Speaking of bonking into windows, the other day at the mall, he walked right into a very clean plate glass window. Luckily, he wasn't going too quickly. Mark and I were bad parents and had to hide our faces behind our hands.
Arthur has a new script in his Master Thespian Schtick. He'll place his fists over his eyes; if he's really into it, he'll tilt his head a little and yawn. When you ask him "Are you sleepy?" several times, he'll whip his hands away from his face and bug his eyes out to look very awake. Then he'll smile and laugh.
Arthur has pretty much gotten over Halloween -- now he waits for Mark to come home from work and ring the doorbell. But he really wants the beeswax candle on the mantle to be lit. Almost as much as he wants to eat a bannana. A typical conversation goes something like this.
Arthur (just finishing a banana): "'Nana."
John: "You just had a banana."
Arthur: "'Nana!"
John: "You only get two bananas a day."
Arthur: "'Naanna!"
John: "Bananas tomorrow."
Arthur: "Dandol."
John: "Arthur."
Arthur: "Dandol."
John (realizing Arthur didn't say "Dad-o"): "Oh. Candles at five o'clock."
Arthur: "Cock." (Points at mantle clock)
John: "Yes. That's the clock."
Arthur: "Dandol."
John: "Candles at five."
Arthur: "'Nana."
John: "Bananas tomorrow."
Arthur's latest new words are, car, tea, out, up, down, off, on, and bop.
Actually, bop has been around for a few weeks, and we're trying to teach him the word gentle. Arthur's favorite things to bop are the windows and the walls. And our new floor lamp. Usually with the heavest toy he can find. He's already put some long scores into the front door.
Let's see. After about five weeks, the bookshelves have been primed, painted and forced into position in our bedroom. There's scuff marks on the ceiling and my left index finger is still sore after five days from where I wholloped it with a hammer. Ninety-five percent of my books are in place. And I had to say to Mark, "Honey, you were as right as right can be; I have more books than I thought." So, there's an auxillary bookshelf in the opposite corner of our bedroom.
After I managed to fill the final portion of my five, eight-foot-long shelves with books, I got a sense of peace. The south wall of our bedroom is floor to ceiling books (except for the one two foot section that will become a desk). It reminds me of the old study in my parents house -- it had a bookshelf that was a eight foot wide, thirteen foot tall expanse of books (in fact, the planks in our house now are from that old shelf). I feel comforted knowing that I'm sleeping just three feet away from my large, consolidated library.
I think Mark's a little frightened.
Now the question becomes, what to put on the auxillary bookshelf -- Arthuriana, oversized fiction, or all those chatty little tomes by Dion Fortune?Arthur's picked up some of our house decorating; last week we hung some photos. Arthur saw and now he wants to tape his his flash cards onto the walls. Mark let him.
The other day Mark got a taste of the Mother Grizzly Treatment. He had given Arthur a paint brush to play with. I was talking on the phone at the time, so I was in one of those states where I was speaking to my Dad on the phone and watching events unfold in front of my eyes. Now that I know better, I will simply hang up and call folks back. But since this was the first time, I watched Arthur toddle around with a paint brush in his mouth while Mark walked away to do something else. Half of my brain predicted that Arthur would fall with a paint brush in his mouth while the other half was speaking to my Dad about tiles for a counter. When my prediction came true (apparently), my Dad got an earful.
Arthur fell down. In retrospect, I don't think he had the paint brush in his mouth, but from where I was sitting, it looked like he fell and jammed it into the back of his mouth. What my Dad heard was me saying, "Are you all right?" Arthur crying, and me telling Mark (in no uncertain terms) that giving Arthur a paint brush to play with was NOT a good idea.
Later that night I apollogized to Mark for yelling at him. In an odd way, Mark's OK with it. "Wow," he said, "I won't mess with your kid again," he said the next day.
Arthur is spontaneously identifying "E", "O", and the number "2" when we read to him. Mark is unnerved by this. "I don't wan't to raise an idiot/savant," he said. "I don't want to raise a savant/savant, either." I guess that he's afraid that Arthur will figure out how to drive the car next week.
Mark's worries about raising an idiot/savant don't prevent him from showing friends and co-workers how Arthur can identify an "E" or an "O", and the two of them have a routine.
Mark: (Making a "V" sign with his fingers) "Hey Arthur, how many fingers am I holding up?"
Arthur: "Two."
Mark: "Very good." (Brings his index fingers together.) "What's one plus one?"
Arthur: "Two."
Mark: "That's right! How many ears do you have?"
Arthur: "Two."
Mark: (Holding the "V" sign behind his head) "Wow, that's great; Now how many fingers am I holding up?"
Arthur: "Two."
Mark: "That's incredible; you're psychic."
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