Slowly, Slowly

Winslow's Metaphors

Today Winslow was looking at the mobile we still have up in our bedroom (Ben's childhood mobile) and mentioned that the little child who had been riding on the lion's back had fallen off.  He said: "Person fall off lion.  [pause] Person fall down like kite floating over ocean."  It was a proportionally long fall so the connection makes sense.  He has been doing this kind of metaphorical thinking for a long time, ever since he started forging connections between two experiences or actions but has just recently begun to draw them together in conventional linguistic form.

I Was Born from a Rainbow

Today Winslow floated this enigmatic statement: "I was born from a rainbow."  Winslow knows that he emerged from the "happy owie" on mom's tummy so we have no idea where this came from.  It was so out-of-nowhere that I'm inclined to believe that it is somehow and in some way true.  Winslow also used the word 'actually' for the first time today, "Actually that's couch."  It is the word of precocious know-it-all children but I'm always a sucker for it.    .b  

Gus and Eliah

One day while we were sitting at the dinner table, Winslow suddenly pointed to Ben and said "That Gus." Then a week or so later he pointed to me and said, "That Eliah." Since then, he periodically points to us and hails us with these new names.  At first, it was a bit spooky.  We have no idea where these mysterious names came from, since we don't recognize them from friends, songs, or books. Were they just sounds that he was playing with that we, in repeating them back to him, translated into the identifiable names Gus and Eliah?

Winslow seems to be experimenting with the power of the new names to transform us at will.  He looks at us closely after calling us Gus or Eliah, as if hoping to see some manifestation of a different identity, which I oblige by taking on a funny squeal and accent that have become Eliah's signature.  He sometimes uses his powers to change us back into ourselves, pointing to Ben and saying, "Not Gus, that Daddy."  I think he finds this reassuring.