Corwin needs new clothes for the fall. His long pants are all size 5 and they’re getting too short for him. Mom went out and bought him some new clothes and discovered that Corwin is the slowest dresser / undresser in the entire world. According to Mom, something trying on new clothes in the store involves singing, although she didn’t have the mental fortitude to investigate why it was required. Of course, I wasn’t surprised.
I got some new paper for Charles, who is quite fond of drawing. Charles has also learned how to climb up on the changing table by himself. We’re making a little progress on the potty training - we can keep Charles on the potty by reading to him, although he still doesn’t actually use the potty. But one step at a time.
Charles has discovered the hose since we’ve been back. He has is now big enough to work the sprayer by himself. The first time out I used set the sprayer to hold the handle down but the next time Charles was able to spary as soon as I turned the water on. He basically stands on the front porch and sprays everything within reach, although I try to convince him to avoid Dad and the front door.
He’s become a bit less hydrophobic as well. Last year when he tried it, if he accidentally squirted himself he’d drop it and run crying. This year I watched him spray himself full in the face. He didn’t like it much, but he figured out he could stop it by letting go of the handle and then aiming the sprayer somewhere else so he was able to recover and continue to simulate a local rain storm.
Corwin seems to have had a good first week of school. We, of course, have no idea what’s going on because Corwin is as communicative as ever about his day. We do know that there is a child named “Corbin” in his class. Corwin claims that Corbin looks like him but can’t remember what color hair Corbin has. The teacher, not surprisingly, gets them mixed up sometimes. I ask Corwin if he ever gets the two of them mixed up but Corwin claims that he always knows which is which.
Corwin and Charles were playing together this morning, which is kind of unusual. Even more out of the ordinary is that Corwin was the primary instigator. Charles was having fun chasing Corwin until I intervened (on Mom’s orders) to have Charles do his morning stuff. He’d already snuck down the stairs once (a minor infraction as he just grabbed a car and then came back up). While I was putting Charles through his paces, Corwin kept yelling “CHARLES!” from various locations so that Charles would spin around and laugh at him. This was particularly interesting while Charles was brushing his teeth, although I don’t think all that much toothpaste was scattered about.
On the way back from the vacation, we had to stop for some gas and potty breaks. Mom announces this and Corwin responds in a somber voice with “And we refresh ourselves, we can continue on with our journey”. Mom and I looked at each other, thinking that it was a bit florid for Corwin. Then he pipes up in a bubbly voice “I’ve always wanted to say that!”. Well, Corwin, all Dad can say is don’t peak too soon.
Charles and I were in the basement this morning when I noticed a particular order in his presence. The resulting conversation went like this:
Dad: “Charles, you need a new diaper”
Charles: “Why?”
Dad: “You made poopy in your pants”
Charles: “Why?”
Dad: “I don’t know. Why did you make poopy in your pants?”
Charles: ” ‘cause”
We’ve been trying harder to potty train Charles and as a result he won’t even sit on the potty for more than a few seconds anymore. He just doesn’t see the point. In fact, Mom tells me that Charles has a new talent - he can climb up on to the changing table by himself. This evening he pooped his pants and headed up to the changing room and climbed up on the table where Mom found him. He seems to prefer that to actually going poop on the potty. I suspect that we will have another episode like we did with Corwin where we had to confine a tearful boy to the potty until he managed some activity. Alhough stressful that was a breakthrough for Corwin. Within a couple months he refused to even consider wearing diapers and wouldn’t believe that he ever had.
Charles has become somewhat resistant to eating out over the last few weeks. What happens is that he’s fine until something goes wrong, at which point he becomes inconsolably distraught. The first time I really noticed this was when Mom refused to let Charles have a lollipop before dinner. Charles threw himself to the ground and assumed the fetal position, crying piteously. We had to leave him down there and he eventually fell asleep. We thought it was Charles being tired. How wrong we were…
The very next time we went out Charles did the same thing, although I can’t remember what set him off. Vacation was the worst because as noted, Charles managed to knock Mom’s iced tea all over the place while going fetal. Mom was just holding him when the Wrong Thing happened and *wham!* Charles’ head rocketed in to the table and in to the cup.
