A Few Tricks

Tor is now surprising me on a regular basis. This is probably pretty standard for kids who are rounding the curve on two, but it's a new feeling for me to be autopiloting along, expecting him to respond in a certain way, and then to realize he's thinking either along parallel lines or on a completely different plane.

Example: Yesterday he was looking at the back cover of his Elmo coloring book (of helmet fame) includes a folksy portrait of all the Sesame Street regulars in front of Hooper's Store. The past 87 times I asked him what he saw in that picture, he recited all their names in order: Oscar, Ernie, Bert, Zoe, Elmo, Abby, Cookie, Bert, [Big] Bird, Super Grover, and Count (although less intelligibly than my spelling represents). This time, when I asked him the same question, he went down the line and pointed to everyone's feet, saying, "No shoes. Shoes. Shoes. No shoes" and so on. What?

Example: A week back, we got the cutest birth announcement introducing baby Greta, the latest addition to the Burnett family. Tor pointed at it and said, "Baby!" I told him, "That's Madeline's sister," knowing full well he has little or no idea what a sister is. Flash forward to today, when Tor passed by Greta's picture on the fridge. I said, "Look at the baby!" and he exclaimed, "Madeline sister!" Just once was enough. Cool.

So I feel like he's on the cusp of synthesizing not only his burgeoning vocabulary, but ideas and observations, to tell stories about the world. And isn't that what makes humans unique?

Tor enjoyed Oma and Opa's company last weekend, as did Lars and I. (Have you ever had house guests who wash their own sheets, mind your toddler, and cook you dinner every night? Then you know how stoked we were.)

New signage for the bedroom door

The question of Oscar's shoddedness remains open

Cooking as Team Hansen is a rare treat these days

Obviously the center of the universe

We busted out the keyboard from the garage and recalled, to our horror, that it plays Livin' La Vida Loca at the touch of a demo button. But by then the genie was out of the bottle.

"I require MORE LA LA!!"

Last Wednesday, one of my Tor-minding days, the kid and I drove 45 minutes north to visit Mormor (and also got to see Erik and Heather--bonus!). Tor tested the mettle of my nerves with some trampoline antics, then worked out the rest of his crazies in the park before going to a highly successful lunch.

The bib is to sop up his face when he goes through the springs

I need lessons from Mormor in maintaining poise and dignity while child-wrangling

"HIGH!"

In day care news, he came home with a fever on Thursday but still managed to play in the sprinkler earlier that morning.

"Must...keep it together...for agua"

And we bummed around the house and park for the rest of the week. Tor's favorite imagination game right now is making pizza: he pretends to turn on an oven, we spread out pretend dough and put on cheese and meat, he mimes putting it in the oven, and I set his invisible watch and make it "Ding!" Then--you guessed it--he takes the fake pizza out and we fake smelling and eating it. It's an involved process, which is why I'm so glad he wants to bake eight pizzas a day, minimum.

Turning on the "oven"

The pop-up house didn't stand a chance once Disembodied Bird Beak came to call

Just in case

Representing his roots

Naptime for "Big Elmo"