Half Cleveland Dad

The Dawn of Friendship

The point of toddler play, at this moment, for Sweet Potato, is to negotiate “fun” with some other toddler.  It’s the rudimentary dawn of friendship.  Peak success is to be able to agree on some coordinated, simultaneous physical activity (usually running, jumping, or singing either Happy Birthday or If You’re Happy and You Know It) that leads to squealing and laughing gleefully.  It’s not easy, because you have to figure out how to coordinate the activity; that is, you have to agree to do something that’s fun for all of you, then work out the timing. 

Last week we sat for friends, and had their 2-year old Zydrunas come for dinner at five.  Z is a big, beatific toddler.  He’s always wearing something special; for a few months it was his bat ears that his mom had sewn for Halloween, but maybe now it’s a pair of sunglasses.

Sweet Potato had taken in the news of Z’s visit very quietly the day before, but by the time Z came over, she had developed a program of sharing and making friends; to wit, she would first share her bumpy balls with him (he would play with the green one, and she would have the red), and then she would show him her easel.  She was tremendously excited to implement her plan and was delivering the whole instruction manual as Z walked in the door with his parents.  Z you pay widt dhis bhall um gween won an dhen um an dhen I’w pay widt dhis won, ohkay, bhat ohkay you stehn oveh deah ohkay puddout yoah heands!

The ball sharing was easily negotiated, but the actual playing activity was never quite established, so the parties adapted the game by jumping and laughing in Sweet Potato’s fire truck together.  While they were jumping on the bed, Sweet Potato said, less hode heands.  Then they were holding hands, jumping, and laughing.  Then they climbed on the front of the bed, and jumped off, singly, then together.  The success of reaching an agreement -- doing something together -- creates more glee than parallel play does.  It’s also amazing to listen to toddlers talk and understand each other!

The easel idea kind of fell apart because the parties failed to reach agreement regarding the occupancy of the opposite sides of the easel, and simultaneous use of either side of the easel overloaded Sweet Potato’s capacity for sharing. 

The evening ended several hours later with all toddlers crying, but I mean that in the best way. 

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This week we went to a birthday party in some unbelievably remote suburb.  The toddler social experience peaked when they ran together with balloons across the living room.

It’s interesting how the peak only lasts a couple of runs.  Then, you know, someone cries, or something breaks, or some parent says it's time to go, or something else throws off the rhythm, the vibe, and you can’t get it back.

 

Thrills and Skills

This weekend Sweet Potato and I took the stroller out to the market.  Here are some of our stroller games:  (1) Battering Ram.  I hold Sweet Potato horizontally at my hip, like a battering ram, while she hangs onto the stroller handle, and we charge down the sidewalk.  It’s hard to steer and we veer all over the place.  When old ladies see us coming toward them they freeze and do that nervous old lady shaking-in-place thing.  (2) Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control.  Sweet Potato pushes the stroller herself.  Because she’s standing behind the seat back, she can’t see where it’s going.  Some youthful hipsters were drinking beer on their porch when Sweet Potato wanted to show off with some FCOOC; they thought it was cute at first, but ten minutes later we were still in front of their house.  (3)  Body Surfing.  Sometimes she likes to lie back in the stroller and look at leaves and clouds.  Yesterday we figured out that she can also lie on her stomach, facing forward.  I push fast.  Can she fall out?  Sure.  I gave her the camera and we made the two-year old’s version of one of those You Tube base-jumping videos.

 

This video is for you, Uncle John.  Warning to all others:  it's dull.

 

 

She is also kicking.  (1) It started a few months ago, atthe Natural History Museum, when she started pointing out various things like exhibits and pedestals; once she’d pointed a thing out, she would shout, kick it!, and then kick it!  (2) And last week I took her to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Beeb the Mom said she’d had good luck by starting with the don’t-touch admonitions early in the day, so for a couple of hours before we went, I was all, okay, big girl, you can look, but don’t touch; don’t touch; don’t touch.  We got there and got up to the contemporary stuff, and I’m keeping up the mantra, don’t touch, don’t touch.  She’s keeping her hands clasped at her chest, so I figure she’s doing all right.  She makes a bee-line to a Martin Puryear sculpture.  She bends toward it like she’s reading a label, and for a second I start to be proud of myself, how the little genius has such natural taste in … then, boom! she stands up and boots the thing with her plaid sneaker from Marshall’s.  She cried when I grabbed her, and said, I want to kick it!  I was squatting and holding her shoulders, and ... couldn't think of anything to say, so I just went with Jesus Christ!  Whatever.  Next time I'll tell her to kick the Richard Long instead.  That Puryear does look like a big ball, now that I think about it.  (3) So on our walk to the market yesterday Sweet Potato was walking on the tree lawns, narrating the experience to herself, including ad lib passages to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell, when she came to a tiny conifer.  I heard her say, dehr’s a lit-tol tree!. Then she booted it just like the Puryear piece, a determined sole-first stomp.  She did it again, and laughed, not like a little girl, but like a maniac -- Ha-HA!  Heh-heh-heh!  She’s turning into a hooligan!  After kicking the tree, though, she did put a flower on top of it.

 

We also watched a bunch of bugs in the back yard.  (1) A fuzzy white caterpillar swirled around in the grass.  (2) A fly had fallen into Sweet Potato’s dirty smoothie cup.  I fished it out and flicked it onto the steps, where we watched it buzz and clean itself with all its legs.  Sweet Potato tried to flick it, too, but by then it was sufficiently de-greased to fly away.  (3)  We watched a honey bee go from clover to clover in the lawn.  I said something about bees being busy working on the flowers.  Sweet Potato was sitting next to her dump truck, the kind of toy you’d use in a sandbox.  She said about the bee, I’m going to kill it with the dump truck.  I almost let her try, but told her instead that the bee had to go home and help its family.

 

Killing in our house is a term of art, and means taking a flying leap, feet-first or knees-first, onto someone who is supine, although lately there is a spin-around bottom-first variation in development.  I guess it also means wailing on someone with a toy.  Before Sweet Potato could talk we would roughhouse, and when she stomped me I would say, you’re killing me!  When she started to talk she would request the game Kyiou you?  It’s been known as killing ever since.  Rule:  When you are lying with mom and dad reading books before bed, it’s okay to kill dad a little bit, but don’t kill mom because she doesn’t like it.

 

A couple times this weekend Sweet Potato also unfastened her soggy diaper, whirled it, and flung it.  I remember an advertising image from the seventies, of sassy women twirling their bras.  Sweet Potato’s gesture is pretty much the same -- the direct gaze, the swinging hips -- except that then comes this heavy, urine-soaked number 4 dipe flying through the air at you.