'Nuther quote

I know this blog is all about Phoenix, but I think this quote pertains... yah?

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Candyman Can

I had a music box that played that song when I was a kid. And I luuuuved it almost as much as I luuuuved candy. Since the poor kid is allergic to food coloring, Phoenix's candy experiments have been more limited than he'd prefer. It also sadly curbs his innate addiction to peppermint (even our homemade play doh is scented with peppermint oil). After insisting the last blasted after-dinner-mint would "be fine, fine, fine, mama" but regretting it the next day, we decided to find some alternatives. We located a lovely online company with natural candies galore and P happily picked a few treats to try. The spearmints were a flop. The heart shaped lolly was a hit, aesthetically, but only deserved a few licks. The peppermints though... wow. It was a pretty large bag and he dedicated himself to finding its bottom.

True Consensual Living with a 3 year old is often challenging, but the dining table has never been a battleground for our beliefs (well, excluding the dancing on the table, naked, during dinner bit, which we hardly notice anymore, but definitely took some redefining of dinnertime expectations to get used to :) ). Ever since he outgrew his many food allergies (only 2 left!) P's always rounded out his diet, naturally and autonomously. His peppermint ice cream binges are followed by days of hard boiled eggs, chickpeas, kiwis, cantaloupe and cooked carrots. I know this to be true and the child is, well, Growing. But each new bag of Booty brings on the same binges for us both. Skip lunch, eat Pirate's Booty. Mom internally freaks. P then resumes normal eating habits and I remember why its so important for him to listen to his own body rather than my mouth. But for some reason, maybe because we were both sick, this candy binge seemed more ominous than the occasional handful of cookies. As he sniffled and looked pathetic he popped peppermint after peppermint into his sweet little mouth. This continued all day and into the next until the bag was gone. It was the first time since his allergies left him that I've actually considered stepping in to limit a food (selfish exception: chocolate bars at bedtime!), but I couldn't find any more peace with the message this would give him than with his peppermint intake. I held my tongue trying to remember to trust P and his process of learning. As the peppermints dwindled he was hardly even sucking them, just for a couple of seconds, and then spitting them onto a plate. It was like he was driven to get through them all, but didn't want to actually Eat them all. And when they were finished, he was back to his beans, telling me how much fun the peppermints were. I'm hoping I finally learned this lesson and next month's Booty bag will be just a blip on my mommy radar.

Here a bean, there a bean...

Seems like everyone (with wee ones at least) is sick this month. We made it through the winter pretty unscathed only to start playing musical germs for all of February. P and I have been inside since last week except for a trip to his dentist yesterday.

During this hibernation period, P cycles through his toys efficiently. Animals one day, trains the next, cars the next, kitchen and shop following that. Then it was bean bin day. The day at home loomed ahead. All of the familiar toy faces had Me wishing for a new toy, or a sneezeless trip into the city. I Rarely talk on the phone. Like, once a month. The price just isn't worth it. P is frustrated by my unavailability and creates complicated situations to extract my attention. But on this particular day it seemed worth it, the penance of mess for the prize of adult interaction. Once P was peacefully settled into his bean bin I called his Aunt B (Beth) and we caught up on each other's last month. Then Devilish glee filled the air. I popped my head into the playroom to see beans hitting the ceiling above a small child enamored with the mess, the sound, the gravity, the motion, the freedom of it all. He looked at me with that waiting face, the one that says, "Shit?" And all I could do was smile. That was all he needed to go on, flinging every last bean (all 25 bags of them), well, everywhere.

Turns out, it was just what we both needed. The monotony was broken as we poured beans on each other's heads and bounced them off of the wall. Our trucks were unusually fun to race with so many boulders to bounce over. Just running and kicking them (the mess was so bloody big, why not?) every which way was intoxicating.

The next morning was a bit like a hangover though. Beans are fantastically difficult to pick up. Too small to grab, too big to vacuum, too ornery on a carpet to sweep. I had occasionally wondered the previous day if he'd want to repeat this experiment very often, but I think the two hours of cleaning will probably work as a natural deterrent. Then again, he may forget by next February...

Baby Brother takes a ride

Torture

So I was helping remove a small splinter from P's wrist today (per his request) when he giggled "Mama, you're Toooorturing me!"

Where did that word enter his vocabulary?! Then it hit me. Baby Brother.

The child couldn't have picked a more apt name for his recent side kick. He explains the world to Baby Brother, constantly corrects him, takes him Everywhere (except bed and bath), and, well, tortures him. They play nicely together (well, BB is nice), as long as I'll do BB's voice. If not, P forgets his angelic side and yells "Make Baby Bwover talk. MAMA! Make. Him. Talk!!!" Its February in Brooklyn and we need some winter diversions. P's really been missing his little tractor, so he made a racetrack on the carpet and sweetly took BB for a ride. I was a little aglow in the brotherly comaraderie until he shut BB in the bathroom door. Like a prison guard enjoying his job, he demanded "This hurts? Ahhh, This Reeary Hurts?" Yah. That's more like what I remember from brothers and my childhood :)

Friday at the Transit Museum

We met some playgroop buddies at the Transit Museum Friday. P adores these kids, despite the fact that he generally requires surgical attachment to my hand to interact with them :) A couple of other kids in his Tuesday group are on the young side too and they keep tabs on their mamas too, so I have hope this is a normal stage and I won't accompany him to college. I remember him at not yet 2, running through the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. He was a dasher back then, not to mention having perfected the idea of continuous motion. Off he trotted, into the sunset. E and I looked at each other and dove behind a tree. Occasional peeks from our hiding space showed no signs of his pace slowing (this is a fully fenced facility, for my devoted readers (all 3 of you) who may be worrying). Ethan finally raced off to keep the kid from visiting Jersey on his own. Fast forward a year and, well, at least there isn't any dangerous dashing :)

The dialogue from the below video (one devoted reader has hearing difficulties (hi mom!)):
P: Mama, get in this bus (I'm apparently past the 5 inches in social situations rule)
M: Are you driving it? (Validating distraction)
P: I'm not... Sir, what do you want? (strokes the bus) What do you want sir? (One of his favorite games on the bus, he sells ice cream out the side window.

