Conversations with Charlie

Charlie:  Mama, I just love licking my nose.

Mama:  What do you mean, Charlie?  How do you lick your nose?

Charlie:  I just get a bugger out and lick it.  Yeah, I get it out and I just slurp it up.

Mama:  [failing to have a straight face--giggling]  You slurp it up?

Charlie:  Yeah, I just love to slurp  it up!  [enthusiastic, elongated slurping sound effects ]

 

Good thing his character has many other fine sides…he may still get a wife someday!!!

Belly Laughs

That boy sure knows how to get his sister rolling around here!   (And if you think you might notice a comatose father lying prone on the bed, you are probably right.  It was spring break—he had some recovering to do. )

on gum…(and gums)

Charlie has been reminding me of the Frances character from Russell Hoban’s children’s books.   I grew up delighting in her little songs about life.  Charlie sings a lot of little songs too—except his don’t rhyme.  Still they are pretty amusing.   Here’s one I transcribed for him in the car the other day.  It was after I told him he couldn’t have any gum in the car…. 

“I love gum. I just love gum.

Its very tasty in my tongue and my mouth.

Tummy tum tummy tum

I weally want gum. I weally want gum.

hmmmm hmmm hmm…”

This picture has nothing to do with gum…or singing…or Charlie.  But it IS about gums.  Isn’t she cute with her little tooth barely poking through?  The smile is brought to you by our sponsor for the week,  Tylenol—saving frazzled mothers all over the continent, one dose at a time!

Bakers C and A share what they know about bread… and how to eat it too!

If you are a baker, you need to take your work seriously.  Don’t forget your apron.  Grab a partner and sprinkle the flour liberally.  Make sure you ignore sister entirely and forget all about the fact that you are her entertainment for the hour.Grease the pan, roll your dough.Then put a toothpick in for every year you have been alive so you can tell your loaves apart—What? You didn’t know that’s how the real bakers do it?  Well, then you just learned something, didn’t you?Then put it in the oven to rise and bake.  Careful don’t burn yourself!  (Oh, Mama, this oven is not hot yet!)Good bakers enjoy to clean up while they wait.  In fact it might even be more fun than baking—if you are a real baker.  Because real bakers don’t stop until all the flour is wiped up, even from the floor!And while those loaves rise and bake, Baker C and Baker A say, “Please, play marbles, read books and color with chalk.  But don’t forget to check on the loaves every 30 seconds while they cool.”  (Baker C recommends taking a bite directly from the loaf as soon as you can pick it up.)  Mmmmmm just in time for lunch.Because every good baker knows you have to eat at least a slice while it is still warm!

“An dats how it woks!  Yeah.  Dat’s how it woks!”

mama’s helper

Jonathan and I have been noticing that Charlie has matured as much in the last 5 months as he had the whole year previously to that.  A lot of that is due to baby sister taking up so much space in Mama’s arms.  One big change is that his ‘help’ is actually helpful now!  He keeps surprising me with what he can actually do.   He is responsible for sorting and putting away the clean silverware, carrying all the ‘child’ laundry to the hamper and of course, taking all of baby sister’s diapers to the trash.  He can set the table, clear his plate, and put his dirty silverware in the dishwasher.  He can also go and get a diaper for me, choose out his own clothes, bring me socks from his drawer, climb into his own car seat (even buckle it) and a myriad of other tasks that really truly make my life easier.

It has made me curious to stretch him, try new instructions, to see what he can do…and I’ve been finding I can leave him alone with tasks he has not done before.  These little experiments sometimes backfire.  For example, I might have stretched  it a little far when I left him unsupervised  on the balcony to harvest the last of my basil plants for winter pesto.  ( My mistake was forgetting that he had been ‘scooping’ with several pounds of beans out there that morning and neglecting to check in on him after 15 minutes to see how it was going. )  

The results—one plastic bowl containing a mixture of basil leaves, navy beans and dirt, one silver bowl with 5 beans, one downstairs neighbor's deck covered in the lentils and navy beans that fell through the cracks, one basil plant uprooted, three basil pots paved with beans---were not at all helpful!

Still, despite the embarrassing call to the aforementioned neighbor to explain the crop of legumes on their lawn chairs, the 45 minutes of engrossed play more than compensated the meager basil harvest I was able to salvage.

“Just a little paintin’ lunch date”

Tuesdays need a little something to keep them going around here.   Jonathan leaves by 7:15am and doesn’t get back until around 8:45pm.   I usually need something to look forward to so the day doesn’t drag on and on and ON.   Today especially so, since sister woke up at 5:45 (just to make sure she saw Dada before he left, of course) and it was raining.   We finished breakfast and her first nap, ran all our errands, poked around in the library for some new books from the library and still ended up back at home by 10:15 as Wendy was yawning for her second nap.   (“what? Only 10?”)  It seemed the perfect time to introduce Charlie to watercolors.  

And since it was a spur of the moment decision I hadn’t had a chance to get any “kid” supplies.  We used my real paint from tubes my “real” brushes from art school and genuine paper (the expensive, sold by weight kind).  It really is better that way!  And since we were being real artists, we ate our lunch when we got hungry without pausing our work.  The results were far beyond what I would have imagined possible! And I love that I got to paint today!

[ ‘Lion’ -- A joint effort by Mama and Charlie.]

Happy 5 months Wendy!