7-28-10: Sock hop

I just watched Gavin, who is a bureau scavenger of the highest order, take one of his shoes out of the dresser, look at it, and then slowly bend over and methodically press the sole of the shoe onto the top of his foot. He held it there for a moment of intense concentration and then stood up and tossed the shoe aside in order to continue rummaging through the drawers -- the equivalent of shrugging his shoulders and saying, "Huh, this may be for my foot but I guess there's some kind of trick to it only mommies know."

The next thing he pulled out was a pair of socks, which he did not do the same thing with. Probably because for him socks are for taking off. It's difficult to keep socks on him, even when the situation requires it. Like today, for example. Stacy and I took him to Java Jungle and it says very clearly on very prominent signage that SOCKS ARE REQUIRED! They even sell socks there in case you forget yours. So Gavin had on his little boy sweat socks and was running and climbing all over the little toddler play area they have there (the play area for older kids is much bigger and more involved) and then just sat down and pulled at the toes of his socks until his little bare feet were free. "Sorry, Dude," I said, pulling a sock back on his enormously fat foot, "socks are required." Thankfully he accepted this with no fuss and went on playing. After awhile a few new kids showed up with three ladies who were obviously friends with each other. Only one of them had socks. One was barefoot and the other wore flip flops. To be clear, I'm not talking about the kids here. I'm talking about the grown women who probably know how to read. Now, I am no fan of bare feet. Gavin's bare feet are the only bare feet I love and it's a love that makes no sense but is real none the less. One of the reasons I don't do yoga is that I cannot stand the idea of being in a room with a bunch of barefoot people. The other reasons I don't do yoga include pretty much everything yoga involves. So I didn't like that this woman was walking around all naked-toed in the toddler area. But what I disliked even more was her friend with the flip flops on since they were clearly what she wore in from off the street and for all I know she'd walked through biohazard waste and they were all contaminated with Hepatitis C which lives surprisingly long outside of the body and for which there is no vaccine and no cure (I just finished reading a book about crime scene cleanup, which may have contributed to my discomfort). She even put her foot up on the side of the slide structure like, "Oh, hey, this is my living room and also my living room is disgusting." I wanted to be all, "Hey, SOCKS ARE REQUIRED, in case you didn't know." But I didn't say anything. For one thing, I don't like confrontation. For another, the sock requirement doesn't make a whole lot of sense if it's for sanitary reasons since you have to walk across the dirty linoleum in the snack area in order to even get to the toddler part. I mean, there's food on the floor and people are allowed to wear shoes in that part, so I guess what I'm saying is the whole thing is a Hepatitis outbreak waiting to happen, but Gavin had a really good time and was super cute. That's all that matters.

Speaking of confrontation, Gavin is trying out temper tantrums now. Feet kicking is involved. Also screeching, screaming, and various sounds of discontent. This just started in the last couple of days and I have yet to witness it full-on myself. Stacy is the bearer of this news. But rest assured, I will keep you up to date.

Also, I'm going to call it: Gavin's first word is "dog."  I know that I said earlier that his first word was "mama," and I guess it still might be, but "dog" is the only word that he has used consistently whenever seeing a dog or hearing a dog bark. I suppose "consistently" isn't true. He varies between what we think mean "dog" and "doggie," and who can blame him for the variance since we vacillate between "dog" and "doggie" ourselves when we're talking to him.When he says it the sounds are more like "da" and "dah-da" spit out in such a way that he kind of sounds like an angry German. Now a family with a dad in the house might hear these sounds as "dad" and "daddy," but "da" and "dah-da" are so tied to visual and aural dog cues that it can't mean anything else. I doubt very much that Henri, our dog, feels very moved by Gavin's canine-related auditory exclamations. In fact, the more excited Gavin gets about dogs -- and being able to say the word sure seems to have revved up his interest -- the more Henri thinks Gavin is insane and not good for anything besides flinging pieces of cheese and other assorted foodstuffs off of his highchair tray. That part Henri can live with.