SOMEONE learned how to ride a pedal bike yesterday, and he is VERY proud!
He can definitely do it, but he is a little nervous! Just like his big brother and big sister, the previous year of balance bike riding worked it’s balance bike magic, and we got it going in less than an hour.
Alex is doing this thing lately where he doesn’t want to be in pictures. I don’t know if it’s a phase, or if it’s a product of being in the generation where your parents have a camera in their pockets at all times, or what.
In any case, we were just finishing up a great weekend of camping, and we wanted to get a picture of all the kids together. “I don’t want to be in the picture!” insisted Alex with his grumpiest, most adorable face. “I have an idea,” said Sara. “What if you are in the picture but you pull your sweatshirt up over your face?”
Naturally this made sense using twisted, kid-logic, and Alex quickly agreed. The kids all lined up on the metal stairs of the slide
Now, Sara had a premonition about this somehow and she was like, “He is going to fall down. Somebody hold on to him.” I’m not sure how she knew what was going to happen next, but she was right.
For some reason, with his eyes covered up by his sweatshirt, Alex was suddenly, like, totally disconnected from reality? He immediately lost his balance, but somehow didn’t know it, so he just went face first, straight down the stairs, without even putting his hands out to catch himself. It was like, without the tether of his sight, he could no longer tell up from down, or whether he were standing still or pitching forward?
Kids are weird, man.
(Sara says kids are not weird and not being able to balance when your eyes are closed is Totally. A. Thing. which is why she was worried about it in the first place!)
Immediately after I was more concerned with his face, since I had watched him totally face plant on the metal. But throughout the rest of the day it was pretty clear something was wrong with his thumb. He just refused to use it at all. It was obviously swollen, but we didn’t know if it were sprained, or broken, or just smooshed, or what.
But you know where this is going:
(That little fat baby hand on that x ray ðŸ˜)
You know, somehow we managed to go the last 11 years without any of the kids breaking any bones, and then suddenly in the last 6 months, not one but TWO kids breaking bones. 😦 This is a trend I would like to stop now.
Alex has been a trooper so far, but no playgrounds for 3 weeks is going to be a hard way to go into the summer.
So, we were going for a walk the other day, with Alex on his balance bike, and we chanced upon a recently dead cat on the sidewalk.
Death has been on Alex’s mind a lot lately. He will routinely say things like, “I don’t want Mommy to die!” or “Why do we have to die?” I remember the other kids going through a similar stage at the same age. But kids are so funny about death: they don’t have the same hang ups and baggage that us older folks do.
For example, as we were passing the cat, and Alex was pondering life, death and the mysteries of the universe, he said to me, “I’m going to drive over it with my bike!”
Me: “No, no, never touch something that is dead. It is yucky and has germs on it.”
Alex: “No, with my bike.”
Me: “Don’t touch an animal that is dead.”
Alex, perplexed: “No, with my bike. *I* won’t touch it, the germies will be on my tires.”
Me: “Alex, there are diseases. I don’t want them on your bike either; that bike has to go in my house.”
Now, this went around and around for a bit. He REALLY wanted to run over that dead cat with his bike! So finally Ollie stepped in. “Great,” I thought. “Maybe Ollie can talk to him kid-to-kid. Get him to understand why we shouldn’t drive over dead cats.”
Ollie: “Okay, so, imagine if Evelyn was dead and she was lying on the road. Would you drive over HER with your bike??”
That is…not how I would have approached the subject.
EXCEPT IT WORKED!
Alex thought about it for a bit and then said, “No, I wouldn’t. But…” I could tell he was still struggling with it a bit – he felt like he still had an argument to make – but he couldn’t escape that kid-to-kid logic. And anyway, by that time I had coaxed him down the street a bit, so riding over the cat wasn’t feasible anymore.
I warned Sara about this because I knew it was bound to come up again, so I wanted her to be prepared. (Oh, that and the fact that she was going to have to walk by that dead cat on the way to work.) So tonight, Sara decided to broach the subject and see if Alex had any more to say about it. You know, work through his complicated feelings on the subject? Maybe he had some feelings he needed to work out?
Sara, while stirring food in the crockpot: “I saw that dead cat…”
Alex: “Did you cook it?”
I haven’t done one of these Alex updates in a long time, but it seems like there have been so many milestones lately that I’m definitely in need of one!
The most exciting thing is that Alex is now completely diaper free! He has always been really good about potty training and staying dry, so we thought we’d give the overnight thing a chance. Right away, the first night, he was dry! He has had a few wet nights, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a few more, but he’s got a 4 day streak going as of me writing this! (But unfortunately broke it before publishing this. Still!)
This corresponded with us upgrading his crib to a “big boy bed”, so all in all I think he’s just really feeling like a big boy lately.
Additionally, we have started reading chapter books at bedtime, and he really enjoys them. So far we have read, “My Father’s Dragon”, “The Dragons of Blueland”, “Little House in the Big Woods” (at least twice, because Sara and I both read it to him, possibly three times if Vania read it!), “The Boxcar Children”, and we are currently reading, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox”.
He has also been drawing and “writing” a lot. Sometimes I can even tell what he’s drawing! For example, I give you “a person”:
Finally, one thing we’ve really noticed lately is that Alex just wants to have friends. He plays SO NICELY with other kids now! And really has a blast. Because of this, he is fiiiiinally starting to warm to the idea of going to school. He has previously taken the adamant stance that he will NOT be attending school next year, but now that he’s starting to realize how much fun it is to go to a toy-filled room to play with a bunch of friends, he’s rethinking that.
Alex, in preschool. CAN YOU IMAGINE??
As an oldest child, I didn’t have older siblings to teach me things. Naturally, I set a sterling example for MY brother and sister, but obviously that is not always the case. Lately Alex has picked up things that…well, let’s just say it didn’t take much work to figure out where he’d learned it from.
For one thing, he has been running around with a toy sword, pointing it at people and saying, “pew pew!” Pretty sure he didn’t learn that from Sara and me. He also is prone to sobbing “No fair!” when he doesn’t get his way (okay, that one he *might* have gotten from me).
On the other hand, being the youngest might have advantages. Alex certainly was the easiest of our children to potty train, and I don’t know if that’s because of something about his personality, or if he just has a whole lot of examples to model himself after (and a whole lot of extra people to sit with him and read Little Critter and/or Clifford books over, and over, and over while he’s on the potty…)
It certainly could just be him personally. All of our kids are whip smart. It’s hard for me to remember precisely how smart they were at 20 months, and I remember being impressed by them, but Alex’s language and memory both seem to be well off the charts.
What if he’s the smartest of the three of them? I have to say…the prospect is a little frightening.
Shane Halbach 