Milestone Minutiae

There was a Halloween party today at Emmett's Spanish school. When we picked him up, there were extra donuts so Luke and Emmett shared one (doubtless, this was not Emmett's first donut off the day). Driving home, Luke was holding his donut in one hand while simultaneously complaining that Emmett wasn't giving him candy.

Oma has been visiting, and her conversations with Emmett are fun to listen to. They were talking about grapefruit, and Emmett said he liked to eat them with honey. Oma, who eats grapefruit with sugar, said, "I've never heard of that before." Emmett replied, "Bees make it!"

Luke and Emmett watch a cartoon called "Peep." I just turned one on for Luke, and while I was jumping through the pre-show stuff, the title page flashed on the screen for a second. Luke pointed at the screen and said, "Night light!" ??? He's been starting to recognize a few letters, but reading the words "Night light?" That's nuts. A couple of weeks ago, he brought me some letters from his Word Whammer, saying "These are 'Os'" and he was right. Then later he did the same thing with a magnetic "A." But still, that's a far cry from reading "Night light." I went back to the title page and he read it again. I asked him how he knew that, but he didn't really answer. Then I realized that he and Emmett watch these cartoons repeatedly, so I asked him if Emmett reads those words for him and he said yes. So my best guess is that he somehow recognized that screen and remembered what Emmett has said in th

We finally got our old Nintendo 64 out of storage, so Emmett has been playing Mario Kart a lot lately. He's developed some interesting superstitions about the drivers in the game (there are eight to choose from). Mario gets lots of lightning bolts (that's one of the "weapons" in the game to use against the other players), the drivers are best on the courses named for them (Warrio drives best in Warrio's stadium, DK is best on DK's Jungle Parkway), etc. In reality the game gives better "weapons" to players who are behind, helping to keep the race close. I guess one of the reasons it's easy for an adult to figure that out is that we know that the game designers wouldn't create drivers that were inherently worse than others. It's fun to watch Emmett's brain try to figure out the world.

It snowed a few days ago. I was outside with the boys moving the riding toys into the shop. Emmett (of course) was barefoot and wearing sweatpants and a tee-shirt. I told him he might want shoes and a sweatshirt, especially if he wanted to help me pick pumpkins (I was worried they'd freeze). He declined, but was walking on tip-toe because the ground was so cold he didn't want to put his whole foot down! In the end, he didn't stay outside to pick pumpkins. He popped in and out of the house and watched, though.

We have a little wooden puzzle with five animals on it. Luke brought it to me, pointing to and naming each animal. "Kitty cat, bunny, bok bok, duck, doggie!" Huh? I pointed to the chicken and asked him what that animal was called. He said, "Bok bok!" As cute as it is to have your toddler calling a chicken "bok bok," I considered it my duty to tell him it was a chicken, so I did.