Jonah loves Isaac's underwear. He tries to put it on, but having little success getting it over his legs, he often wears it on his head instead. Then he waits for us to laugh.
Isaac puts on his own underwear and pants now, but he always wants us to lay it out so the front is facing up. Jonah has caught on. Now when he finds a pair of Isaac's underwear, he grabs it and says "um-wear," then throws it down dramatically and says "Funt! Funt!" He often seems to be showing Isaac - here, big brother, this is how you do it!
Below is Jonah in a sweater that was once Adam's. True retro style.
Feb 2:
I've been reading chapter books with Isaac - The Black Stallion and Charlotte's Web, both old favorites of mine. He loved the Black Stallion and surprised me with his understanding of the story. I substituted smaller words here and there, but for the most part, he listened to an entire novel with great attention - 2 chapters at a time before he began to thrash around the bed - and begged for more each night.
At bedtime tonight, Isaac summarized the story of the Black Stallion to his bear. We just finished the book this afternoon, but we'd read the early chapters several weeks ago. I was amazed how much he remembered and at the new words he used correctly, like island, harbor and spring (of water). He told about the storm when they were on the big ship and even the small detail of Alec trying to turn on the lights - "but there was no power because the lightning had pulled it out." He told how the ship sank and "all the people fell in the water," and Alec tied a rope around the Black (slightly off, but close enough!) and the Black pulled him to an island. On the island, he found some strawberries (again, close enough), and he ate them all. And there was a spring, where the water came kind of out of a drain (ha!). And Alec tried to catch a fish, and he missed the first one, but then he caught it. And he ate it, but he was still hungry. And then a boat came and Alec went on the boat.
Me: Did the Black go too?
Isaac: Yeah, the Black went too. They tied a belt around him and lifted him up...
Then that boat was going to Portugal...(Brazil, but same language, right?)
Alec's parents sent him some money so he could go home...
Alec lived in New York...
Alec wanted to do some races, and he told his Dada if he could do some races, and his Dada said yeah...train to Chicago...
I'm obviously not copying the entire summary because it was long, but I couldn't believe how much he'd absorbed. Isaac loves stories as much as anyone I've ever met. Maybe he'll be a writer...Certainly, he'll be a reader.
Isaac had a good long one-sided conversation with Bear that night. The next topic was earthquakes. Isaac was very interested in earthquakes and volcanoes in February, so we'd been talking about how they happen and finding YouTube clips to show him. Here are a few quotes from the next monologue.
Isaac to Bear: Now I'm going to tell you about earthquakes...
Earthquakes happen where there's a fault line. You have to stand under a strong desk or doorway. Everything starts shaking really hard like this...Everything falls down...
But we don't have big earthquakes here...And we don't have little earthquakes here...
Me: Where do the big ones happen?
Isaac: The big earthquakes happen in California. Little earthquakes happen in New Jersey.
Next topic: volcanoes ("The not extinct ones erupt...they're REA-wy dangerous.") and mud puddles with boiling water (I think this came from a Yellowstone conversation.)
Sometimes I have to do all the talking, but that night I just sat and listened for a half hour. And I could have listened much longer, but it was getting late.
Isaac loves to run out on the balcony in the morning, even if he is barefoot and it's covered in snow. Sometimes we let him. He'll know if he gets too cold. Jonah likes to go wherever Isaac goes. That's why it's easier just to keep the door shut.
FEB 3:
Jonah told Isaac sorry today, unprompted, after throwing things at him. Since then, he's been saying "Sah-ree" and rubbing his tummy whenever someone is crying or hurt, and often when he does something wrong. It's so cute, you can't stay mad at him even if he deserves it.
At naptime, Isaac: "Is there going to be a toy drive here?"
Me: "I don't know of one..."
Isaac: "I think I want...I think I want to make there be a toy drive here."
Me: "That's nice of you. Who do you want to give the toys to?"
Isaac: "Um...maybe I'm going to give them to Landon maybe." (HA! Landon is one of Isaac's best buddies, who like us has a perfectly adequate supply of toys.)
This afternoon, Jonah kept picking up Isaac's wallet and going through it. Isaac got upset, so we picked up all the bills, the receipt and one Thomas card off the floor and put them back in. Jonah was still holding one card, padding around the house and saying sweetly: "pay...pay..." while Isaac wailed. I tried not to laugh.
In the car coming home from music tonight, Isaac: "Probably they don't have toilet paper in Texas. They just use this thing that sprays water to get the poopoo off their bottoms..."
In Jonah's room at bedtime, Isaac: "I love Jonah so much."
And he's been saying "I love you" to Jonah when he hugs him night-night.
FEB 8: MY SWEET ISAAC
I aided in Isaac's class today, and there was a rude exchange between 2 other boys. J. told R. he didn't need him as a friend because he already had a good friend. R. immediately burst into tears. I was comforting R., and Isaac came over to ask why he was crying.
Me: "J. said something mean to him, so he's sad."
Isaac then gave his highest form of comfort: he leaned over and solemnly kissed R. on the cheek.
Oh, how do we tell him? I want him to keep that sweetness forever. But some of the 4-yr-old boys in his class think they're so cool and have surely watched more TV than he has - and have surely picked up on cultural nuances that Isaac is still blissfully unaware of...
Adam and I decided later we need to tell him that kisses are for family, but we can hug friends or pat them on the back. I never want him to stop giving those dear kisses of comfort to me.
