Slowly, Slowly

Academic Interests

One of Winslow's favorite things to do in the morning while Ben and I are struggling to drag ourselves out of bed is to go into the study and pull out books from my bookcase of academic books.  He is quite selective about what he chooses.  He has been particularly drawn to Maurice Merleau-Ponty's The Phenomenology of Perception; which has a jumble of colorful dots on the cover; EP Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, which has a size and heft that invites standing on; and Edward Said's Orientalism, whose cover painting of a nude boy holding a snake is understandably intriguing.  He doesn't seem very interested in the contents of these books.  He occasionally flips through them, but then returns to gazing at the cover or using the book as a step.

The exception is his all-time favorite scholarly text, Salman Rushdie's BFI book on The Wizard of Oz.  Winslow was so fascinated by the stills of Dorothy, Toto, the Munchkins, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and especially the Cowardly Lion that it prompted us to check out the Wizard of Oz soundtrack from the library.  "Tin Man Song, Tin Man Song," has since become the refrain every time we get into the car, and a favorite song to fall asleep to during car rides. 

He also enjoys singing along to the long note in "We're off to see the Wizard" ("Be-c-a-u-s-e").  And his interest in the rather gruesome Ding Dong song prompted us to change the words to "Ding Dong, the Witch is Bread." --I.

Sameness

For a while now Winslow has been making connections and often using the word "same" to do it.  So, when we read about the pot of soup in the book Chicken Soup with Rice, he will run downstairs to his play kitchen and return with his soup pot and say "same, same."  Up until now he has always compared two objects based on name and/or function.  So a flamingo in a book is connected to a flamingo in the house or one in another book and carrot soup in one book is connected with carrot soup in another.  But yesterday he observed a common attribute between two objects based on color and shape (yellow, round wheels in a puzzle and a yellow, round helium balloon floating at the ceiling).  The connection I would have expected him to make was between the wheel in the puzzle and a wheel on one of his pull toys or in one of the books around the house, but he has moved on to making associations of greater complexity.  It is exciting to watch him develop especially when it entails drawing disparate things of this world closer to one another.   

I like to sing songs

Winslow has recently been discussing all of the things he likes: "I like soup.", "I like Bao's house.", "I like this."   A few weeks ago we were in the supermarket and he said, "I like, I like...sing songs."  He is singing quite constantly these days and his repertoire is ever-expanding.  Current favorites are:

- Old Macdonald

- Baa Baa Black Sheep   

- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

- The Music Together Hello Song

- Goodbye, So Long, Farewell

- Raisins and Almonds

- Sweet Potato (i.e. roo, roo, roo, roo, sing roo, sing hokey dinkum...)

- The Bells of Westminster

- Two Little Drummers

- Redfaced Robot (A song Irene made up. It is the theme song of the redfaced robot who sits atop a kitchen cabinet.  He is programmed to love Winslow more than anything has ever loved anything else ever.)

- We're off to See the Wizard

- Doe, a Deer

His favorite song to listen to right now (and one he also likes to sing) is the Tin Woodsman's song from the Wizard of Oz, "When a man's and empty kettle, he should be on his mettle and yet I'm torn apart..."  He won't see the movie for several years but we play the film soundtrack often.   

And just today he very moved by the Rolling Stones song, Painted Black which we heard at the University Village "pumpkin patch."  The song features some pretty propulsive drumming which is a sure way into Winslow's heart.  

It Looked Like Spilt Milk

Winslow has begun spotting sea turtles in the sky.  One day he just looked up and announced what he saw in the clouds.  For some reason I had come to regard cloud gazing as an activity that required some sort of formal initiation, one that needed to be taught in order to participate.  Maybe it's because there are children's books built around it, or because in general most adults don't make these kind of observations/connections in their daily lives--sweet, whimsical stuff.  For whatever the reason I thought someone would need to point out to winslow that clouds can look like other things.  In actually thinking about it though it is immediately obvious that a child would discover that activity on his/her own.  And  it has now extended to other things as well.  Just a few days ago he was eating a piece of bread.  He stopped ,held it up and said, "sea turtle", then took another nibble or two and said, "dog", then after a bit more pruning "duck." 

Let Them Eat Cake

Winslow and I were reading the book A Hole is to Dig in mid-late August and we came to a great page where children are throwing a party, meeting each other and saying with some amount of ceremony, "how do you do."  In the corner of the scene is a table with a cake on it.  Winslow pretended to grab a piece and eat it.  He then very kindly grabbed one for me as well.  His Gong Gong was using the bathroom but he grabbed a piece and hopped up to offer one to him as well.  I told him that it would be best to let Gong Gong take care of things in the bathroom before eating cake and so suggested he put the piece of cake on the arm of the chair where it would sit until it was ready to be eaten.  We continued reading the book and several minutes later when Gong Gong emerged Winslow popped up, grabbed the imaginery cake from the arm of the chair and offered it up to Gong Gong.  He has been pretending with food in this way for a while now but in the past I feel like he would have had to return to the page in the book with the cake on it in order to produce a piece fro his Grandfather. Now though he is able to pretend that the image of cake is cake and in addition further abstract the cake to an invisible object on the arm of the recliner. 

