SO polite!

So Xander and I go to the playground down the street today (enjoying the BEAUTIFUL day, for a change) and have a good time on the swings and driving his cars around the jungle gyms (MUCH more fun than going down the slides, Mommy...). Then a little girl (Taylor, 19 mos) arrives with her mom and great-grandmother and we begin doing some interacting... Taylor has a little tricycle and a ball that Xander is enamored of, Taylor is interested in the cars that Xander has (but overall, she's having a bit of a bad day, per her mom -- woke up on the wrong side of the nap-bed, so was a bit cranky and cried a lot).

And I am just blown away watching my son. There was not one bad-mannered reaction out of him the whole time. He understood that the ball was Taylor's and offered it to her a few times - rolled it to her once (she wanted nothing to do with it), then threw it in her direction another time (again, Taylor is not in a cooperative mood today...). He then had a great game of catch with Taylor's great-grandmother and enchanted her by saying things like "you throw it!" and "good job!" when either she or he threw it or caught it.

While he was playing with the ball, Taylor found his cars and started carrying them around. He noticed and I reminded him about sharing and taking turns and he turned his attention back to the ball for a few minutes. Then decided he wanted the cars, and went over to her - she wasn't being very cooperative and her mommy was trying to convince her to part with them since it was Xander's turn to have them back - she holds on to them crying, and Xander stands quietly in front of her and waits for a few seconds, then gently puts his hands on the cars and again, waits. No pulling, hitting, crying - just waits for a second until her mom got her to let go of one of them. I then asked him to let Taylor play with the one she had for a few more minutes and he graciously turned away with the one he had and began to play with it.

So this continues, back and forth for another 15 minutes or so until Taylor's mom decided they needed to go home because Taylor was a mess (again, cranky from nap...) - but again, my son was a little gentleman the whole time. Shared like a champ - not one fuss out of him. Said "thank you" and "bye-bye" -- even was sweet to Taylor's dog. He was very excited to see the dog and made a beeline for her right away when they showed up - I told him to stop (and he did, immediately, just froze!) so I could teach him how to greet an unfamiliar dog and again, he listened to exactly what I said, and was such a good guy!

We are blessed with a smart, sweet, well-behaved, cheerful, generous son - and he amazes me daily!

Also new - we started trying the "one bite" rule at meal times to see if we could get him to broaden his horizons a bit on the culinary front... and omigosh, he does it! I offer him a food he hasn't had before or has obviously no intention of eating, and he says "no, no, no!" I tell him to please take one bite and if he doesn't like it, he doesn't have to have any more. He looks me in the eye, and I offer it to him again and he opens his mouth and eats it! This has worked 3 times in the past two days and again, I'm blown away. The first time, he voluntarily eats more of the 'one bite' food, the second two times, he doesn't eat any more of the one bite foods, but he does pronounce the peaches as "it's good," even though he doesn't want to have any more.

We also just got the Polar Express movie (and little train) and he is really fascinated with it. We also dug the book out again and have been reading that at every bed/nap time. As a result, he can now recognize the written word, "believe"... (not 100% of the time, but fairly often).

MOMMY IS AMAZED!!

Insights from a nearly 2-year old

So while reading a book, we see a picture of Humpty Dumpty. X asked "what's that?" I tell him and recite "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again." X looks at me, thinks for a second, then says... "He broke." Can't get much past this one!

Big into 'what's that?' questions these days -- more about sounds he hears, vs. things he sees, but very curious overall.

X had his first trip to the Boston Aquarium this past weekend... and (even more exciting) his first TRAIN RIDE!!! Grammie and Mommy and X took the T from Wellesley to Boston and Xander was in his glory (although he fell asleep in Mommy's lap on the longer of the two trains we had to take, both in and out of Boston, so he missed most of the experience. But honestly, I think watching the train come and getting on it was more than enough for him! While waiting at Government Center T stop for our connecting train to the Green line, we had to watch a few trains go by before ours came. One came and it was very loud and it started to pull away and I looked down and Xander had started to cry and was getting upset and I squatted down to assure him that yes, it was loud and it was ok -- but realized that was he was REALLY upset about was that the train was leaving and we hadn't gotten on it ;-)

When we got to the Aquarium and were standing outside buying tickets, there was a brown shark 'mascot' (i.e. guy in costume) walking around entertaining the kids and getting pix taken. After we got our tickets we went over to see him and X got his pix taken with the shark and his buddy the seal mascot. Then we go inside... and Grammie and I think that Xander is going to be entralled... after all, this kid's room is decorated with an undersea theme... he LOVES Baby Neptune and Finding Nemo and his Cat in the Hat book about fish in the sea (and recites it... "the top parts are sunny, the bottom parts black - we'll go to the bottom and then we'll come back... Sunny Zone, Twilight Zone, Dark Zone, Abyss... the Trench at the bottom you won't wan to miss). He also orders me to sing "the Mr. Ray song" from Finding Nemo 24x7... "Ohhhhhhhhhhh, let's name the zones, the zones, the zones... let's name the zones of the open seeeeeeeeeeeea... there's Epipelagic, Mesopelagic, Bathypelagic, Abyssopelagic, the rest are all too deep for you and me to seeeeeeeeeee..."

BUT, after a few perfunctory glances as the various fish, yadda yadda - he keeps saying "Brown Shark! Brown Shark! Go see Brown Shark!"...he wants to go back out and visit the shark mascot and he probably would have been happy for hours there if we could have tolerated the 45 degree weather for that long (which we couldn't...)

Oh well - so much for the best laid plans... a good reminder to Mommy that my expectations are NOT his reality ;-)

More gems...

The latest from Xander...

"Bodhi, 'nuff! Make me crazy!" (I wonder where he gets that one from...?)

"Mommy run?" (no Xander, Mommy is done running for today) "Mommy walk??" (oh, ok...)

"Mommy play wif trains?" "Mommy play wif Diesel? ...grumpy Diesel!" (one of his favorite trains)

"Thomas little blue steam engine...lives on island of Sodor..." (yes, we read those books incessantly, not to mention owning a whole stable of Thomas the Tank Engine DVDs...) - and we are all very excited about our trip to the Conway Scenic Railroad planned for July where we will spend A Day Out with Thomas and actually get to meet Sir Topham Hatt and go for a ride on Thomas!

"Diesel 1o goes beery fast! Trevor the traction engine... George the steamroller...

"dogfish, no it never barks..." (a line from a Cat in the Hat book about life under the sea -- the six-inch long dogfish...no it never barks...)

31 pounds. JUST starting to get some air under his feet when he jumps, and goes up the stairs like a big boy (while holding onto someone's hand, of course). Runs everywhere ("beery fast!"). Puts his clothes in the hamper at night, and brushes his teeth (with a little follow-on help by Mommy...). Loves to dig in the dirt and play with rocks. Sleeps (no kidding) with rocks (or his dinosaurs or trains, depending on the day). Happiest, sweetest, snuggliest little guy on the planet (with only a few meltdowns here and there) who makes us laugh and smile like crazy.

Happy Birthday (in March) to Sara Quinn and Rob Fogg3! And congrats to Shaun on 5 months sobriety! Check out Shaun's blog to hear his thoughts on being sober. He also got accepted into an online Bachelor's degree program for game software development with Westwood College, and he starts classes next week!