Friday, Dec. 9: Seriously, David. No.

Two of Gavin's favorite books right now are No, David! and David Gets In Trouble by David Shannon. Personally, I'm not such a big fan of these books. In case you're unfamiliar, David is a little boy who does many naughty things and in No, David! is scolded by his mother and in David Gets In Trouble repeatedly denies culpability for his transgressions. In the later book, there is a page that features David trotting off to school clad in underwear and his mom trailing behind him waving a pair of pants. The text on the page reads, "I forgot!" Taking our cue from this book, Gavin and I have played the "I forgot" game in which he runs around the house in his diaper and I chase him with a pair of pants. It's good fun. Sadly, most of the things Gavin has now seen David do repeatedly in the book have inspired imitation of bad behavior. Especially chewing with his mouth open and putting his finger in his nose. I do not find thesethings cute. I could, perhaps, find all of these things forgivable if it wasn't for the profoundly disturbing image of David cowering under a sink with a bar of soap crammed in his mouth next to the text, "But Dad says it!" It's just such a horrible thing to do to a child. I've taken to skipping over that page altogether when Gavin and I read the book because I don't want to have to explain it to him. For one thing, he doesn't even know what swearing is (not that he hasn't heard some in his time) and he certainly wouldn't understand that the consequence for repeating something he heard a grown-up say in front of him is to be forced to suck on a bar of Irish Spring. I keep meaning to glue the pages together so that we never have to look at it again. I know I can't shield Gavin from every unpleasantness on earth, but, like I said, I don't want to have to explain to him that David is eating soap because his parents are assholes. 

And I know I would have to explain it because Gavin is hard core into the "Why" stage right now. I know this is something that a lot of parents find frustrating. On the one hand, it's amazing that your child is so curious about the world and so interested in learning about it and is looking to you as his guide. On the other hand, it'd be nice to have something to eat without having to answer questions like, "Why you eating hummus? Why you eating pita? Why you eating hummus and pita together? Why you fold it [the pita] like a taco? Why you dip it? Why you not use a plate?" Jesus, kid, let me live my life. 

He really doesn't miss a thing. In fact, Gavin asks me questions about things that I didn't even realize I did or said. For example, we were in the car and a truck pulled in front of us without much warning and I must have made some kind of verbal response because I was surprised and did have to put on my brakes quickly. A moment later Gavin said, "Why you say?" And I said, "I didn't say anything." A beat later, "Why you say, 'Oh'?" I assured him that I said no such thing. It took me a minute to realize what he was talking about and then I realized that it must have been when the truck non-incident happened. So I just said I made a noise of surprise because the truck wasn't watching where he was going. This answer apparently satisfied him, though I assure you there have been many more moments like this. I apparently make a lot of unintentional noises. 

While he can't read yet, Gavin can consistently recognize a handful of capital letters. G for Gavin, D for Mama D, S for Stacy/Shelly, M for Mommy, L for Laura, A for Amanda, H for Henri, B for Brian (in order of consistent recognition). So that's A B D G L M O S. C'mon Words for Friends addicts. What you got? Gavin is especially good at recognizing G. As 'tis the season and all, we've been getting a lot of packages via "the P.S. man" and he's able to look at the shipping label and figure out who the package is for based on whether the first name starts with a G, D, or S. He gets very excited when it's a G package. 

It seems like everyday Gavin is singing a new song. He sings a lot now, which I love. His singing is pretty tuneless and no-frills, but he's often very serious about it. Perhaps it's his low register. Favorites include "Ring Around the Rosie" (which I've taught him to say is about the Black Plague, even though that may not actually be true), "Old MacDonald" (often I hear him singing to himself, "With a moo moo there, and a moo moo there, and a moo moo over there"), "Itsy Bitsy Spider" (he sometimes sings this in Spanglish), "Wheels on the Bus" (the Kyle Andrews version is quite tolerable), and some other songs that I don't quite recognize. He sings a Chuggington song, which basically consists of him singing, "Always be Chuggington," over and over. It isn't the theme song and since he's only ever watched the show in Spanish, I don't know where he might have heard or learned this song. I hope he made it up because that's pretty adorable. 

So, yeah, Chuggington. And Thomas the Train, and La Casa de Mickey Mouse, and Cars. All of the overly commercialized cartoon franchises I hoped he would somehow be "too cool" for. But he isn't. And I'm not. Stacy and I just went on a trek to the Payless store in Northland Mall to get him a pair of Rayo McQueen light up tennis shoes. He loves them. Which means it's that much easier to get shoes on his feet in the morning, which makes it all worth it. I hope. In potty related news, he's peed several times on the big potty, now, though no poo. We thought we'd let him test run his big boy underpants (Thomas the Train underpants, no less) in the house. He was very excited and was showing them off, with our encouragement, to Granny and Paul via Skype. Unfortunately he peed in them as we were all oohing and ahhing over what a big boy he was. He was pretty upset. Hopefully this doesn't set him back to infancy. The other day Gavin and I went over to Megan's and he played with Olive. At one point Ollie was trying to show him some kind of toy but she couldn't reach it. I heard Gavin said, "You need help?" Presumably Ollie said yes because he said, "I'll help you." He then moved a box of toys and an end table to get to the toy and he handed it to her saying, "Here you go, Ollie." It was a super sweet moment. The kind that make me think, "Looks like we must be doing some things right."