Hopefully it’s just the terrible twos, as Charles comes to grip with the fact that there are forces and actors in the world that are not part of him. He was a little better at day care today. He played with his car the whole time but not in the same part of the room and he ate lunch, so that’s a step forward. I didn’t get him in till 10 and Mom picked him up around 2:30 and he had a nap so he was only there, awake, for about 3 hours. I’ll need to start shift earlier because of Corwin’s schedule in the days ahead but slowly is for the best. Charles just doesn’t handle change well.
Charles and Corwin both had their first day back at school / daycare today. Corwin had an OK day, although as usual he refused to discuss it. His massive set of school supplies was successfully stored at the school - he didn’t bring any of it home.
Charles did not have such a good day. The report we got was that he was basically OK unless someone spoke to him, at which point he would start crying. I took him in late and Mom picked him up early to minimize his first day but it was still a bit rough on him. Hopefully he’ll adjust - he was doing well before he left for the summer. It’s change that really sets Charles off.
Mom gave Charles a a bath tonight. Mom cleverly took Charles upstairs before informing him of the purpose of the trip. Once Charles realized his fate he began to protest. Mom, the cruelest parent, was unmoved. However, once Charles had had his face and hair washed he was actually ok with being in the bathtub. It may be that his vacation experiences helped him overcome some of his fears. I have been taking him out immediately because he has been still struggling to get out when I finished. Mom reports that was not even upset about being soaped up. I can hope that Charles is finally recovering.
We’re back from our little end of the summer vacation. I’ll try to get up some pictures up this week although we don’t have that many tales of the boys.
We cut it close — tomorrow is Corwin’s first day of first grade at his new school. Mom will have to take him over in person because the list of school supplies is so large that Corwin can’t actually carry it all. Mom stuffed his backpack full and there’s still another bag of stuff to carry.
On the way back from the vacation we stopped at a Mall (Mom insisted!) and looked for Mom things I’ll write about in a later post. The important bit here is that Corwin got new shoes. He’s been wearing sandals all summer but now it’s time to go back to shoes. Corwin got some slip on shoes since apparently the zippered kind was just too much hassle for him. So he’ll be looking spiffy which is only right for our high style boy.
Charles will be more interesting. He’s going back to daycare after a summer at home. He doesn’t react well to change in the first place and so this is likely to be somewhat traumatic. The daycare wanted to move him up from the Two’s room to the next age room (“Green” or “Purple”) but he needs to be potty trained for that and Charles is just not there. There’s a little bit of hope. Charles is starting to get upset about having poop in his diaper. He’s started to bug Mom or Dad about it before we notice. I’m hoping that’s progress although I’m not sure how much it helped with Corwin.
Yesterday and today, Charles was eager to leave the room in the morning. Yesterday it turned out he wanted to go down to the arcade, but today he actually was up for putting on his swim diapers to go down to the water. Last night Mom had tried to take Charles to the outside shallow pool but it was being closed. Charles starting screaming in frustration so naturally we thought that he was eager to try it out this morning. But it was not to be. Charles didn’t want to go outside (he never did try the outside pool) and he wasn’t very interested in the water in the indoor pool either.
However, I had given Corwin a glow stick to carry with him on the yellow run in the dark, which he thought was cool but he got bored with it after a couple of runs so Charles inherited the glow stick. Although it was hard to see in the light, Charles thought it was very cool and spent the rest of the morning swooshing it through the water.
In the afternoon we went in to Lake Geneva for some shopping. Corwin wasn’t very happy about it. He begged us for a boat ride, but those were 1-2 hour excursions on a lake with uninteresting geography. I pointed out that the last time Corwin begged us for a boat ride he hated it when we actually went out on the water (that was in Chicago last summer, the water taxi from the Sched Aquarium to Navy Pier). Then we walked by the small beach on the lake and we couldn’t go there, either, because we didn’t have our swim suits. Corwin was willing to drive back to the hotel and get them.
During lunch Charles had his usual restaurant fit. This time he tried to go fetal while sitting on Mom’s lap and managed to tag Mom’s iced tea, spilling it all over the table and floor.
In the evening, after dinner, Corwin declined to go out for one last trip to the water park. Despite his repeated claims that we had told him we’d be there for an entire week, it looks like the vacation was about the right length.
