Chipper died.

It was Monday morning. Chris found our 15-year-old cockatiel horizontal on the bottom of the cage.

Chris petted Chip’s head feathers for the last time. We both kissed the bird good-bye.

I helped open the Ziploc bag. Chris slipped the yellow bird in it, then rolled the bag into the size of large cigar. He opened the freezer and said something but I couldn’t hear him. He cleared his throat, lowered his voice by a few octaves and said, “We’ll bury him in Vermont the next time we go.”

Miles awoke after his Dad left for work.

Part of Miles’s daily ritual is to bid the birds good morning.

I prepared Miles that there was only one bird now, not two. That Chipper was in heaven with Grammy. That we wouldn’t be able to pet him or see him any more, only in pictures.

Miles is at a speech development phase where he echoes back the last word of some of my phrases. I was trying to not cry while I spoke, but my voice was cracking and weak.

Chip-puhhh? Heh-vin? Miles would confirm at intervals. My heart, already in pieces, melted at each of his questions.

The next morning, Miles came downstairs and asked, “Yellow tweet-tweet?”

I tried for an analogy.

“You know when the battery in your monster truck dies? And the truck won’t move? It’s dead?"

“Ja,” Miles said in his best Swedish. I don’t know when he became Swedish but he does a good Ja.

“That’s what happened to Chipper’s body. It died. His heart stopped working. He stopped breathing.”

“Ja,” Miles repeated, looking into my eyes.

“We can’t go to the store and buy another body for Chipper like we do for batteries. He’s gone, he’s with Grammy in heaven. He died.”

"Ja," he blinked. "Milk?"

And that was the end of that.

I was so exhausted Friday afternoon that I thought it would be OK to grab a pillow and just recline a bit on the cool bathroom floor tiles as Miles bathed in the tub. It was about 3 pm, and Miles had not napped once during the entire beautiful-weather week.

I was completely horizontal, locking my eyes on my child’s, when he said something that sounded like “Pancake, Momma?”

I repeated it. He rejected my interpretation.

"Bankate, Momma. Bankate?"

Backache? I echoed back to him. Oh my sweet son, he’s asking if I have a backache. Isn’t he a sensitive love?

Bankay, bankay, bankay, he said, straddling the tub, dripping wet.

Belly ache? I wondered. I did mention I had a belly ache this morning.

Miles’s wet bare feet soon padded past my head, and he repeated this indecipherable word as he headed through my bedroom, down the hall, and over to his room. "Be careful!" I called to my naked-and-on-a-mission son, who has a pretty excellent sense of balance, but still, I should have gotten up and investigated, or at least dried his feet.

When he stalled in his room, I figured it out: Blankie.

My two-and-half-year old boy left his warm and playful tub to retrieve and deliver to his lazy ass, floor-hogging mom one of his blankets from his crib. He wanted to ensure my comfort needs were met as he sudsed up.

I was curious to see what he’d bring back, as I knew his quilts and blankets were heaped on the living room couch where we left them earlier that day.

Bankaybankaybankay (I could hear his footsteps and mantra getting louder as he got closer).

“Bankay, Momma?” Miles asked as he appeared at the bathroom doorway, a diaper cloth in his right hand. He carefully stretched the rectangular white cloth between my chin and waist, and made a sound that sounded like, There, Blankie, Momma.

Then he straddled the tub wall and plopped back in the bath. He resumed playing monster trucks with his boats (he aligns his rubber ducks along the tub wall then takes a toy ship and steamrolls over them, all the while chanting "must-huh-chuck.")

If he's not certifiably a genius then certainly his EQ has to be off the charts.

Ok, well, if it turns out that his emotional intelligence quotient is just plain ordinary, then let it be known, for sure, height-wise he's off the charts. All the pediatric physician assistants say so.

My sweet son.

 

Underwear Bandito


I know it’s sick, sick, sick
It happened when I was washing down the tub
When Miles was doing other things
Like making jewelry out of my Jockeys
But really, despite the symbolism
I'm OK with it for now
Because he's so cute cute cute

The best and worst memories from Summer 2007:

I was planning on an overnight at my friend’s Long Island shore house. Miles and I (no Chris this time) were going to drive our car onto a ferry that would transport us over the Long Island Sound. Miles is very excited to board any boat of any size, especially one that travels fast, or fash, as he says.

