Tor Tales: March 2013

Bit of a hodgepodge again this month, I'm afraid. Who thought that keeping current on a blog would be tougher when Tor was two than zero? Not I, but strange to say, he's more constantly demanding now than he was then.

Fortunately, the demand is usually for me to play with him, which I enjoy; the hard part is convincing him to play by himself while I get any kind of meaningful task accomplished. So to all of you whom I owe emails: I'm sorry.

Lars pokes fun at me for not being able to sustain attention to anything else while Tor's around. Last night we took him to the climbing gym and tethered him to our harnesses while we belayed each other, and I got a way better belay than Lars did. (Tor was gung ho about it at first, gamely tolerating the chest harness, but lost interest after three "climbs.") I do have a tough time focusing while he's yelling, "Mama! Mama! Mama!" So we're going to have to train him incrementally to play solo at times. And to be patient when others are speaking or working. Easier said than done, I fear, for someone who cried every time he cried it out during sleep training.

The reason I like playing with Tor is that he is turning into a card. He not only laughs at the slightest provocation, he makes (beginner's) jokes. For example, last night, he showed DaDa his "prune fingers" after bath and good ol' DaDa, misunderstanding, said, "Poop fingers?" Tor about lost it. Then he came back with, "I put Dendro poop on my fingers and put it in bed! I put Dendro poop on DaDa's head!" (Actually, this may go to show that our whole family has a two-year-old's sense of humor. Life could be worse.)

Two other behavioral updates before I get to the photos:

1) Right now, Tor likes to say what things are NOT before he identifies them: "It's not a square. It's not a triangle. It's not a circle. It's a RECTANGLE!" "It's not an A. It's not a B. It's not a C. It's an F!" Same with animals, colors, numbers, articles of clothing . . . you get the picture.

2) The kid's also obsessed with pointing out similarities between things. I ask him what color a bird in a book is; he says, "It's blue! Like my agua!" I ask him what shape a cookie cutter is; he says, "It's a circle! Like that plate!"

These two probably go hand in hand as marking some kind of "categories" phase. It's neat to see him start grouping items by their properties, but I also (of course) worry about his identity formation in that respect--what's the loss if he also starts to view himself as "boy" or "young" or "white" or "working class" or whatever?

On a lighter note, the photos:

The comeuppance to a good whack on the slide

"STELLA!"

Eyes like augers

Saying goodbye to Great-Aunt Diana . . . and carrying on
her passion for all things chocolate

Now hell on wheels with a camera--thanks, Nick

We took a Saturday morning trip to the Stanford campus with Aunt Christina to see where DaDa worked, get Mama a library book, and mingle with the tourist groups.