We spent most of the day in the water, stopping briefly for lunch and dinner.
Charles found the electronic game arcade near the water park and spent some time in there looking at the games. He liked sitting on Mom’s lap at the Daytonna racing game just watching and pretending to drive. Mom finally broke down and fired up a game for Charles, at which point he refused to drive.
We went over to the main building to another set of outdoor pools and spent a long, lazy afternoon there. Charles fell asleep and even Dad nodded off for a bit. Charles did splash in the water before his nap so it wasn’t a total loss for Charles. Corwin spent his time swimming in the deep pool. The main building was next to a large pond. Mom and Corwin went out on a paddle boat around the pond which Corwin actually enjoyed till the end (I had figured he’d last about 5 minutes).
At dinner we were playing a question game and the question came up, “what is the largest number Corwin can count to?”.
Dad: “You can’t count to one million one after counting to one million?”
Corwin: “Oh. I’d be too tired to count anymore.”
Dad [to Mom]: “I have to write that up!”
Corwin: “I don’t want that on the Internet!”
I decided to write it up anyway - I’ve already lost one story about Corwin, swimming and lockers at Corwin’s insistence and this story isn’t nearly as embarassing.
After dinner Corwin went back to the water park. Eventually I had to save him from drowning. He was trying to get out of the pool but kept slipping back underwater because he was too tired to haul himself out. I pulled him out and sent him to bed.
We left around 9:30 from the house and headed up to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. According to the map it is a 4½ hour trip. With two boys, stops and what not it was about 6½ hours, which isn’t a bad stretch factor. Corwin, because of his number fetish never asks “are we there yet?”. He asks, “how long till we get there?”. Although he was persistent early on, he gradually lost interest in asking. Charles was a good boy about traveling all the way up - not a single complaint. Of course, he’s a car freak who thinks a good time consists of riding off in the car with a parent but if you can’t get some mileage out of your kids mental oddities, why reproduce?
Finally we arrived. The destination was a resort with an attached mini-water park. The registration area was one floor up from the base of the water park with windows looking out on it. Corwin walked up to the windows and asked “Are we staying here? I must be dreaming! I want to come here every vacation!”. Oh yes, how I will torture him with that last statement years from now!
We immediately changed in to swim trunks and headed off to the water park. It was half indoor, half outdoor. It had two water runs, one for inner tubes (“green”) and the other one just straight bodies (“yellow”). The latter was also completely enclosed in opaque plastic so that the run was almost entirely pitch dark with just a few light holes near the end. Corwin did both runs and I was surprised that he liked the yellow run but after the first time he went up for another trip.
Charles wasn’t in such a good mood. He came down to the water reluctantly even though the place had a wonderful setup for small children. There was a large pool with one side that sloped up at a shallow angle so toddlers could get in and out without having to go over an edge. The deepest area was about 18” deep so Charles could get his head out of the water even on his hands and knees. It had three small slides with running water set in a little faux cave. Outside was another 18’-24” deep pool with two water slides about 4’ tall. The other side of the building had a 5’ pool suitable for older children, plus one deep pool inside. Really a nice set up. But it was not appreciated by Charles. He mainly sat in about 6” of water running a car around under water. There was also a swing in the shallow pool and Charles spent some time in that as well. I did manage to get Charles to go down the slide but only if I sat next to him and went down as well (one of the slides in the shallow pool was wide enough for two). I think Charles had an OK time.
Giving Charles a bath is a new adventure every time these days. The problem is that he’s a smart boy and figures things out (I suspect that he must spend the day pretending to watch TV when he’s really plotting out schemes to bedevil me). Today he realized that he needed to get me to move back from the edge of the tub in order to escape. I thought he was adjusting and wanted to some personal space but it was all just a scam. The moment I was back from the edge Charles was hopping out.
It does appear that what really upsets Charles is water on his face or hair. When I started washing his hair he got upset and asked for a towel. I thought he wanted to get his face but he did that and then started working vigorously on his hair, so much that I had to wet it again in order to put on the shampoo. Of course, Charles is crying or screaming the entire time but with a bit of effort I manage to get him cleaned up.
When I let him out he wants a towel immediately to dry his face and hair. He then proceeded to pee on the bath mat. I managed to avoid splash on the walls and got him on the potty before he finished so I could tell him what a good boy he was for using the potty.