Later: Isaac was mad because Jonah accidentally knocked over his lego tower. Isaac really wanted him to say sorry. I explained to Isaac that we could ask Jonah to say sorry, but he doesn't understand that he did anything wrong.
Me: "Do you want him to say sorry anyway?"
Isaac: "Yeah."
Jonah, calling sweetly from the top of the slide behind us: "Sah-reeee."
Isaac: "It's okay. I was just mad at you." He then climbed up the slide and gave Jonah a hug. "I'm not mad at you anymore."
Later that afternoon, Jonah was on the floor in front of the slide, playing with my wallet. He took all the cards out, and I was waiting for a chance to sneak the important ones into my pocket. I got back my credit cards, but he was still carrying around my license. Eventually, Jonah put that down too and was briefly distracted. Isaac quietly picked up my license and handed it to me without a word, before his brother could notice. I was amazed at his subtlety and understanding. Wasn't it just last week that he was the one pulling cards out of my wallet?
FEB 10: When I got Jonah from his nap, he'd been crying while I finished a layer on my painting. I picked him up, and he stopped crying and said "Sad!" Then he started sobbing and put his head on my shoulder. (Heartbreak for me, but wow - he can express his emotions at age 16 months!)
That afternoon, Isaac was crying upstairs. Jonah ran toward the stairs and said, "Isaac, Isaac." Then he said "Sad."
Now, in early April, anytime Jonah hears someone crying, even from a distance, he frowns and says "sad." I love that he connects the action to the emotion.
FEB 11: New words. Jonah asked for his slippers - he pointed to where we keep them and said "Bi-ber." When I put them on, he laughed and said "Tickle."
FEB 13: THE BEGINNING OF PRETEND
Jonah was pushing buttons on the microwave in the play kitchen, doing his usual, dear "bayp...bayp...bayp...REH-ree!" (beep, beep, beep, ready! if you didn't get that) But this time, he was putting "food" inside and pulling it out. The food was a wooden ladder from his fire truck. He was pretending to eat it with a great, gutteral huffing noise - "HHHruh!" Then he would offer me some and say "Mama HHHruh!" So we took turns for a while.
FEB 15:
Isaac is obsessed with safety - smoke detectors, burglar alarms, glassbreaks, and today, the fire exit map at the vet's office. We studied it together while we were waiting with a dog, a cat and Jonah (surprisingly peaceful in the little room), and I read to him that there were two ways to get out safely in case of a fire. I showed him the front exit, where we'd entered, but I didn't know where the back exit was.
When the vet tech returned, Isaac said loudly, "UM..."
She laughed and asked if he had something to say.
Isaac: "What's the other way to get out of here safely?"
As she obligingly tried to answer, Jonah held up a drool-covered hand, fresh out of his mouth, and said "HAY-uh!" And with brows furrowed in annoyance, he held up the (invisible, to me) hair that had been stuck on his tongue. He then continued to point out hairs from his tongue throughout our visit.
Isaac is obsessed with safety; Jonah is obsessed with hairs in his mouth. Apparently he gets a lot of them, and he gets a little mad over the tickle.
FEB 17:
At Lulu's gymnastics birthday party, Isaac wouldn't try anything. He just wanted to sit by me, leaving occasionally to run around, then come back. The instructors had the kids running to a vertical, thick soft pad and were helping them scale it and land on a soft mat on the other side. I kept asking Isaac if he wanted to try it, but he didn't want to. So Jonah tried to encourage him - he walked over to Isaac and leaned in his face and said "Try! Try!" He patted his big brother on the shoulder a few times, then gave up and came back to sit with me.
Above is the back of the minivan borrowed from the Toyota dealership while we had some recall work done. Adam let the boys explore the clean new car while I was at an appointment one day. Isaac fell in love with the spaciousness and the automatic features and is now telling us regularly that he wants a minivan. He even offered that we could get another baby so we would need one.
Below, the boys always have fun alone with Dada. This time, he took them to a hardware store and they came home with their own rake and shovel, looking a little dangerous in the backseat.
But very happy with their new tools.
It was late February when Jonah started yelling, with perfect annunciation, "high-way!" anytime we drove anywhere. Ironically, Isaac used to always ask, until very recently, if we were going on the highway. Isaac was hoping we'd say no because he doesn't like to go too fast. However, Jonah's "highway" sounds like an order. He demands a ride on the fast road.
Home life is sweet, but school has been harder. In February, we also began dealing with a bully in Isaac's preschool class. It's been an interesting year, with 10 boys and only two girls, and most of those boys already four since last fall. Several are 10 months older than Isaac, and there has been a lot of hitting all year. I'd thought Isaac just did his own thing and stayed out of the aggression, but it turns out that one boy has been hitting him repeatedly, to the point that Isaac one day told me: "Mama, I don't want to go to school because I'm afraid someone is going to hit me."
Isaac doesn't hit anyone at school. He is, as he says, nice to everyone. I tell him that is just the way to be, and we've been working on ways to stay nice but be strong too. He felt enormous relief just from telling me - it had obviously been bothering him deeply for a long time. We are still working on helping him have the confidence to stand up for himself, but things are certainly better now that he's not carrying this burden alone anymore.
I hate that he has to learn about cruelty already, at age 3. But I realize he has to face this sometime, and I'm just glad he can do it from the safety and support of all our love.
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