I had a rare quiet few minutes while one was napping and the other was at school. And despite having a house to clean, orders to fill, illustrations to finish, and hair to wash, this was what I determined to be the best use of my time. Hey, I’m sick alright? Sick and very, very lazy.
Yesterday was rough. Graham and I both have a cold, and somehow on Tuesday we managed to trash the house from top to bottom – even though none of us were home all day. Weird. So yesterday my goals were:
* For God’s sake, clean this all up.
* And tire Nicolaus out so he’ll go to bed early since he has preschool tomorrow
* But also rest a lot
* And cuddle with Graham, since he doesn’t feel good
I did a little but not enough of each. So the house is better, but still messy. Nicolaus didn’t fall asleep until 9, but that’s because right before bed he started working on writing letters and was so serious about his work that I couldn’t bring myself to make him stop.
He wants to learn how to write, but doesn’t want to read or really even talk about the alphabet. Hey, if I learned how to ride a bike without ever falling off, maybe he can learn how to write without learning how to read. I’ve never heard him sing the little ABC song, and at the end when all the kids brag that now they know their ABCs – he omg totally will not sing that part – and then the last bit where they pressure him to sing with them next time, holy shit.
Which, I know that memorizing the alphabet song doesn’t help much with learning to read or write. What worries me is that he takes it so damned seriously, and thinks that it’s all supposed to make perfect sense to him. It doesn’t, so he won’t sing it. The pressure he puts on himself is what worries me. I don’t know how to help him not be embarrassed when he doesn’t know or understand something.
If you try and get him to tell you the sounds of the letter magnets on the door, he might do one or two and then he starts guessing wildly and/or openly making fun of you:
“What sound does this letter make?”
“Buh”
“Good! What about this one?” (holding up an E)
“Uh.”
“And what about this one?”
“Hucklugerfundwubber.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of a French letter. And you don’t speak French so…” he shrugs. That means that the game is over and you should not expect another straight answer from him about letters, maybe ever. So we really have no idea how much of the alphabet he knows, although sometimes we sort of suspect that he might know more than he lets on.
He wants to write. But his three-year-old hands draws the letters all wobbly, and last night before I realized what he was working on, he had scribbled all over the page and thrown all the paper across the room and started crying.
“What on earth are you freaking out about?”
He sobbed, “Ohhh! I just can’t! Make a MUH. And I want to make a MUH and a TUH and a BUH and a NUH. And a PUH and I can’t because they just go all wrong and (unintelligible)…”
I offered to help by making some connect-the-dots letters for him to practice. He liked that. While he worked – drawing and erasing and erasing and erasing each one – I tried talking to him about how he shouldn’t worry, this is really stuff for much bigger kids, and it takes a lot of practice, and even grown ups have a hard time learning how to write if they’ve never done it before. He waved me away and kept working until he managed to draw a perfect DUH. He pointed to the D and told me, “That says Daddy.”
I offered, like a jackass, to show him the rest of the letters in Daddy’s name. “No,” he sighed, “That says Daddy like all by itself.”
Alright, I got it. At’ll do, pig. At’ll do.
Good things having to do with art and prints and little nerd books and sketchbook/journal things. And! Birds on plexiglass. Remember birds? On plexiglass?
Soon they will be made affordable to actual humans. Not the masses, exactly, but you know. People without butlers and diamond tiaras or whatever.
But first there must be some sleep. Not a lot, just some. Ready for me to nerd it up? Here is a haiku about Graham:
You wake up all night.
God how you hate to wake up.
Me too, dude. Me too.
He wakes up every hour all motherfucking night long. It’s like he accidentally got the newborn newsletter this week. Each time, I go in and give him a hug and say “Awww, hug. Okay well, night-night.” Then I lay him back down, throw a stuffed rabbit on top of him and run like hell.
Oooh and here’s another one…
Shoes make awful hats.
Same for bears, blocks, keys, cell phones.
Pasta lunch? Might work.
Hmm… I probably should have bathed him before bed tonight.