After all of that trauma we went off to get Charles a new diaper and clothes. Charles spent most of the time working on his hair with a towel.
What I’m wondering is how Charles will do on our vacation because we’re going some place where most of the fun is water related. If Charles is unwilling to have wet hair then it should be an interesting experience for everyone.
Today was Erica’s last day with the boys for the summer. School starts for Corwin on Monday and we’re heading out for short vacation starting tomorrow.
Corwin and Charles made (with just a little bit of help from Mom and Dad) made Erica a set of pentominoes from small wooden craft cubes. Corwin helped glue them together and Charles did the painting. Erica was overwhelmed with emotion when she saw the all of the result of literally minutes of work by the boys.
This evening when I got home, I asked Corwin about his last day with Erica. He couldn’t remember it. It must have just been too traumatic, knowing that it was all over.
The family went shopping last weekend to pick up Corwin’s school supplies. We ended up at Walmart. Mom sent me off with Charles to look at toys while she dealt with Corwin.
Charles spent most of the time looking at cars. He was having a hard time trying to decide which car he wanted to whine about Dad buying for him. Eventually he decided he wanted another Hot Wheels™ car. But he couldn’t decide which one was the right one. So he set out a selection of cars for Dad, just like I do for him when it’s time to pick out clothes in the morning. Then he said “Pick!” and I picked out a car for him. He was happy that Dad was so easily teachable.
Erica took the boys and Jacob swimming on Friday. Charles, however, didn’t swim. Erica told Mom who told me that Charles the jumpy boy actually objected to being put in the water. So Erica and Charles played with cars on the deck while Jacorobwin played in the water. They went off the diving boards a few times until the life guard, after seeing Corwin’s T. Rex swim technique, asked the boys to take a swim test before jumping off the diving board again. Rather than submit to this humiliation Corwin decided not to go off the board anymore.
Today Mom’s Aunt Erna dropped by to see the house and give Corwin a present. She, Mom and Charles went off to see the pond. I was concerned that Mom would end up soaked because of Charles, but Charles had no interest in going in the water. He did want to get naked (so Mom stripped him down to a diaper) but he didn’t even try to go in the water.
Mom took Corwin over to his new school yesterday to get registered and screened. Kids who transfer in are tested to make sure they’re “grade appropriate”. Corwin was allowed to bypass the alphabet test after he demonstrated that he was able to read simple text. Corwin was impressed by the gymnasium because it had a stage on one side. The class choices were a bit thin because most class assignment were set at the end of the previous school year.
What’s more interesting is that we’re now hearing stories of Mrs. Newport, Corwin’s teacher for kindergarten. Apparently kids would get marbles for being good and if a child accumulated six marbles then Mrs. Newport would do a “happy dance”. Corwin described her as “funny and crazy”. I suppose that kindergarten teachers, like history, can only really be judged from a distance in time. Only now can Corwin fully assess his time in the classroom.
The family was watching a bit of TV last night while Corwin put together his Z-Cardz. Charles had fun working out on Dad. Charles would start out by just being squirmy on my lap. His favorite action is to put his head down with his butt in the air until he falls over foward in a somersault. After a couple of rounds of that he’d slide down my legs until his head was on my feet. At this point I was required to do leg lifts to bounce Charles up and down until it was too painful to proceed. Then Charles would slide off forwards and jump back up on the couch to start the whole process over.
While I bounced Charles I would have my feet together so Charles didn’t fall off and spread them apart when done. Charles would get up and then push my feet back together so that the “equipment” would be ready for the next round. He’s such an organized boy.
We haven’t been bathing Charles as regularly as we should. This is mostly because Charles used to like baths. He’d sometimes even ask for one if he saw Corwin in the bath. Over the last couple of months, though, Charles has acquired two phobias which make bath time not a completely pleasant time.
This morning Charles was in an extra grumpy mood. He fell out of bed around 7:15 and lay on the ground, mewling. I checked in on him a couple of times but he was unresponsive. Eventually he agreed to get a new diaper and crawled from his room over to the changing table. As I stripped off the old diaper, I realized that Charles had gotten just too stinky to go on without cleansing. So I girded my loins and told him the bad news - “Charles, you need a bath”.
