May 2011

This month Marcus is out of diapers completely at daycare, even for naps, and at home wears a diaper overnight and (depending on how busy we are/how distracted he is) weekend days. Even when we’re out of the house, though, and he’s wearing a diaper just in case, he still lets us know when he needs to go.

His alphabet is converging on the target, his songs in general are getting more clear, and he can reliably count to fifteen--almost too reliably, since when counting any small number of things he'll just get excited and keep on going ("FIFTEEN JELLYBEANS, MOMMY!" Uh, no, just three.).

He eats everything, and in large quantities. Lately he’s been joining me in “Mommy’s special cereal” for breakfast—raw oats, drizzled with a bit of honey, and then just a bit of milk to moisten. Robert can’t understand how anyone can eat this, but Marcus and I eat it almost every day, and sometimes after dinner he’ll ask for another bowl. He loves strawberries, bananas, and blueberries, and sometimes eats several bowls of blueberries steadily. He’s also still a huge protein lover, eating shredded chicken, hot dogs, steak, pork chops, and meatballs with abandon, but has become a shellfish fan as well, eagerly grabbing the two shrimp out of a pad thai (he loves the noodles too), loving lobster, and being persuaded to eat squid because I said it was “like shrimp.” (Robert and I have a disagreement here: he says I’m being deceptive, but I say I’m just marketing it. He says, yeah, same thing.) Marcus eagerly spoons up the “au jus” from a piece of beef, saying, “Mommy, I want some foup [soup]!”

It’s been so drizzling and misty and rainy here lately that we haven’t had a lot of playground days, sadly, but I’m sure there will be more to come this summer. My semester ended, and I had a couple weeks of a pretty flexible schedule where I planned summer classes, got lots of home projects done (closets/organization/shelves), and took a bit of extra time home with baby, but then next week my summer class starts and we plow through the six-week session.

This week we went to the Child Study Lab again and participated in another study, this one about how young children understand gravity. The researcher's hypothesis was that the two-year-olds in his study would be so fixated on their intuitive understanding of gravity that they wouldn't be able to predict where an object fell when it fell down a curved tube, landing not directly underneath where it began, so he developed a few conditions to try to trick kids into giving the correct answer. The problem, in our case, was that Marcus initially got the prediction wrong, as expected, and then immediately learned where the object would fall when put through the curved tube, and so was getting them all right even before the changed condition. It was pretty neat to see.

Marcus finished up the Tots-in-Training swimming class, and since he swam alone with an instructor, without us in the water or even on the pool deck, for two full sessions he's eligible to move up to "real" swimming lessons, either in a small group or privately, whenever we want him to. I think we'll wait until after the summer, because between softball and nice weather (hopefully!) and trips we'll be keeping busy. We also got to hang out with Jef and Jin Yoon and their kids this month, to celebrate their daughter's 100th day. Here you see Jef reading to Jayden and Marcus.

My parents came to Boston with Aunt Mary the weekend after Easter, and we had lots of fun with them--they watched Marcus at our place one evening, they helped us work on our deck a little, and we went to the circus on Sunday afternoon (Big Apple, at Government Center). Marcus loved the animals the most, including this goat standing on top of a horse.

The day before Mother's Day, we went to the Wake Up the Earth festival in the Southwest Corridor Park just a couple stops down the Orange Line. Marcus had a great time playing both in the playground and on the sculptures, and we were really enjoying ourselves when it suddenly began to pour. Along with a couple hundred other people, we ducked into the Stony Brook T station and sat on the floor before you went through the turnstiles, taking this opportunity to eat our Puerto Rican lunch (pork, chicken, rice, beans, plantains--yum). It was just like in India, with people crowded together in a train station, sitting on the floor and talking loudly and eating. Robert forgot to get a fork from the stand, so it was even more like India because we had to eat with our hands. When the rain stopped ten minutes later, we went back outside and encouraged other children to use the slides first, just to dry--er, test--them out. We had a lovely day, ending in a beautiful nap back at the house.

Marcus made me this Mother's Day present at school: it's a finger-painting on canvas stretched over a wood frame, with a green card ("That one my M, mommy! I write my M!") and a decorated bag and tissue paper.

Last weekend I went to a babywearing meet-up at the Prudential Mall on Sunday morning. Marcus and Robert had colds, so we skipped church and just went straight here. The boys ran around playing with a ball while about ten moms tried on lots of different wraps and slings. Afterward, most of us ate at the Wagamama right in the mall. Robert got a noodle soup to help make him feel better, so the day wasn't a total loss even from his perspective.