A few random stories that I want to remember, but aren’t really related beyond that:
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E has a new(ish) teacher in his room, and he has slowly but surely winning her over. She’s pretty quiet, so it’s taken me a bit longer to get to know her, and get a read on her. She was asking me a few questions about him recently which left me wondering if she was worried about his speech. I was talking to Tom about it, and mentioned that she kept asking about what he can say, and seemed surprised that he couldn’t say his name. To be clear, Tom and I aren’t worried. But the conversation led me to believe that maybe she was.
Then a week later, when I was picking him up at daycare, she started asking him questions.
“Who’s that?”
”MAMA!”
”What’s your name?”
Silence
”What’s your name?”
Silence
”Can you say your name? What’s your name?”
….. “TURKEY!”
I started cracking up realizing what she was doing. “Were you practicing?” I asked her? “YES! All day! He could say it earlier!” She was so sad because she’d wanted him to do it for me, but I laughed the whole way home that he now will tell you his name is turkey.
He’ll get there, but the whole thing helped me understand his teacher a bit more. She’s quiet and observes the kids, and then works hard to try and teach them and help them with exactly what they want. And the other day when what E wanted was to walk the perimeter of the playground over and over, she held his hand and walked with him.
…..
When you can’t say many words, naming the things you can is powerful. Often when E needs extra reassurance (during a diaper change or in the middle of the night, for instance) he’ll call out “MAMABABY!” Things he likes, that he can name. Oddly enough it’s the same tactic I used to encourage my cousin to follow when she was nervous on roller coasters. So if you ever rode a roller coaster and someone next to you was screaming out garlic bread during the whole ride, well now you know.
It apparently works with things you don’t love so much, too. E used to love the Roomba. He’d turn it on by himself and giggle as it went around the house. Some point in the past few months, he’s gone from loving it to hating all vacuums. Seeing them can cause tears. I’m not sure why, so I’ve taken the strategy of trying to name it and make it less scary. So when he sees it and points, I cheerfully say “VACUUM!” He’ll now copy me and go “Vac-cuum!” even as he’s sometimes crying. It’s weird, I don’t understand it, but it’s where we are.
As a result, we’ve noticed recently when E gets hurt and cries, through his tears you’ll hear him crying “Vac-cuum!… Vac-cuum…” So he now associates the vacuum with getting hurt and crying. It makes me laugh wondering what daycare thinks of that one and trying to figure out why the kid is crying about a vacuum.
Oddly enough, my floors are filthy right now! Hmm…
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We don’t have a huge bedtime routine. It’s pretty short, but we do the same thing every night, more or less. Lights off, sound machine on, put E in his sleep sack and then some cuddles before we put him in his crib. The other night we were passing babies back and forth to get our cuddles in, and E reached out to touch G. He started petting his head, like you would a dog. Over and over. It was the cutest thing. Super gentle, little reassuring pets. I love how much E loves his baby and I can’t wait to see it continue to grow. The bond is so sweet.
