Chip off the old block

I like reading around in the more accessible anthropological literature about primate and hunter/gatherer childhoods; I find it useful when I have drilled myself down into a dark child-development hole to have a few notions in my head about all the extraordinarily different ways the human animal has dealt with its young.

So, knowing about those one-year-old babies who wield machetes, I was at least slightly prepared.

Peter and the boys were doing outdoor chores on Saturday morning. When I stepped outside, here is what I saw:

"WHAT are you DOING?" I cried.

Peter shrugged. "Making artisanal wood mulch," he said.

Composed

The following pieces were composed by Henry, spelled by Peter, typed by Henry (and here transcribed by me):

I. 

FLOWERS IN THE EARTH AND RAIN.

WHEAT IN THE RAIN AND THE ICE AND THE SNOW.

BEES IN THE LEAVES

HENRY

II.

PIGS IN THE ARK OF THE ZOO.

PEAS OF THE WORLD.

RABBITS OF THE LAND.

HENRY

PEAPOD

I adore these. I am a firm adherent of Alfie Kohn et al. with respect to the dangers--impudence, really--of praise, but I received these with so much delight that I'm afraid Henry will keep Peter at the computer all day as he dictates lists of gobbledygook names, which is where he goes when genuine inspiration fails.

apropos des bottes

And in the midst of his labors this morning (lining up trucks under the table), Henry stopped to say, thoughtfully, "Mama, I'm not so much interested in the fronts of statues. I'm interested in the behinds of statues."
I know that the quaint sayings of children who aren't your own aren't necessarily all that delightful, but this one in particular captures a certain Dada quality in my daily life that I would like to remember.

Good Morning, Moon

James and I are up alone this morning, sitting on the sofa. I've been reading, and he's been rearranging stacks of books, pretending to nurse his stuffed kitty, filling and emptying a packing envelope with puzzle pieces, etc. The sky has lightened, but it's still early morning dusk, and James, who has paused in his labors a moment to stand on the sofa looking out the window, notices a faint fingernail sliver.
"Love moon," he says. I start to nurse him, and he pauses every minute or two to look out the window again and make his report. "Moon still there!"
I woke up this morning on the wrong side of bed, thinking angrily about a lot of unsolvable problems.  I wanted to be alone for half an hour before the boys got up, so I could keep on thinking angrily without distraction. I don't mean to suggest that angry thinking isn't a worthwhile pursuit, within reason, but the combination of a very small child and astronomy does make it dwindle down into something pretty small and postponeable.

Do you really want to know?

Henry would like us to have more children. He brings it up several times a week. I think he thinks a baby would give more scope for his kindness than his 2-year-old brother seems to, and he is at least theoretically interested in developing his kindness chops. I have explained to him that we are unlikely to have a third child, and that the five or six more he wants are definitely out of the question.

So yesterday he came up with this modest proposal."Every time you get too old to have another baby, we can get another mama to make a brother for me. How do you like that idea, Mama?"

A few things about James

1. James has started saying his own name. He pronounces it "Wame." The other day Henry (or Ha, as James calls him) was chiding him for making a mess. "Bad Wame," agreed James, making my heart ache.

2. He comes capering out of the bathroom after his bath each night exclaiming "Nakey! Nakey! Nakey!" If pushed, he will add, "Hay clo" (hate clothes).

3. Although James has very little interest in movies or TV, he has spent enough time watching his brother watch to pick up a thing or two. He now delights in prancing back and forth across the room singing "Hot dog! Hot dog! Hot dig [gity] dog! Mi[ckey] Mou[se] Clu[b] Hou[se]!" To my great surprise, this, along with Henry's passion for the program, has for the first time ever softened my heart toward Walt Disney.

What not to read

So, suppose you have your third cold of the young year, your period is about to start, and you have spent the previous night waking up every 45 minutes wondering if you are going to throw up, then have spent the morning holding your 4-year-old's head over the sink while he unambiguously does--you! with your vomiting phobia!--but then, surprisingly, everyone turns out to be in a mellow and easygoing mood and you find you have both the time and the inclination to start reading a novel. Your excellent husband, say, has given you a gift subscription to the Persephone book-of-the-month program, and the satiny gray paperbacks have begun piling up faster than you can get to them (because you have been devoting your precious reading time to books with interchangeable titles and subtitles like "Becoming the Parent You Want to Be" and "How to Stop Yelling"). Being realistic, you pick out one of the slimmer volumes, with a whimsical horsehead endpaper and something about princes in the title--sort of makes you think of Kate Middleton and the lighter side of Trollope, exactly the sort of escapist British fizz to hit the spot, as you lie curled up at the foot of the bed where the baby is napping,  a toy helicopter at your feet, and the pessimistic stainless steel bowl left over from last night gaping at your head.

And then you read this:

"But what's the use of spring to me, thought Patricia. It'll be light after tea and, as I go down to the garden to eat the eggs, a blackbird will sing in the holly; the chestnuts will flower in Christ Church meadow, and Magdalen will have her fritilleries, but I'll have a beastly dental plate... I'm old... Hugh's old. God! what a struggle it's been, she thought, remembering monthly nurses, sticking-out teeth, tempers, nametapes, rows about dirty necks, rows about tidying up the nursery; and now that I've finished with it, she thought, now that they're grown-up, wash themselves, feed themselves, don't quarrel any more or drop egg down their fronts, now that my work's done, I've just got to grow old and feeble and ugly..."

Yah, that hits the spot, all right. 

It's Princes in the Land, by Joanna Cannan, in case you want to make sure you don't read it when you are recovering from the stomach flu.