Bookends

Dylan,

You've mastered the opening and closing act of each day nearly independently now. If I lay out your clothes the night before, when you awaken in the morning you will dress yourself stealthily before exiting your room and heading towards ours for the goose-bump announcement. At the end of the day you are now able take your own bath. This encompasses plugging the drain, starting the water, getting undressed, using the toilet, getting in the bath, turning off the water when there's enough, bathing yourself (including washing your hair) unplugging the drain and getting out of the tub. There you stand calling for one of us to get your green hooded "burrito" towel which rests on it's hook on the back of the door, above the reach of your increasingly lanky appendages. Yes, sometimes the bath ends up too cold, and I question how clean your hair really gets, but in the overall scheme things, I'm pretty impressed. Then I have to wonder how you can so easily do this complicated process but often get distracted while walking from one end of the room to the other to carry out a simple request. Or why when I send you into the bathroom to go potty, I often find you 20 minutes later lying on the carpet outside the bathroom door with your clothes still off, totally engrossed in something other than the task you set out to do.

I know the real answer lies in the fact that you are proud of yourself for doing the whole bath yourself. You are practically overflowing with self esteem as you inform us of what you've done, and it's clear you enjoy how excited Dad and I get when you emerge from the tub ready for your towel. We've always tried hard to foster your self esteem, and it's always a joy to witness it.

Now, if we could only master all those other basic self-care tasks that present themselves between the wake-up and bed times of each day...

Check back in about 16 years.


Mom

wording

Dylan,

You've been green-lighted to start using the movable alphabet at school. You told me you made the words "mop, top, tap, cap, train, mom, and dad" among others.

It's one of those little advancements that reminds me how amazingly capable you are becoming.


Dad

potty talk

Dylan,

A couple months ago you entered into a new phase, finding endless hilarity in words like "poo-poo" and "poopy-butt".

We've actively discouraged this, but there's something innate to little boys which makes confining use of such terms to an appropriate --and very limited-- venue difficult.

Recently, we decided that inappropriate outbursts, such as "I went pee-pee on my food, HAHAHAHA!" you would cost you the use of a train. The first confiscation hit you pretty hard. You were sitting at the table, lost for words until finally managing: "I need a hug".

You've lost one more train since (another coach, actually), but there seems to have been a noticeable improvement in your choices of vocabularic exercises. As a mechanism of punishment, it's not ideal. There's no inherent connection between inappropriate language and trains, and we'd really prefer to have you learn from the natural consequences of your behavior. But hey, I'll take it.


Dad

goosebumps

Dylan,

You've made something of a habit of getting up and dressing yourself, then coming to our room and announcing "I have goosebumps". It's your way of signaling that you want to crawl in bed with us and cuddle for warmth.

As soon as you're warm enough you pester us to get up and start breakfast. You want to make pancakes pretty much everyday, even when we've got leftovers in the fridge.


Dad

hear that?

When the fool learns the Way,
He laughs at it.
Yet if the fool did not laugh at it,
It would not be the Way.
Indeed, if you are seeking the Way,
Listen for the laughter of fools.

--Lao Tsu

simple explanations

Dylan,

I try to avoid watering-down my answers to your questions and instead keep in mind that children are generally smarter and more-capable than we assume.

Still, there are some questions you ask that aren't easily answered crisply, regardless the audience.

I hope to supplement my over-simplified responses to such questions as time goes by and we have a larger pool of shared analogical models through which to communicate the subtleties of life's more puzzling topics.


Dad