Aloud, I reviewed what we had shoved into the back of our car: Pack N Play, towels, swimsuits, flotation devices, clothes, sandals, sneakers, toiletry bag, diaper bag,, handbag, baby pillow and blankets, two sippy cups, and a cooler bag of milk and snacks.

“What else do we need to take the ferry to the Mary’s?” I asked Miles, knowing no answer would come.

“Wah-wah?” he responded, three fingers tapping his chin, his version of the sign for water. “Fash. Wah-wah.”

Don’t tell me he’s not a genius.

Ok, maybe if he said “Biodiesel ferry fuel” or “Forty-seven bucks for a one way ticket, including the fare for the vehicle's passage" well then I guess certifiably he’d be a genius. For now, he’s just a parent-accredited genius.

But don’t get me wrong. In this blog I tend to write only the tender stuff, and ignore the awful painful behavior befitting any two year old.

For example, on that ferry ride, Miles had such a tantrum —- the kind where he screams, hits, bites, scratches and kicks me until he gets what he wants -— that I physically restrained him in a dining booth near the ship’s snack bar. Our struggle lasted a sweaty five minutes.

I am sure we collected stares, but I didn’t care, a first for me. I think it helped me that the roar of the engine muted his yells by 50 percent, and the walls of the booth were high, so we were partially hidden as we battled wills.

The important thing is that my son and I survived our struggle; afterward we kissed and hugged and held hands as we strolled to our car parked below deck.

Since that summer day I have new, better tools geared to decrease this unwanted behavior; I have much firmer and clearer boundaries and expectations. Time-outs occur daily, sadly, but I’ve been bruise, lump, and scratch-free for weeks.

The Very Worst Summer Memory:

Me telling Miles that I didn’t give a fuck about his boo-boos.

Could it possibly get any worse? I believe this is grounds for getting your parenting license suspended.

Miles had just sunk two fistfuls of fingernails into both sides of my neck, as I carried him from the pool to the parked car. He was non-verbally telling me he didn’t want to leave, and I no longer could bear his physical aggression. It was beyond his nap time and I guess mine too. I was pissed and hurt and I forced him into the car seat, somehow irritating one of his pre-existing leg bruises.

“Boo-boo,” he cried, rubbing his shin, when I uttered the offensive phrase. How terrible of me. I spoke to my child in a manner that did not show empathy or love, right after I caused him pain. Sure, I was hurt but hey, I’m the adult here.

On my local PBS station there are interstitials that remind parents of our role as teachers; we teach our kids how to handle stress by our real life examples. What a poor lesson I taught Miles that day.

This exchange occurred the same week as the ferry struggle, and since then, after I had the equivalent of Super Nanny (my best friend Anne-Louise) visit my home for a day, times have changed dramatically for the better. Thank you God.

Is it ok to use the F-word six paragraphs before referencing God? God I hope so.

Summer Update: De-Minted Communications with A Two-Year-Old


When I ask “More meat?” he hears “Mint?”

When I ask “Want to go to Vermont?” he hears “Mint?”

And when I am running late and I place him on the bathroom sink counter while I continue to get ready, and he hands me my toothbrush smothered with a green gel-like substance, I think mint, as in toothpaste. And when I shove that toothbrush into my mouth and quickly discern that it is not toothpaste lining my teeth and gums but instead a strip of my husband’s antiperspirant/deodorant, I sputter and growl a four-letter word which sounds nothing like mint. This happened only once, last month, and Miles laughed and growled the bad word right back at me.

Speaking of which, Miles has one very sweet bad-sounding word in his growing vocabulary.
When I say "Fox?" Miles says a word that sounds like luck but begins with an F. We have a family here in our town whose last name is Fox and I insist now that Miles address the father as Mister Fox.

In early June I bought Miles some blue rain boots. For a week he called them boops and I refused to correct him. OK, confession: I encouraged it; I encouraged my two-year-old son, tender and new to this complex language of ours, to speak incorrectly. I referred to his boots as boops at every opportunity, and there were many that week because he insisted on wearing them almost daily during a 90-degree heat wave. To my chagrin and his credit, he corrected himself before the weather broke and ever since has called them boots.

Three weeks ago, my son and I were playing our own special game What Else Can Miles Hang From (Besides Mommy?). I had a brilliant idea. What if I brought the broom into the den and somehow balanced it between the chair and the couch? I pictured Miles having fun while improving his hanging and balancing skills.

