Eugenious

Dear Sylvan,Because your dear Mum didn’t write you a letter last month doesn’t mean she hasn’t been thinking about the wonder you are — and the screaming bag of rubber bones you can be when your world goes awry, in your humble opinion. Your past two months have taken you into the realm of little boy rather than toddler. You’re getting too tall for your trousers, you have very real whims and expectations, and you’ve become a pint-sized Pete Seeger with a fascination for musical instruments that exceeds even the appeal of construction vehicles.

The three big events of the last month were: Gramma Mia’s visit, your first stage performance, and moving to another house (which we’re still doing, but which has thus far impacted you by making all of your bedroom furniture disappear and giving you the opportunity to dance in the back of a moving truck).

I’ll come back to these, but just so you don’t think I totally shirked my responsibilities, I did start a letter last month:

Last week, we visited your Grandma Diana and Grandpa Tom in Virginia. Also in attendance at Camp Diana were: Aunt Stephanie and Uncle Chris, along with your cousins Hanna and Sebastian; and Grandma Diana’s brother, Uncle Brian, with his wife and son, Aunt Tammy and cousin Nicholas. That’s two cousins just over 2 1/2, one a few months shy of 2, and one born last August. While the madness lodged itself right between my shoulder blades and my eyes, your Grandma Diana dug it. She encouraged greeting card-making, T-shirt painting, and exploratory hikes in the woods.

It was a treat to observe your interactions with Hanna. You, Hanna, Uncle Christian, and I went over to Ivy Creek mere minutes after we flew into Charlottesville. After attending toddler storytime, complete with touchable turtle shells, a book about creatures that lay eggs (“Spiders,” you said, when the storyteller asked who had laid the cottony mass of eggs in the illustration. It didn’t seem that obvious to me.), and a nature walk, you and Hanna found the lawn, studded with pungent onion grass. You danced, sang, ran after each other, had conversations with each other about benches, and fell to the ground, sometimes on top of each other. Uncle Chris and I didn’t feel compelled to “manage” you at all. You easily worked through problems, especially if we laughed when one of you took the other out.

I told you last Sunday morning that, the next time you saw me, Wednesday night, I’d bring Gramma Mia with me. At lunchtime, though, I managed to escape and see you, and you said, looking behind me, “Where’s Gramma Mia?” I called today from the Dallas airport, and your Daddy tried to get you to talk to me. You said, “NO! I want Gramma Mia.” Ah, well, second fiddle. It’s okay; I know you’ll shun me for all of your teenage years, too.

You now recognize most letters of the alphabet in upper-case, plus some punctuation, the exclamation point.

That’s it for last month’s letter.

As for this past month’s excitement:

Gramma Mia and you were inseparable for a couple of weeks. Despite the fact that, when you were under a year old, she encouraged me to put you in a playpen so I could get things done, she rarely left your side during this visit. You appreciated the attention. You’d climb into bed with her in the morning to talk about your dreams, sing some songs, and eat the trail mix “hidden” in her carry-on. Throughout the day, you and she sang songs, snacked on usually forbidden fruits (Twizzler pieces in the trail mix?), and generally missed each other when you were apart. Thank you, Gramma Mia!

Gramma Mia was very sad to miss your first performance on stage. While she was here, you and I received an invitation to dance with five other Moms and their children, aged 2 weeks to 6 years, in Lane Community College’s annual faculty show. I asked you if you wanted to participate, and you said, “Yeah, I’m gonna dance like an armadillo. And a lion.” Gramma saw your rehearsals, all two of them: you cried “I wanna go home,” with snot and tears running down your face, for one of them; you danced like a lion, complete with roaring, during the other. But she missed your finest performances, unfortunately.

The piece had actual choreography in it, with all of the Moms dancing their own movement phrases along with the choreographer’s phrase with little ones either in arms, partnering (6-year-olds can partner), or doing their own thing (you). Two microphones were set up, one where each Mom answered a few questions about our dance lives and the other where we talked about our kids. The first night, you said, into the mic, “I wanna get down now.” You danced with me, after a fashion, that night, by staying close and bowing under my legs if they ventured off the floor. The second night, you were doing your own thing, rolling around and running. I went to the mic and told everyone that you liked drums tonight; you had really appreciated watching the drummer and electic guitarist jam backstage before the show. You ran over to me because you had something else you wanted to say. “What else do you like, Sylvan?” “Guitars and bananas!” The audience laughed.

While you’ve never been a “joiner,” now you really shy away from any organized activity. You don’t want an adult with some lengths of foamy pool noodles to tell you how you can balance them; you’d rather take those tubes and bang them against the wall to experiment with the sounds they make. Good little inquiring engineer.

At your last parent-teacher conference, your teacher confirmed that your two-year-old classroom has few scheduled, altogether activities or curriculum. What?! Where’s the algebra? You 2-year-olds have the freedom to explore your world independently, making up games and manipulating objects on your own terms. Aside from suggestions, comforting, and some discipline, your teachers don’t interfere. In fact, your father even told me about a kindergarten study that confirmed that 5-year-olds who were pushed into learning to read, rather than engaging in the structured play that was the intention of the first kindergartens, didn’t learn how to control their impulses. There’s VALUE in playing — and in making up and following your own rules and figuring out how to compromise.

I’ll work on encouraging your independence and curiosity rather than fitting you into the classes for which we’re undoubtedly overscheduled.

Love,

Mommy

This entry was posted in the categories Julie, Sylvan by julie on Tuesday, 13 May 2008, 15:15. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.