This resulted in immediate screaming and desparate clutching to get the old diaper back on. But it was to no avail. Charles was hauled off to the bathroom, screaming and kicking. He even used his new word, saying “Noooo, Da da!”. But there was no mercy for Charles. In the tub he went. I decided to do the quick bath because Charles wasn’t going to be happy anyway. I had to physically restrain him to keep him in the tub, blocking his leg and holding him back. It made washing him somewhat easier, though, because he was all stretched out from trying to get his leg over the edge of the tub. Eventually the ordeal was over and Charles was free. He stopped crying as soon as he was out of the tub, although there were some relapses when water from his hair would drip down on him.
As we’ve (ok, as Mom has) been unpacking there have been a few interesting discoveries. One of them was a set of pentominoes that I got while I was in Japan one summer. One of the puzzles with it was having to fit all of the pentominoes into a rectangle without overlap. This actually kind of tricky to do. Last night I managed to solve it and show Corwin. This inspired Corwin to work on it this evening before I got home. I got a call from Mom at work to tell me that Corwin wanted me home so he could gloat over having solved the problem. I of course immediately rushed home so that Corwin could be properly proud of his success.
UPDATE: I had purchased a Z-Cardz for Corwin a while ago but because of some misbehaviour I hadn’t given it to him yet. So I gave it to him in honor of his solving the pentominoe puzzle. Corwin replied with “This is cool. How can I ever thank you?” He’s learning that fine line between earnestness and sarcasm. He must get the latter from Mom (and since she never posts here, she can’t deny it! Bwahahaha!)
We have a small balcony outside of the master bedroom on the second floor. Charles really likes it. He frequently makes me go out on it with him, so he can just hang out there. He likes to run his car along the railing and the base boards. Last weekend while the boys where trying to get up, Charles got to have a double thrill. The balcony faces the street and out on the street that morning was a large truck. What could be better? So Charles and I went out on the balcony to watch the truck be trucky. Charles repeated confirmed with me that yes, indeed, it was a truck. The driver heard us and waved to Charles, who got very shy. Eventually, though, the truck left and Charles let me go back inside.
Mom was doggedly determined to make some progress on our stacks of boxes from the move over the weekend. She actually did get through quite a number of them, but there are still stacks and stacks in the garage and my office (I desperately need some additional shelf space).
As part of my contribution, I took the boys swimming for a bit. We hadn’t been for a while because Charles had managed to bang up both of his big toes in to fairly bloody messes. I didn’t want him in the pool or pond until most of the scabs had healed up. He looked good enough on Sunday to head out so off we went.
I now let Corwin go off basically unsupervised. He knows how to swim and there are life guards so I’m not overly worried. It’s Charles who’s scary. I thought I’d mentioned this before, but apparently not — Charles has no fear of water (as Erica discovered). Soap, now, that is scary, but water is fine. Charles thinks nothing of jumping off the side of the pool in to water way over his head. It’s always an intense bonding experience to take Charles to the pool.
Charles primarily likes to jump in to the water. Now and then he’ll have me hold his tummy while he “swims” around but mainly it’s jumping. During the last outing, Charles started to jump from about 1 foot back from the edge of the pool. Of course, Charles can’t do a standing jump of one foot so he’d tend to wrench my arms as I caught him to prevent impact. I tried to work on him to start from a bit closer to the edge but it was working for him so why change?
We left after about an hour. It had seemed scorching when we left but the boys (especially Charles) had gotten too chilled to continue. It wasn’t as long as Mom had hoped but she had made some progress.
This weekend Mom and I had planned to get Corwin to open a saving account, since he had much more money in cash than a little boy should have. On the way to the bank we had Corwin count up his reserves and it turned out he had only $6. Mom and I paniced but Corwin was completely unconcerned. We thought he had dropped his money somewhere, but eventually figured that then he wouldn’t have any money left. Mom counted up some of the toys Corwin had bought over the last few weeks and thought it was possible that he’d gone through all of the cash. What’s interesting is that Corwin seems somewhat aware of his low cash position as he hasn’t tried to buy things he can no longer afford.
