Cars and Trucks

Like many kids his age, Calvin periodically develops full-on obsessions of various things. I've posted before about his fascination with light, and his passion for drawing. While both of these are still important parts of Calvin's life, his new love, or rather complete infatuation, is with cars and trucks (and planes and space shuttles, which are also called "car"). If I were to catalog his words each day, which are now numerous in an almost constant dialogue of mostly unrecognizable words, I am confident the number of "car" and "truck"s coming out of his mouth would far outweigh every other individual word or babble. He has been practicing the word, too. For a few weeks now it has been "kar" and "truh", though the other day he was working hard on saying "tru-k" while driving through the frustrating-for-me but fascinating-for-him traffic clogging the streets everywhere. And just for the record, we live pretty far out of D.C. that there shouldn't be this much traffic. Ugh! Fortunately, at least 10% of the vehicles traveling on the road with us are dump trucks, trash trucks, semi's, cement trucks, moving trucks, school buses, business vans, and other large, fascinating vehicles. The soundtrack in my car these days is an aria of "truh, truh, tru-k, tru-k, car, truh, TRUCK!!!".

Big Yellow Dog gets to go for a ride on the fire truck.

Now that I'm at home with Calvin (since I've finished my PhD and don't yet have a job), we've started taking walks around the neighborhood every afternoon that the weather allows. Despite being on neighborhood streets there are a surprising number of cars and trucks driving through, which gives our walk purpose: Calvin announces the passing of every car and truck, as well as every parked vehicle visible as far as the eye can see.

The other day on the return leg of the loop that we walk, a UPS truck pulled up to a house on the other side of the street and stopped. For Calvin this was as amazing as a gigantic wild animal wandering up and stopping a few feet away. Calvin paused for a few seconds and then waved hello. He waved again and added a "Hi. Hi, truh. Truh, truh. Hi, truh." This was repeated for the next several minutes as the woman rummaged through the back, found the package that belonged to that house, and delivered it to the front door. The woman and her daughter who answered the door to receive the package must have thought we were kind of strange to be standing there staring at the truck parked right in front of their house. I wanted to yell across the street that my son has a thing for trucks, but I didn't. As the big brown truck drove away, Calvin said, with a slightly softer, quieter voice "Bye. Bye, truh. Bye" and just kept waving. I couldn't get him to budge an inch until that truck had turned off our street, was well out of view, and showed no signs of returning.

Similarly, on another walk we passed an old white van parked in front of a neighbor's house. I didn't think much of it, being just one vehicle in a row of driveways filled with cars. But Calvin took notice and insisted that we turn around and walk back to the white van to introduce ourselves. Calvin started with his usual "Hi. Hi, truh." and so on. Standing in front of some stranger's house talking to their old white van made me a little uncomfortable, so I tried to urge Calvin on. It is a fine line these days between convincing him that it is time to say good bye and continue on our walk and a complete toddler melt-down right there in the middle of the neighborhood sidewalk. This departure dangerously tread that line.

Calvin likes to make a towering truck out of legos.

A couple of weeks ago, Calvin and I met some other ladies and kids at Panera bread for breakfast. As we were walking through the parking lot, Calvin noticed a giant semi parked next to the building unloading supplies for Panera Bread. After some urging on Calvin's part, we walked over to the truck and, walking within a couple of feet of the huge vehicle, completely circled the truck. Calvin got to meet the driver (I did explain that time that my son was really excited to see the truck), point to all the wheels and lights, and practice his favorite poem, "truh, truh, truh, truh..." with a few "wow" and "cool truh". Seeing the giant beast totally made Calvin's day.

So at this point, I am pretty convinced that Calvin thinks cars and trucks are actual beings. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even see the driver. Calvin's car and truck collection is slowly growing, and will probably be delightfully larger by the time Christmas is over. They are his absolute favorite toy right now. And they get a "Goo nigh, car. Goo nigh, truh" every night on his way to bed.

Fall Family Photoshoot

Last month a couple of friends took some pictures of Bryan, Calvin, and I in our first family photo shoot in over a year. Timing was great with the sun setting and lighting up the fall leaves behind our home.At first Calvin wasn't so excited about picture time, but with some creative games and tickling we managed to get him to cooperate (most of the time).Although Calvin continued to be his usual squirmy, non-cooperative picture-taking self, Brandi and Jared somehow managed to take a lot of really excellent pictures.

updates

It's the second week in December and I'm now about two months behind on updates. So much to talk about: anniversaries, happy PhD defenses, family visits, Calvin's new obsessions. I've been busy recovering from the many celebrations marking my successful PhD defense last month, catching up on sleep and doctor appointments and chores and errands, and transitioning to a stay-at-home-mom role until I find a job. This stay-at-home gig is a lot of fun and quite welcome (Calvin is growing so fast, I feel like I'm missing out), though I know I'll be happy with a job when I find one.

Day 1 staying at home: Almost simultaneously I realized that I had filled the dishwasher with the wrong kind of soap and Calvin realized that the full bag of straws that he is now tall enough to pull out of the drawer was open. Sigh.

