Thoughts and Words Ill-Sorted

He’s a funny one.  When we’ve disciplined him recently he’s started attempting to retort; if you punish me, I’ll punish you, he seems to think.  His zingers have included:

“If you send me to my room . . . I’m, I’m not going to play with you.”

“If you don’t behave I’m not going to share my toys with you.”

Today he came to the kitchen to announce to me: “I’m not going to let you do any more dishes . . . and I’m going to put you on a high, high shelf.”  I think he confused me with his own toys, which get put up when he is too rough with them.

We’ve also had trouble keeping him in bed at night.  Every now and then he wants to visit us, whether shortly after we put him to bed or at 5 in the morning.  This evening he came down shortly after bedtime, and I heard, “Mom, can I come down?”  When I said no, he promptly trotted upstairs, closed the door to his room, and went to bed.

Sydney explained to me recently that, whether we’re disciplining, playing, or ignoring Nathaniel, our little guy’s always looking for a chance to strike up a chat or to negotiate–anything to catch you up in a conversation with him.  Nathaniel likes being able to interact and bargain and flirt and anything else he can get away with.  When he tries this with strangers he gets some interesting results.  Sometimes he simply announces a random fact about the surroundings: “There are balls over there to play with!” and other times he confesses that Katherine did something wrong and got in trouble for it.  We never really know what he’s going to decide is good conversation material on any given day.

Erin

After Heidi’s visit we had a flurry of activity in our house.

My parents came to stay with us for a bit, fully expecting me to largely ignore them so that I can keep up with my students, and seemingly okay with that as long as they got to spend time with their grandchildren.  While they were here we made a few expeditions into Lexington, hit the playground, and took walks.  Sydney’s parents stopped in for a few days shortly after that, and they, too, folded into our busy school/work life for a bit.  Both sets of grandparents seemed keen to discover grocery stores during their visit, as if anxious to see that we really do have food down here!

In-between these visits from family, we had four separate groups over for dinner.  It’s nice to be back in hosting mode again, and to get to know some of the people with whom we work and go to church.  The dinners worked reasonably well: Sydney was at the helm for much of the cooking, and my housecleaning standards have apparently dropped to manageable levels as I stay occupied keeping the kids under control.  It also helps that all of our company was very kid-tolerant.  Not all people want to spend an evening listening to long, wandering stories told by toddlers and preschoolers, or building Lego structures.

We’re heading into different kinds of busy as we come to the last weeks of the semester.  We’re both looking forward to a long Christmas break, but we will need to use that time to gear up for changes this spring: I will have new classes to teach here, and Sydney will be spending half of each week this spring in Columbus, as a visiting professor at the Ohio State University.  We’re really excited for both the teaching and the research opportunities he’ll have there, if a bit nervous to see how the family/work juggle will go.  Thankfully, things here will remain quite stable.  My husband may be three hours away for a few days each week, but it gives me great peace of mind to know that my children are only just down the street from me when I’m teaching!

Erin

As the children sit on opposite sides of a puddle of Legos:

K: “Maybe we should play together someday.”

N: “That would be good.”

K: “Yeah, definitely.”

Then they resumed swapping pieces, showing each other their building projects, and trying to determine whether the Lego person in front of them is a girl or a boy.

Erin

A few weeks ago, my friend Heidi drove down from Chicago to spend the weekend with our family.  She and I have spent most of our post-high-school life in different parts of the country or, twice, in different countries, so it seems miraculous that we’re now “only” a six-hour drive apart.  Heidi has known me for twenty years, but she hadn’t seen Katherine since my little girl was one, and she hadn’t met Nathaniel at all yet, so her visit was filled with both reminiscing and getting to know each other.

Heidi seemed unfazed by the kid chaos (thank you, Heid, for that!).  We spent the weekend picking apples at a local orchard, visiting one of our favorite playgrounds, and following a trail at Shaker Village (though most of that walk consisted of chirpy voices begging to return to the car for banana muffins).  On our walk, Nathaniel was busy trying to load every rock, fruit, nut, and stick in nature into his arms; this boy puts the great collectors of the Victorian era to shame.

Erin

As we get settled into our new lives here, I’m finding that I need to work fairly long days to keep up with my students.  So, the kids and I have done less roaming and running errands together and hunting up new playgrounds than I might have liked.  But one thing we have done a fair amount of is walking around campus.  Katherine and Nathaniel seem to really love walking from home to my office (where they occasionally have lunch before nursery) and then from my school to theirs.  They have their entire world mapped out with their feet.