Boxes

For the past few months we have kept a large box in our living room for Winslow to interact with.  The first box began to show its age so we recently swapped it out for a new one.  Winslow loved the first box.  I had cut a door into one side and left another side (one of the flap sides) to swing open.  This way he could upset the box while inside and still be guaranteed a means of escape.  He wouldn't remain inside for long stretches of time-- it didn't serve as a clubhouse like it might for older children-- but he loved to hide from us inside, drag things in with him, and knock it about.       

The second box had been a complete flop.  It was maybe 15% smaller which was enough to make the idea of entering it either scary or uncomfortable or both.  Whatever the case it just sat their taking up living room space until yesterday when Winslow came to recognize it's potential as a slide.  Now it may never leave.

    

Soundings 2

In our house "Soundings" is the name given to the activity wherein I cover Winslow's ears and lean him back into the water during our nightly bath.  Once under water he begins speaking, captivated I suppose by his voice's powerful resonance in his head.  Try it and you'll understand why a baby would request to do this at every opportunity. He just begins rattling off words starting typically with "Daddy", "Momma", then to both of our first names, and then he is on to things recently experienced in he tub: "book", "duck", "ball"; and then to the memorable experiences of the day: "sea turtle", "big dog", "baby Eleanor."  I'm not sure what exactly he gets out of it and I can't ask of course but I realize that it is one of the only times outside of sleep that he allows his body to go totally still.  And those other times are usually brought on by momentary astonishment (a manically barking dog, a passing emergency vehicle, an enormous balloon) followed by a naming of one of the objects involved and then some sort of physical intention either toward or away from the spectacle.  The soundings stillness is different.  It is a stillness that he wants to last.  There are words but these words are not so much spoken as incanted and then not so much to name as to produce a totally interior sensation-- one that requires that stillness in order to be fully appreciated. And all his intention is directed toward that strange, sonic world inside his head.  I really look forward to this time each day and would like to help Winslow find other ways to turn some of his energies inward.   
~.ben

Our Newly Affectionate Baby

From when he was a baby, Winslow always defied our attempts to hug and kiss him--squirming and pushing away whenever we tried to hold him close.  This amplified as he gained mobility.  He just hated it when I would try to snuggle him in bed in the mornings, literally screaming and kicking in protest until I let him slide off the bed and go about his busy activities.  He liked to be held, but remained wriggly and alert at all times.  He never melted into our bodies or leaned his head against us unless he was nursing or asleep.  I had assumed that a baby would be like a dog or a cat, content to flop lazily across our laps and be stroked and petted as we read or watched movies.  But Winslow was simply not a snuggler.

Until now.  For a couple months now, Winslow has been giving and accepting kisses ("ching-ching") and hugs from us.  The kisses are still usually tentative, just his face pressed briefly against yours.  But he loves hugging these days, and goes about with a big smile and his arms outstretched to hug most of the babies and small dogs he encounters.  This morning he hugged piggie blanket, Cowardly Lion, the cat and tiny fish on his little pouch, and PyoPyo the duck.  He also hugged his doll Eugene but then proceeded to chew on Eugene's hand and more disturbingly, his face.  Sigh.  But it makes me very happy to see him becoming more and more affectionate.  He even spontaneously called out "Love you" to me this morning while saying goodbye to go to the aquarium with Ben.  And he gave our friend Sabrina an unprecedented shower of hugs and kisses when she came to visit this evening. 

Ben especially, who doesn't get to experience the cuddly warmth of nursing, savors each drop of tenderness Winslow bestows on him, from laying his head down on Ben's chest in the bath, which he had been doing for a couple months, to leaning his head against Ben's shoulder and nodding off to sleep while Ben held him in his arms in Italy--something that seemed unimaginable to us with our squirmy, constantly astir baby a few months ago. --I

Soundings

Winslow now has command of many many words.  New ones appear each day and we're not entirely sure where they are all coming from.  Most significant is the appearance of pronouns: I, you, it.  This is the beginning of his speaking words that he doesn't need in order for his desires or observations to be understood.  It is perfectly sufficient to point at a box and say emphatically "box box."  But he isn't far from, "I want that box."  an expression which carries the exact same meaning. 

In fact he has started to put together words to make slightly more complex requests.  The other day a helium balloon made its way into the house.  It had been tethered to the ground with a stick tied to the end of the string, but Winslow had removed the stick and the balloon had floated to the ceiling.  Though he seemed to like looking at the "tall balloon" it didn't compare to possession so I lifted him up by his forearms to enable him to grab the string.  We turned it into a bit of a jumping game.  After a round or two I turned to do something else but he recaptured my attention and said, "two hands jump".  Meaning he wanted me to grab him with my two hand so that he could jump up and grab the balloon.  He was not just asking me to do something but, in addition and significantly, explaining how I should do it. The word "two" by the way seems to have both a specific and a more general meaning for him.  It refers most strongly to the precise quantity 2 but also to any number of objects greater than one (though I haven't tested the limits of his definition).   

Father and Son in the Summertime

I have begun to take care of our son Winslow three days/week.  This will continue for the duration of the summer and as it currently stands will increase to five days/week come Fall.  I will (hopefully) make regular use of this space to chronicle our time together.