As I imagined this, I barked, "Broom!" and I darted to the kitchen. Miles followed me, joyous, squealing, his right hand in a fist, his wrist twitching. I was intrigued, but not understanding the meaning of this peculiar happy dance. Then I heard him confirm with me, "Brrooooom? Brooom-brooooom?"

I soon realized he had an imaginary set of keys in his right hand, pretending to start a make-believe car. He and my husband play VroomVroom in which Miles gets to sit on Dad's lap behind the wheel of Dad's parked car, and play drive.

Poor Miles, his Mommy don't play that. I avoid the car, especially in summer. To see his face fall once I explained how Vroom is different than Broom, it was enough to make a good mom haul her only child out to her car and fake drive with him.

I, so eager to stay out of my car, instead tried to perk up my deflated son with one word: "Mint?"

It has been a big week. Miles expanded his 2-word phrase repertoire beyond
“No, me!”

Beebee Duck?, or "Baby duck?" is Miles question for “May we please stop by the pond in front of the condo and look for the five or six goslings that just hatched?”

Daddah Sue came out yesterday, Milesspeak for "Daddy’s shoe." Miles was inside our front hallway, wearing one of dad’s bigger-than-a-bread-box Nikes, begging us to go outside and play.

Must-huh-chuck – this is growled, just like you would imagine any male would utter the mystical two-word combination “Monster Truck.” We have a Hard Hat Harry video (we actually have a 5-pack DVD set) and one segment features monster truck footage and education. My brother would like this video; Anne-Louise says her boyfriend would like this video. It’s Miles’s pick-o-the-week.

Moo stah is “moon and stars,” which not only refers to the moon and star-shape lamps we got from Ikea last month, but is a direction I call out during tub time when I try to shampoo Miles’s hair. He does not yet understand how the horrors of hair washing could be minimized with a gentle skyward tilt of his head, but he is getting closer everyday.

Other achievements:

Miles can trike up and down our community driveway. This was big. He started last week but perfected his form over the weekend.

This morning Miles got pretty far in his attempt to change his diaper. I found him upstairs diaper-free, with a tube of Balmex in his left hand and smears of white cream on his right hand and heinie cheek. I commended him for being a self-starter and taking initiative.

Nap's over, I can hear him thumping the slats of his crib now.
More later.

Paper Tucks

“Tuck,” he says, and points at the pen holder on the desk.

There is nothing near the plastic box of pens that looks like a truck, but I try to become two years old and imagine it. In the pen container is a yellow highlighter and a black pen, and near it is a dollar bill, a business card, an envelope of photos, and the computer's external hard drive.

Miles points harder and becomes more adamant. I point to almost all the items, and he tells me no to each one. He finally stretches his too short arm as close to the business card as he can. “This?” I ask in disbelief, and he says "Yeah."

With the card in my hand I twice confirm that the flat piece of paper is a truck. Twice he yeses me.

My son then points to the minuscule UPS logo on the bottom of the business card, next to the small FedEx logo. He looks at me and says, "Tuck." Miles recognized the quarter-inch square UPS logo and I guess associated it with the giant chocolate brown trucks that appear in our condo driveway at least twice a day.

Tuck, he says again, gently assuring me he’s right. And I think, my son can read! He is a genius!

Last night I was explaining to Miles why I thought our lives would be better without the paci.

"I can hear you so much better without the pacifier," I started. My fear is that he'll end up with a lisp due to prolonged use of the paci. I read somewhere that some docs believe the device might prevent proper development of tongue muscles. Our pediatrician told me to wean the boy off the paci a year ago. I'm getting to it.

I try to speak to Miles as if he understands everything I say, and to a great extent I believe he does. I warned him last night that the paci might be putting his tongue in the wrong position. To demonstrate, I started mixing 's' sounds with 'th' sounds, conjuring memories of Cindy Brady and teeter-totters.

Not surprisingly, Miles wasn't interested in hearing my speech about The Brady Bunch or speech pathology. The garbage can was seducing him, again.

"Miles please," I pleaded, "look me in the eyes." He resisted.

"I need to talk to you. The paci might train your tongue to be in the wrong position, resulting in incorrect speech—

"Choo choo? Choo chooooooooooo!" he interjected, piercing my eyes with his, suddenly eager to hear what I had to say.

I collapsed on the kitchen floor. He heard the word train. I called to my husband (who was unloading the groceries) because I needed someone else to know about this milestone misunderstanding, and how, like me, Miles is adept at hearing what he wants to hear.