Playgroop update

P went through a period of playgroop strike, but has been excited to go each time this month. Its such a wonderful group of kids and moms, I'm glad he's starting to feel more comfortable. Our hosts, the twins, have erected a "train station" in their living room out of an enormous, and I mean Huge, box. Their creative mother added lovely curtains to the ticket window, doors and windows and there is a plexiglass tunnel shoot that enters the roof. Its the ideal February get-a-way for the short set. So last week, it "snowed" in the train station. Billions (ok, maybe millions) of soft poms were poured through the shoot onto the laughing heads of our children. Of course, my camera was sitting at home. Suffice it to say, it was Precious. They helped pick up the poms to the common refrain of "do it again!!!" After many snowstorms we eventually placed the poms in the middle of a parachute and bounced them all over the room. (I know, the host is an Angel).

This memory alone could keep P jazzed for playgroop for months :) Leslie may be unearthing poms from her living room for about that long...

Children's Museum of Manhattan

We joined P's buddy Malek and his mama at the Children's Museum of Manhattan on Friday. This place is Amazing. P Loves the letter eating dragon. He's focused on it the last few trips, but this time he really spread his love everywhere - for Five Hours!

It was busy, as it always is, the place is unbelievably popular (Gwen Stefani's kid was in the throng). Never a big fan of leaving my side in kid infested crowds, P attached himself to my hand for about the first 4 hours and then found his independence during the last hour. (I believe this squarely fits the "hard to transition" label for 3 year olds...)

He dressed as a fireman and drove the fire truck for ages. He played shop with some other 3 year olds. The sand table was practically a spiritual experience for him because he's missed his dirt pile so much this winter. We built foam block walls and crashed them and pushed and pulled millions of knobs and dials. He found a porcupine puppet that he fell in love with. Perched on his shoulder, he chatted with it, grabbing it for the occasional hug. At one point he looked very seriously into the porcupine's eyes and declared "I'll never forget you. I'll always remember you." The visiting Greek mythology section was a highlight for P, but he was pretty disappointed Theseus and the Minotaur weren't featured. Fortunately the climbable Trojan Horse redeemed the show and he and Malek enjoyed scaling it's insides.

We stayed in the city for dinner to meet E. Tired little P happily ordered a chocolate cheesecake brownie with coconut ice cream to start. Normally a very healthy eater, he has been on an enormous ice cream kick this week (we found some peppermint gelato without food coloring last week and it was a veritable ice cream diet for a few days there). Ah well, at least he's feeding his brain...

Baby brother at the beach

P and I visited the beach and aquarium on Thursday. It was a bit chilly, but he was pretty thrilled to see the ocean again. He and baby brother romped in the sand until P's hands were frozen and he was ready to see the sharks. The "museum" was delightfully vacant of school groups and P had the front seat at each window. He quickly became captivated by the piranhas- they seemed equally drawn to P, moving to whatever side of the tank he was on. Their skin was glittery and gorgeous and P wanted an explanation. I made a silly suggestion about spilled glitter and he decided the obvious answer was bubbles from the aerator stuck to their scales when they swam through the air stream :) He waited forever to watch one of these omnivores chow on another fish, but apparently we missed their feeding time .

We did watch the feeding time for the Papa walrus and the penguins though. He chatted it up with a nice man from Egypt - who was enthralled by P's name. And he really enjoyed the education lady's chat about various fish and coral. Still no go on the sea lion performance - he's always interested initially, but something about it freaks him out every time. We read books all the way home - our usual approach to sitting still on the sub - with Phoenix relishing the death of his naps and stories of sharks and piranhas.

As a side note - today he told me that when he was dead, before he came to this life, he dreamt of lemon flavored lollies :)

99 bottles...

So Ethan sang Puff the Magic Dragon to Phoenix a couple weeks ago. And the child is obsessed. We've made play-doh Puffs, felt Puffs, talked about Puff, you can usually find me answering to the name of Puff, and of course, we've sung Puff till we're blue in the face. Top to bottom, P loves that song. Its his first song to really love other than his baby lullaby (that he still calms to almost instantly - wish he would have done that as a small babe!!) And the first kid's song he's sung. The filmed version below is a little, well, filmed :) He's self-aware and goes much slower than usual and he even tries to throw in a voice quaver at the end like his papa's vibrato :) He's currently singing it to his trains as I type and I think I've heard much more than 99 stanzas of the thing today! I need a beer...

Got giggle?

P was practicing his fake laugh this morning during breakfast. (A boy sported a hearty fake one at a marionette show last week and P's been busy appropriating it.) His guffaw got me giggling and then his laugh went real and we really got going. There's nothing like happy tears in your eyes at 7 in the morning! Or a three year old's silliness. Side note: P's teeth haven't gone the way of the Beverly Hillbillies, the mouth decor is chocolate chip pancakes (hey - they have flax seed meal and oats thrown in!). And I apologize for the Blair Witch like shake, I was chuckling too hard to hold things steady :)