So anyway, stay tuned for more posts in the next few days, weeks, who knows.

Roar!

Before Calvin started saying mommy (which has been only in the past couple of weeks) he knew how to ROAR! When ever he sees a picture of a lion or dinosaur, he roars. It is a little roar, but said with emphasis and purpose, and is often repeated until we acknowledge what he is roaring about. So when it came time to find a halloween costume for Calvin, we finally settled on a cute scaly-green dinosaur that Calvin pointed to and roared.

This is the picture on the tag that sold us on this costume - it is not actually Calvin.

The costume hung in Calvin's closet for a couple of weeks before Halloween. Every time Calvin saw it, which was often right after waking up, during every diaper change, while getting dressed, before and after brushing his teeth, while putting away laundry, and before reading some bedtime books, he roared repeatedly at his costume. Several times we got it down so that he could try it on, though every effort was met with panicked crying and complete toddler meltdown. The dinosaur was cool to look at and even touch, but it was evidently NOT okay to wear.So as Halloween approached, I started to worry that maybe this was a bad choice. Maybe Calvin needed an "easier" costume to wear, something that was less transforming and more human. But we were stuck - no time to find another one. And this one was so cute!

Finally the first of his three costume-wearing events arrived - a birthday party for Zander, the littlest Benjamin. Bryan and Calvin headed to the party before me (I was in the middle of writing up my dissertation and joined the party a couple of hours late). Seeing the other kids wearing costumes, and possibly responding to the oo's and ah's of the other parents there, Calvin was suddenly completely okay with being a dinosaur. He played for hours in his head-to-toe dinosaur getup, ate dinner with his tail hanging out the back of the chair, and cried when, sweaty from the extra layer and the more than 20 people in the house, I finally took it off.Second, Calvin wore his costume at daycare, surrounded by bears and bumblebees.And finally on the evening of the big day, we wrestled the dino suit on over his clothes one more time and headed out into the chilly Halloween evening for some mingling with other neighborhood toddlers, trick-or-treating, and passing out candy to the herds of children that filled our street.

Halloween begins!Stomping around the neighbor's toddler-scale haunted houseIt wasn't easy fitting his dino tail into the neighbor's pink plastic car.

Time to trick-or-treat: taking lessons from the neighborhood kids.

Helping to pass out candy......and trying a little for himself

Halloween is over and Calvin hasn't worn his costume since. But it is hanging back in his closet, and it still gets an occassional ROAR!

Dancing

One of my favorite activities to do with Calvin is to dance. He really gets into it, and he'll dance to just about anything: the sing-song recording on his fridge magnet toy, Louis Armstrong on the CD player, Offspring on the car radio, a bluegrass band at a fall festival...

He's good at crawling up onto the kitchen chair, turning on the CD player, and babbling along with Louis while we bob and sway to Mahogany Hall Stomp. He'll swing his arms up and down, clap his hands, bend his knees, twist, sway, rock back and forth and generally boogie down (sometimes switching between moves faster than the beat, which makes for a confusing show).

Although he's got all these great moves, he's pretty shy about the camera (and has the attention span of a toddler), so getting good pics and video is rare.

And who wants to be holding a camera anyway, when you could be bopping away with Calvin and Pops.

The Artist

Our little artist has been creating pieces of art just about every opportunity he can get, with crayons, chalk, pens, bathtub crayons, water-doodle-markers; on paper, sidewalks, bathtubs, anything.

His bathtub masterpiece titled "the Whale and the Fish"

Well, maybe one of these days he'll give his artwork titles. For now I get to come up with names. This one (above) was on the inside wall of the tub - I had to climb into the tub to be able to get a decent picture.

He sticks to mostly abstract designs, prefering circles and ovals and spirals, big and small, declaring "gircle!" while he admires his work.

"A bouquet of flowers"

"Orbits"

Thank you, brilliant person, who ever you are, who invented washable crayons!

Chill'n with his buddies

In case you can't tell, he's got Gorilla, Donkey Breath (the blue donkey), froggie, a tiger, and a black dog up on the rocking chair with him. Just chill'n.

Legos

Earlier this week while I was on a visit back to Boulder to meet with committee members, update them on the status of my research and set a date for my defense this fall, Calvin was at home impressing his Grandma Janice with his ability to organize and stack legos.

The Slotted Spoon

A slotted spoon is sometimes good for cooking, serving, and tasting cooked carrots.
It may also be used for collecting, transporting, and tasting tiny sips of water from the kitchen faucet.

The Kitchen Helper

My little kitchen helper standing in the Kitchen Helper.

It lets Calvin get up to counter-height so he can wash his hands in the sink, help cook, etc. It adjusts in height so we can lower it as he gets taller. And it folds up pretty narrow, or it will when we lower the platform to the next-lowest height, which won't be too long from now. Calvin likes to push it around so he can get to the sink or a countertop, but he still needs a little help climbing in and out of it.