I am guessing this is our first mom-son miscommunication, aside from the times when Miles signs in the dark and I am lost until I can grope his hands.

Dang this English language. Train.

We had a play date that extended well beyond Miles's mid-morning nap. On the short drive home, my almost two-year-old fell asleep in the back of the car.

As I carried him up to the kitchen, he began to wake. We listened to a snow plow as it scraped around in our driveway. The sound of any truck approaching (FedEx, the local recycling company, the garbage hauler) is an exciting noise to Miles.

I placed my son in the Learning Tower, a glorified step stool with railings, and positioned him in front of the window.

I sliced up two pickles and fed them to the mesmerized window-watcher. The slices could have been popcorn, Miles could have been watching a thriller. Every so often, "Mar" (more) would bubble from his lips. I was pretty sure he was requesting more pickles but it could have been he wanted more truck action. Miles used to wake up and immediately sign "outside." Now he awakes, signs for milk, and says Tuck.

I started to defrost some shrimp when I realized the “Mar" utterances had ceased. It was oddly quiet now that the Bobcat snow plow vehicle had drifted away from our condo wing.

I looked up from the thawing shrimp to see Miles slumped over the window sill, his head resting on a fluffy raccoon toy as if it were a pillow. With half open eyes he managed to mumble one lonesome wistful word: Tuck.

I slipped him into the crib, pretty sure of what he'd be dreaming about.

I kept hearing a RRR RRR RRR while I showered.

I dismissed it as a motor from Chris’s rechargeable shaver. I showered on, knowing Miles was safe in the bathroom with me, and occupied with something.

The RRR RRR RRR was the sound of the spools inside the mint flavored Glide dental floss container, reeling at a regular but urgent pace. My son loves mint. He craves toothpaste (I know, I know, most paste is poisonous in large amounts), mint flavored floss, and most recently, After Eight chocolate mints.

Miles was desperate. We hid the After Eights this week, right after our toddler began asking for them for breakfast. We transitioned Miles onto kid-safe toothpaste five weeks ago. The floss, however, was still fair game, and Miles needed his fix. Yesterday, in the bathroom, in the safety and anonymity of the steam from his mom’s shower, he got his dose.

Miles cranked out yards and yards of dental floss. When it was new, the pack contained 43.7 yards; I’d say half of that amount was on or near my son yesterday morning. Some of it sat in a loose figure eight on the window sill, but more was draped around his neck, like multiple strands of pearls. I was too wet to get the camera and capture it. I just now tried to recreate the scene but it’s not the same.

At one point, Miles had tufts in each fist, with one strand forming a bridge between his hands. He made a motion to bring the minty strand to his lips, but the cord was too slack, and he missed, twice, and ended up merely licking air, confused.

That’s when I cracked. I had been trying to look solemn, or at least not look as amused as I felt. This is perhaps my biggest parental flaw; I can’t scorn him for playing with stuff I’ve left within his grasp, especially stuff that I’ve encouraged him to interact with previously. This philosophy might come back to bite me hard, in fact I am sure it will, but I’ll cross that minty slippery bridge when I get to it.

Dressing with a two-year-old

I was standing in a towel, halfway between my bath and bedroom, when Miles opened my underwear drawer. I pulled out a pair of undies that once fit well and told Miles these were like diapers for adults.

Miles tugged on the handle of my sock drawer. I twisted out a pair of beige woolens. Miles ran away and returned with a mismatched pair of toddler-size athletic socks, but they were the same thickness so I gave him full credit.

Miles narrowed his gaze to my pants drawer and pounded it softly, then patted my bare leg. I chose a pair and watched him disappear. He came back brandishing footsie pajama bottoms, gray with an all over pattern of cars and trucks.

Miles moved on to my shirt drawer; I chose a black top. He scooted off and returned empty-handed. In our copy-cat fashion euphoria, I guess we both forgot that Miles’s shirt drawer is beyond his tippy-toed reach.

Also, Miles resists nearly all shirts. The idea of poking his head through any garment’s neck opening has distressed him since he was born. We enter Garment Negotiations at least once a day, and to my discredit, we will continue to do so until I get off my cheap ass and replace all his excellent hand-me-down tees and sweaters with spanking new button-down shirts.

But with new hope today, copy-cat-induced, euphoric, hope, I followed my son to his room, picked him up, creaked open his overstuffed shirt drawer and awaited his selection. I got instead the big head shake, the silent no, the repugnant yet somehow aloof there’s nothing here for me reaction.