One evening recently, when the kids were still bouncing off the walls even after the walk from school and supper, I took them out for a loop around town with small flashlights in hand.  We circled the soccer field (stopping to observe the game and hop up and down the bleachers) and collected pine cones and leaves.  Now that it’s getting dark so early in the evening, I think we’ll be taking a lot more walks with flashlights.

On the day of the picture below, we took a morning hike at the equine center that’s down the road (nice wooded trails, gentle horses to pat) and then stopped by campus for a picnic before heading home.  Yes, Katherine seems to think that frilled socks and skirts are proper hiking gear; having “discussions” about clothes is one of our main activities in recent weeks.  As you can see, the kids are too busy munching to pause for a photo.  Since the bench they chose is directly in front of the library, we saw a number of my students over the course of half an hour.

During their morning time with Sydney, Nathaniel’s been making use of Sydney’s leftover wood pieces to make tracks for his cars.  He can turn pretty much anything into a pretend train set.

His time with Sydney is also reflected in some of his favorite words.  Nathaniel loves to repeat things we say, so instead of a dart frog, Nathaniel will tell you that he has a Dendrobates tinctorius on his shirt:

Erin

A couple of years ago I took a lovely photo of Katherine chewing on a raw beet. Now it’s Nathaniel’s turn. He has recently really taken to eating raw beet slices. Yellow beets in this case:

She asked me to read the Cinderella book (no, I’m not sure why we have this book).  After we finished, she said she would like to have some glass slippers someday.  When I pointed out that glass might be a bit uncomfortable, she said, “I can wear socks.”  When I started to laugh, she followed with, “And maybe a Band-Aid?  Socks and a Band-Aid?  No, stop laughing!”

Erin

One of the courses I’m teaching this fall is American Literature, Beginnings to 1865.  I have been a bit nervous about this one, given that early-American literature is not my forte.  It does mean I can’t pull from my old teaching files or even classes I took as a student, but I’m armed with a good Norton edition (I hate anthologies, but for early periods they really do work best) and a handful of authors I know reasonably well amidst a sea of others I do not.

Today I decided to include the Englishman Sydney Smith’s 1820 rebuke to Americans who were already claiming America to be at the forefront of art and literature, despite the U. S. having been a country for less than 50 years.  Smith’s challenge is both famous and galling: “In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue?”  He concludes with a potent challenge: “Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow creatures may buy and sell and torture?”  Yes, slavery made us look bad even on the literary front.  How could we consider ourselves a nation of culture with such an embarrassing smear on our understanding of humanity?

Set Smith’s essay against a piece I just read today, announcing that the Man Booker Prize, the most prestigious literature prize for the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, is going to be opening its doors to literature worldwide.  Apparently there’s some backlash, since everyone’s afraid that the Americans will take the prize every year.  Times, apparently, have changed.

Erin

As we might have predicted, the shift in country and situation is catching up with our kids, and we’re noticing some serious growth spurts in their language abilities recently.  Which mostly means that they’re frequently funny.  Now that the initial ruckus is calming, Sydney and I have more time to stop in the middle of what we’re doing to give each other a look over the kids’ heads as we try not to laugh. Today, for example, at the end of my solo-parent time with them, the kids came up with the following:

– Nathaniel was awake before Katherine after nap time, and he stuffed his Eeyore into the doll stroller and announced to me, “I’m going to go to the grocery store, and to pay the man there.”  Then he paused: “I need my list!”  Who is this two-year-old who not only understands where groceries come from, but that he needs to pay for them, and to head into the store with a cooking plan?

– Katherine, shortly after she woke up, responded to my request that she go upstairs to grab the cordless phone with, “I don’t think I am careful enough right now for that.  Maybe later.”

Erin

Sydney left early this morning for a short trip to Ithaca, since there’s a conference at Cornell that involves some of his favorite philosophers.  He’s arrived safely in Ithaca and is already torn between going straight to campus and stopping by the woods to do some birdwatching.  Now that he’s made it to town, maybe I should email the conference organizer to see if Sydney makes it to the conference . . .

Meanwhile, I’m having to call in some extra help to get through the end of this week.  David took the kids during my class this morning, and then brought them to school so they could join me for lunch in my office.  They really like visiting me here; apparently it takes awhile for Mom’s school to become old news, even if it’s just down the street from our house.  Nathaniel told me excitedly as we were leaving, “I want to go with you on the alligator!”

“The alligator?”

“Mmmm, ummm, the elevator!”

So we took the elevator down.

Erin