comedy.

There is no time for me to respond to his query. My three-year-old hardly takes a breath before uttering a list of trucks, such as dump trucks and back hoes, and I wonder for a second if I am off the hook, if maybe he didn't use the F word, and so aptly.

But I am pretty sure his expletive skills are somewhere near a 14-year-old's.

While taking the long way to school this morning I hear Miles say: "Me found school bus store."

I look around but see only medical buildings.

He says it again, and points left. "Two bus store" is what I hear this time.

I mull it over. "Yeah?" I say, eager to acknowledge his eagle eye vision, but I am struggling to make sense of what a bus store is. Pizza Store is the pizzeria; Tractor Store is either Home Depot, Lowe's or Tractor Supply Company. I am befuddled by Bus Store.

This time, with more gusto, he says, "Brush Your Teeth Store, Momma, me found it. Back dare."

And then I realized we had just passed my dentist's office. Toothbrush store, that's what he was trying to tell me. I'd taken him with me last month for my check-up, my first in almost a year, and we walked out with two new toothbrushes in hand. We hadn't passed this way in some time.

Eagle eyes.

Consonant Confusion

This week, according to Miles:

Barn and farm rhyme. The terminal M sound is very prevalent in our language, at least in our home. Telephome! is what he calls when my handbag or jacket pocket chimes. Often he'll sing, "Wheels on bus go opem and shut..."

A shellph is what you might find Sally selling down by the seashore.

Chicken rhymes with turkey and baloney.

There was one more, I will post again when I can remember it.

For anyone who's counting, Miles has up to five babies in his belly. One is Jack, the other is Baby Jack, and three, four and five are as yet unnamed.

A few months ago, Miles crept into bed with us at 6 am. He sneezed and I whispered “God bless you.” In his early morning creaky voice, he said, “Bleshyou too, Momma.”

Yesterday I chirped “Morning!” at the site of him in his footsie pajamas. “Morning toooo,” he lingered as he hugged me.

This afternoon, right before his nap, I told him how proud I was of the way he shared toys at a kiddy party we had just attended. I told him how I really liked his friends but that I especially loved him.

“You know why I super duper love you?” I asked, leaning in for a final kiss, hoping it would help send him off to sleep. “Because you are my son.”

“You’re my son, toooooooooooo,” he said, patting me gently on the back.

On Thursday night I knocked over a reading lamp in our bedroom.

From downstairs, on the couch, Miles heard it crash.

He looked wide-eyed at his dad, clapped his palms to his face, and said, Fuck!

Damn me and my potty mouth.

One morning last week, I saw something that reminded me of my dead mother-in-law Lorraine. She passed away about a year ago. I still cry when I think of her.

I was in the closet collecting laundry when I saw a hint of a greeting card that she gave me years ago.

That’s all it took to get me hurling through time, re-living past moments and re-scripting last conversations.

In general I am so good about letting dying people go. Last week however, I was not so open-hearted about Lorraine’s departure. I was irrational. I was sad and lonely and angry. I re-felt the pain of the loss of her, my mom and my father.

I did not express my turmoil quietly or gracefully.

I scooped up an armful of dirty clothes and wailed through my sorrow. I headed down two flights of stairs toward the washer/dryer in the basement.

From the kitchen, Miles heard me.

He asked what I was doing.

I detoured to him and told him I was crying.

Why? he asked.

I stalled for a second, not sure I was ready to delve into the dead grandma topic.

“Because I’m sad,” was all that I could offer.

“You miss Chippuh, Momma?”

Oh my god, I thought. How closely this kid can read me.

Chipper is our pet cockatiel who died four months ago. Miles speaks only of the yellow bird in relation to his grandmother, and he recites how they live together in heaven. Miles has never brought up the subject of Chipper without being prodded.

To the best of my knowledge, Miles has never used the verb to miss.

My son's timing for dead bird chit chat was striking. Why didn’t he suggest “Boo-boo, Momma?” as he does when he sees me catch my finger in a closing door, or re-acquaint my toe with my bedframe?

To explain Miles's uncharacteristic show of empathy/intuition, I could say that he probably hasn’t seen or heard me weep aloud since the week Chipper died, and therefore associates my tears with yellow birds.

But I’d rather believe he thinks of Grammy and Chipper as one beloved, absent entity. I want to believe he took one look at my forlorn face and read my mind.

But that’s me. I’m pretty good at attributing SuperChild powers to my son.

DISCLAIMER: I am five months pregnant, and all observations I make today and this day forward should not, and can not, be used against me in a court of law.

Just to temper what I relayed regarding Miles’s outstanding empathetic powers, I need to disclose what he said a month ago, when I asked him what we should do with the new baby when we bring it home this summer.

I gave Miles some ideas such as "Give it some milk?" "Kiss it?" "Hug it?"

“Troe it in darbage?” Miles said full smile, lilting his palm toward our kitchen waste receptacle.

Since then I encourage Miles to kiss and wish the fetus good morning and good night on a daily basis.

I think we are making progress.

Today he shoved a small monster truck up my sweater, near the largest swell of my belly, and said it was for the baby.