Griffin bypassed the playroom full of toys in favor of setting up an improve choo choo train in the laundry room. Later in the day we hit up Depot Days in nearby Brooklyn.

It’s been wonderfully warm this week, even when pouring, leading to plenty of singing in the rain. Last Sunday it was so warm that we all went out to do some gardening. Candy returned with a sunburn while I threw out my back and we had to flick off 4 ticks over the next 24 hours.

No soccer for a few weeks while I get my back in shape… which is only fair, as I’ve ignored it for years now.

This evening we have bustling winds, lightning, thunder and a tornado watch.

Griffin was looking at all the buds on the trees and said “Yellow is my old favorite color”.  I asked what his new favorite color is and he said “Green!”

At Griffin’s swimming lesson I was sitting near two well dressed moms who were watching two beautiful toddler girls swimming.  One of the women said “I thought about signing her up for yoga instead” and the other woman smiled pleasantly and nodded.  A few moments passed and then the first woman said “To chill her ass out.”

With young kids you get to hear hilarious things every day.  Griffin is still learning cause and effect, and he has a pretty limited range of experience to work from.  Some recent ones I want to remember:

• We’d parked near State Street for Griffin’s weekly espresso-soy ice cream fix.  I explained to him that we couldn’t stay long because I didn’t have much change for the parking meter and I didn’t want to get a ticket.  Then on State Steet there was a panhandler jingling change in a cup and Griffin ran up to him yelling “Mom!  Change for the parking meter!”
• Griffin is obsessed with my freckles lately and I have to keep explaining that no, I don’t have chicken pox.  Today he was looking at my freckles and a light bulb came on.  “Mom!  Girls have freckles and boys don’t!”  Which I guess is true for the people living in our house.
• We were at Trader Joe’s getting groceries and I had an adult cart and he had a kid cart.  He was zooming all over the place and I was trying to keep him within eyesight and not running into anyone’s ankles.  He positioned his cart about three feet in front of mine and then ran backwards at full speed hitting his shoulder on my cart.  Then he looked at me very sternly and said “Mom.  You have to watch out where you are going.”  Two people standing near us actually burst out laughing.
• A while ago I told Griffin to stop doing something because it was dangerous and he said “But I’m being careful!”  I explained that even when you are being careful you can still have an accident.  Then the next time I told him to “Be careful!” he said “But Mom!  If I am careful then I will have an accident!”
• Griffin has strep and we were talking this morning about how people get sick.  I explained that you can get germs if someone coughs or sneezes near you.  Soon afterwards Griffin was doing a lot of very fake coughing.  I asked why and he said “I have to cough the germs out so I can get better!”

Griffin’s been home a few days with strep. He’s taking care of himself, though.

March 22: backyard

March 23: world famous art studio

April 7: field across from school

April 12: yummy yummy Brasserie V

I haven’t talked about this here in a while so I wanted to give an update, a few months ago Griffin finished speech therapy.  At the beginning of speech therapy we could understand maybe 70% of what he’d say and now it’s more like 95%.  Part way through speech therapy the therapist realized that instead of having him color a picture every time he said a word it was a lot more fun if we went to the occupational therapy gym and he swung across a trapeze or skidded down a slide on a sled every time he said a word.  We have really good health care here.  He went from being characterized as having a “severe phonological impairment” to being about age level.  He stands up and talks to his class during show-and-share now, and he initiates conversations with other kids.  He still doesn’t say r’s, l’s, ch’s or j’s but that’s not uncommon for kids of this age.  He’s very interested in word sounds now and loves to talk about what words start with the same sound and to come up with rhymes.

A good thing is that his vocabulary and grammar development didn’t suffer from the speech problems.  One reason the speech therapist decided he was ready to graduate was when she was working with him on “j’ sounds and she showed him a picture of a cabbage.  Griffin looked at her and said “Actually, it looks more like an artichoke”.

…er, rather, synopses.

G I Z M I S M S

During the bedtime routine, we were talking about 911, our home address and names. We asked G if he could say his full name. He started “G. I. M. … wait, no. G. I. Z. M. O.” We had no idea he could spell his own name.

His school had a fundraiser auction last weekend at Cafe Montmartre. I had no idea what we’d bid on (busy getting the wine), but came to class Monday to find a treasure trove of coffee (woo!) and a teddy bear somewhere between the size of G and myself (major triple woo!). The bear had to sit beside G in the back, and transfer to Mom’s car after work. It came later that day to swimming lessons, and the next day, when it finally made its home at home, G asked to call in to see how Bear was doing while G and Mom were on the road. His name is “Bear”. Bear currently resides in G’s room, on a papasan chair, complete with a pillow under his head. After a bath, G had rather cold hands, and we all took turns feeling them. Even Bear, the behemoth who I lifted over to G’s bed so he could paw G’s cold paws. Upon returning to the papasan chair, G implored “put his head on the pillow!”.

Bear supersedes a previous close friend, a motorized Pirates of the Caribbean skull that G was disarmingly affectionate towards, bringing to bed and gently and considerately sharing his food with.

Last week, G came up with a second name for his requested little sibling (fyi – not gonna happen)… “Celery”. This supersedes the initial name, “Astronaut Bunny”.

S L E E P I N G

G’s been sleeping in his own room for several weeks now. Yes, one of us generally winds up with him, but it’s good progress and we want him to be really comfortable in his own room and not freak him out by pushing for to much too soon. We’ll start moving towards longer sessions on his own.

His bed’s on the floor, but he just asked for it up as a bunkbed again, so we may try that this weekend. The typical routine is Candy lays with him to sleep (around 8pm), while I go down and exercise. I then fetch Candy afterwards, we spend and hour or so together and then retire. Then around midnight I come up and lay with him when he awakens.

This arrangement has really helped our bonding and he’s been more and more comfortable being around me when Candy’s around, instead of just being plastered to Candy. Not that he’s not still plastered to Candy most of the time, and it’s clear I’m still a distant 2nd, but it’s helped. More often than before, I get a shout out when something needs attention… “Day-yad”, he yells, in an oddly southern dialect.

O T H E R

Ideally, I’d like to not be outwardly political, especially in this blog.

But I can’t help it.

Bronx students discuss Obama’s race speech

Obama raised $40MM in March, after a $55MM Feb, bringing his total to $240MM. Clinton’s at $175MM, McCain’s at $65MM. A big difference is that the people are funding Obama, not the power elite and special interests. Over a million donations, mostly $5 and $25 at a time. I never, ever, would have believed the little people of the country could successfully drive a presidential campaign in this day and age.

But I guess we can.