LL Anecdotes

In honor of LL's second birthday next week (!), here is a collection of recent LL short stories. I wanted to get them written down before I forget them in the haze of Terrible Twos and New Baby.

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A few weeks ago, when I picked LL up from Natasha's, she told me that she should really be paying me, rather than the other way around. LL spent the day cleaning her house. When I got there, he was sweeping the patio, complete with very competent use of a dustpan. The next day, Natasha made me wait to get LL so that he could finish fixing her vacuum. Natasha has a roomba (small robotic self-propelled vacuum). One of the little girls at daycare (Jenny) is scared of the roomba. All day, this process had been repeating: (1) roomba starts independently cruising around the room; (2) Jenny starts crying; (3) Natasha hits buttons on the roomba in increasingly confusing patterns to make it more difficult to turn on; (4) Natasha hides the roomba; (5) LL finds the roomba; (6) LL keeps trying different combinations of buttons until the roomba starts working again; (7) return to step (1). As I was talking to Natasha, we heard a quiet "whirrrr" followed by hysterical crying from Jenny, followed by a big grin from Natasha: "I guess he fixed it again!"

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We stopped using tablecloths when LL learned to crawl. (You know that physics trick where you pull really hard on a tablecloth and all the stuff on the table magically stays in place on the table? LL loves the idea, but sucks at the execution.) The other day, we were having friends over for brunch, and brought out a tablecloth. LL saw S shaking it out to put on the table, and became convinced that it was a bed sheet. We explained the difference, and had LL help us to spread the cloth on our formal dining room table. S and I then went to the kitchen. Soon, I heard a weird creaking sound coming from the dining room, followed by a giggling LL happily yelling, "Jump! Jump! Jump!" I returned to the dining room to find LL standing on top of the table, jumping up and down. He was somehow convinced that putting a "sheet" on the table had transformed it into a bed, which is of course meant for jumping. (Yep, we let him jump on the bed. We're bad parents.)

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One of LL's favorite words is "hot." I'm fairly certain that in LL-ese, "hot" actually means "not the temperature that I was expecting," since all objects are said to be "hot" if they are not room temperature. Including things like ice water. One of his favorite things in the world is blowing on things to bring them to the correct temperature. In my perpetually-overheated pregnant state, LL has taken to lifting up my shirt, touching my stomach, declaring it "hot!", and then blowing on it until it seems cooler to him. My own little portable cooling system.

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Our neighbors did some heavy duty yard work recently, which meant that there was a real live bulldozer right outside the window! LL spent much of the morning standing on the bookshelf under his bedroom window so that he could see it better. When we finally let him outside, he dragged a lawn chair off the porch and set it up in the lawn so that he could watch all the action. I tried to ignore the fact that he was convinced that the bulldozer was a train, and therefore kept yelling "Choo choo!" whenever it moved.

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For snack time at daycare, Natasha puts out plates of snack at two toddler-sized tables, then lets the kids sit down and eat whenever they're hungry. Last week, LL sat down at one table while all the other kids sat at the other one. He proceeded to eat his entire plate of food, then slide the snack plate at the chair to his right on over and eat that snack, then go ahead and eat the one to his left. Then he carefully stacked all three (empty) plates into a neat little pile, carried them over to Natasha, and asked for more. He regularly eats three or four servings of everything that she makes, more than any other kid there. I think she's convinced that we never feed him. Yet he's still in the 30th percentile for weight. I wish that I had his metabolism.

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LL's vocabulary isn't huge, but it suddenly started making huge leaps just in the last week, with a ton of new words and an explosion of phrases/sentences. One of his favorite pastimes is pointing out stuff he knows words for while we are driving. These loud pronouncements are generally followed by requests for me to acknowledge that I, too, saw whatever it is he's pointing out. And requests to see more of them. ("Bus! Bus! Mama, bus! Look! More bus?") Things that we see from cars that must be acknowledged: buses, bikes, balloons, trains, and dogs. Note that "trains" are things bigger than cars that are not buses, and "dogs" are non-human, non-bird animals.

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LL remains the most expressive toddler I have ever seen. What does a typical toddler do when he spills milk? Laugh and make a bigger mess? Cry? Call for you to clean it up? Try to clean it up himself? Mine shakes his head and says, "Ay yay yay! Look at that!" His constant use of the phrase "Ay yay yay!" (along with the occasional "Oy!") makes him sound like an old Yiddish man. It doesn't help that he refuses to say the word "eat," and instead asks to "nosh" when he is hungry.

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LL has a Farm ABC book, with pictures of farm items for each letter of the alphabet (R is for rooster; S is for silo; T is for tractor; ...). But, like every alphabet book ever made, the authors could only come up with a zebra for the letter Z. Next to the picture of the zebra is a caption that says, "Hey! Zebras don't live on farms!" Every time we read this book, LL points to the zebra, giggles, and says, "No no no no no!" He is now convinced that zebras are called "no-nos," and they're one of his favorite animals.

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You know how some parents allow their older kids to choose the name of new siblings? We're at such a loss for names that we decided to give it a shot. I'm fairly certain that LL has chosen the name "Jumbo Jet" for his younger brother. Which do you prefer: Kermit? or Jumbo Jet?