Miles motioned for me to put him down. He bee-lined to his half-opened pjs drawer and selected a red, puppy-emblazoned footsie one-piece, which I had previously zipped closed so that it would look nice when folded inside his dresser. (Unlike the way I’ve jammed his hardly used shirts in the shirt drawer.) Without unzipping the puppy pjs, Miles tried to insert his arms into the pajama sleeves. Compounding this challenging situation, Miles was already sporting blue, winter-weight, zip-up pjs. I suggested we reconsider our clothing plan.

We trekked back to my bedroom, where his treasured socks and pj bottoms huddled on the floor. I sat him on the bed, pulled off his blue pjs, slipped on his gray leggings with footsies, and placed his naked arms into the sleeves of the red pjs, as he had requested. Now he was happy. He has opted for this pjs-as-cloak ensemble before, and the way he parades around in it, a bare chest offset by swinging, swaying pjs slung from his shoulders, always reminds me of Steven Tyler’s rock video presence.

I let Miles jump on the bed for what seemed like a long time, until Steven Tyler’s jacket got the best of him. Refusing assistance, Miles squeezed out of his red cloak, made clucking noises (our sound for food, please) and signed for milk.

I insisted some shirt must be worn if we were to head downstairs. Outside it’s 2 degrees F with the wind chill factor.

Despite my cold air warnings, Miles continued to boycott tops. In just his legging footsies he ran to his bedroom, then his bathroom, and closed the door. In a brilliant move, I ran to my bedroom, grabbed one of Chris’s T-shirts, and lured my boy out of his bathroom with it. He happily ducked his head into the giant Hanes top and soon we were mobile.

We went downstairs, had some milk, turned on the TV (Miles had been pleading for TeeTee since 8 am). He stood in a box, sat on the couch, and channel surfed, all in dad’s T.

I wish I could say I let him watch TV because he was sick, or as a reward because he’s been so good, but there’s no truth to either. I am simply being lazy. Of note, though, Miles found interest in a Spanish language soap opera that featured what looked like a priest saying something terrorizingly important to what looked like a nun on her death bed. Then my son switched to News 12 Connecticut, as local as news gets.

He’s up, that multi-culturally interested and politically aware son of mine. I gotta go.

I asked Miles to put a trash bag into the kitchen garbage can. He was happy to locate the box of bags and attempt to insert one slick black sack into the can.

After struggling for a few moments, Miles accepted my help in opening the static-sealed sides of the Glad trash bag.

I walked away to close a hallway door, or bring a mug in from the living room, or something. This is what I found when I returned to the kitchen.

Miles couldn’t very well push the bag deep into the receptacle, due to ShortArmitis, a common affliction among children and very pregnant women, so he draped it (as if it were a tablecloth) lovingly all around the bin. He disguised our unsightly Wedgwood blue Sterilite trash can as a black shiny thing. And he was proud.

This is from December 19, 2006

Miles peeped in the toilet on the child toilet seat adapter thing yesterday.

For weeks he’s been pointing at his crotch, and when he does, I jump up and say “Peepee on the toilet?” to which he responds by violently shaking his head no.

Yesterday I fell for the same trap again. I jumped and he said no.

And then I can’t recall what happened.

I somehow asked again, or maybe he pointed again, but I took off his diaper and carried him half-naked down the stairs to the bathroom equipped with a baby toilet seat and sat him on it.

And for a moment he paused.

He pulled at his scrotum. I could only think about testicle descent and how they both seemed to be present.

And then he grunted and peepee came out of his penis and I rejoiced. At 21 months, this was the first time he start-to-finish peepeed on the toilet.

When Miles exhausted his abdominally strenuous, pee-making efforts, I re-diapered him and whisked him to the kitchen. I inverted a can of Reddi-Wip into his favorite bowl and created three mountains of whipped cream. When he finished, I refilled the bowl. If Maggie Moo’s had been open (closed on Mondays and Tuesday in our town for winter) we would have celebrated with ice cream too.

I called my husband, the sister who gave us the potty accessory, my mother-in-law, another sister, and my best friend. I told neighbor Rich who I bumped into while taking out the garbage. I emailed the news to a former co-worker. I called another sister later that night.

What a great day.

This morning Miles let me clip all ten of his fingernails as we sat at the computer. Last week he let me clip all ten of his toenails as I fed him PBJ.

He is growing up. My little son is growing up.