Like Mother Like Son

Um, I think I dressed up like this for The Rocky Horror Picture Show once.

 

 

Crossover Post: Teaching the Baby

Well, I tried really hard to get footage of the Bug trying to teach Josie to clap -- he said "Clap!" several times, and grabbed her hands and tried to make her clap -- but I missed it. By the time I got the camera on, he was teaching her the parts of the body: "Head, eyes, BUTTON!!, knees and toes." It's still pretty good.

Bug Conversations: Funny?

Ben is busy exploring the bounds of what is funny and not funny. When he does something that really makes us laugh he says "Pretty funny?" and will repeat that over and over until we tell him that yes indeed it is funny.

He will do this even if he doesn't know why we are laughing. For example, last night, I asked him if he was ready to go to bed, and he said "No!" Which is, as his two-year-old right, one of his favorite words. So my father said: "You've got to trick him, you should ask: 'Hey Ben, do you mind going to bed?'" And Ben promptly looked at Dad and said "Yes."

Which of course made us all laugh very hard and Ben was very pleased with himself: "Very funny!"

Unfortunately he doesn't always get it right. Last night he screamed along with a song that was playing on the stereo and scared the heck out of Josie -- she began to bawl inconsolably and Ben got the biggest grin on his face. "Pretty funny!" he said. And I said, "No, not funny."

He kept grinning, though.

On the other hand, he does seem to be learning a bit: Every morning when he crawls out of his crib and into bed with me at 6 AM, he says very solemnly: "NOT funny."

A Crossover Post: Conversations Between Siblings

This is a picture of the second conversation that Ben had with Josie. Mostly Ben talks to us about Josie, or pats her hard on the head and yells "Okay! Okay!" to try to get her to stop crying (which, as you can imagine, has just the opposite effect). But he has twice now tried to engage in dialogue directly with her and explain to her about the world.

The first conversation--when she was about 2 weeks old -- was when Ben tried to tell her about the main crush in his life and it went like this: "Music Class! Miss Amy!"

The second conversation took place when I had laid Josie down on the floor on a pillow, and Ben cozied up next to her. Her arm flew out and hit his shoe, and he said "Shoe!" and then proceeded to point out a whole host of body parts. He spent a good five minutes saying things like "Knee," "head," "hair," and "fingers" to her.

. . . and then he picked up her pacifier shoved it in her mouth hard, and made her cry again. Oh, well.

Buckethead!

In honor of his hero, Mickey, from Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen

He dons the bucket, climbs on a chair, and cries, "Quiet Down There!"

Sayings of The Bug

Phrases we've heard lately from El Benjarino:


"Do it!"
"Leave it!"
"I want to!" (which of course means both "I want to" and "I don't want to" - the negation concept has yet to be expressed)
"Call Daddy"
"Call Mommy"
"Call Gramma"
"Call Papa"
"Josie cwying"
"JosieUp!"
"Ben socks shoes"
"My compeeler" (computer)
"ABCD"
"Pictures of Ben?"  (when he wants to look at photos on the compeeler or camera)

Halloween!