One of the things Corwin blew his wad on was a small plastic plane launcher. Corwin didn’t have his wallet at the time so he promised me that he’d pay me back for the $2.99 toy. The next day while we were going to the bank, I asked for $3 for reimbursement. Corwin objected that the toy had only cost $2, not $3. I pointed out that $2.99 was almost $3, only 1¢ difference and that with tax, Corwin was actually ripping Dad off for 6¢ or so. But Corwin didn’t believe any of that because he knew the toy had cost $2.99. After some additional badgering by Mom, Corwin gave in and just gave me the $3 in ill grace. But that wasn’t the end of it. In the evening, after supper, Corwin came over to me to tell me that I owed him a penny because the toy was $2.99. I rewarded his persistence with a shiny new penny and Corwin was pleased with his negotiating skills.
On Saturday morning, around 4 AM, Charles finally found some additional language skills. He woke me up out of a deep sleep as he cried and called “DaDa!”. It wasn’t the very best time for me to appreciate his advance. After I stumbled in to his room to his rescue I discovered the source of his dismay - his truck had fallen down the wall side of the bed and become wedged so that Charles couldn’t pull it out.
I also managed to get Charles to stay in his bed and not come over to our bed. He cried a little bit but normally he’ll cry for 10 or 15 minutes until Mom gives in or Charles crawls over and goes fetal on the floor next to Mom. I thought he had gone back to sleep but when I checked him a little later he was just lying there, staring (although his eyes would close every few seconds). Eventually Mom took pity on him but it was a little bit of progress.
Another morning with the boys. I’ve started Charles on the “morning stuff” regime, where he’s not allowed downstairs until he’s done his morning stuff. This consists of putting on clean clothes, going potty and doing tolietries. Charles wore his Teletubbies™ jammies and he was OK with taking the shorts off. He sat on the potty for a bit as well but when I took off the top Charles went fetal on me. I tried to convince him to pick out some new clothes but he didn’t want to do that. So went back downstairs to take care of some things. I popped back up a couple times but Charles was still unwilling to pick new clothes. One time he was over by the bathroom and he responded a little bit. But he acted like he didn’t quite know how to walk. He’d get up on his hands and feet and then collapse back down to the ground. Eventually he just crawled over to the clothes and then lay on the ground. I had the clothes on the edge of the bed but Charles couldn’t raise himself high enough to look at them.
Eventually Corwin woke up and wandered about upstairs. At one point he’d done his toiletries but was still shirtless. I used my mega-threat against him, informing him that if he still wasn’t dressed when Erica arrived that she’d get to dress him, probably in something pink, frilly and with a big Hello Kitty© picture on it. Corwin took that lying down but not passively:
Corwin: “How long do I have until Erica gets here?”
Dad: “Let me check … about 70 minutes.”
Corwin: “Tell me when I have 50 minutes.”
I’m not sure what surprised me more, that Corwin was planning like this or that he thought he needed fifty minutes to get a shirt on. Unfortunately for Erica Corwin managed to get his shirt on fast enough that when I gave him the 45 minute warning he was all dressed. Meanwhile, I had gone back downstairs to wait out Charles. I wasn’t down very long before I heard giggling upstairs.
When I went up, Corwin and Charles were both in the parental bedroom banging about. Charles was on the bed, giggling and looking cute. He does this adorable little pantomine which involves pulling up the sheets and looking extra cuddly and he was practicing it. I gave him a few tickles and body-slammed Corwin on a the bed a few times (Corwin wanted more but Dad’s back isn’t what it used to be, plus I suspect that Corwin has gotten bigger). I then asked Charles if he wanted to get dressed. Charles thought that was a great idea and off we went. Dad was completely forgiven for stripping off the only one day old clothes from the innocent little cuddly boy.
As I remember from Corwin’s younger days, getting him dressed was a problem of putting clothes on. He would cry and struggle as I tried to put on his pants or shirt. Charles is generally the opposite. He rarely gives me any trouble with putting on clothes. What he doesn’t like is taking them off. The big struggle in the morning is getting his night shirt off so that I can put clean clothes on him. It seems to be the shirt in particular, as Charles has no problem running around in just a diaper, which leads to conversations like
Dad: “Charles, you’re not wearing any pants”
Charles: “Why?”
Charles has also become adverse to soap. Generally when I give him a bath I drop a little bit of soap in to the water in order to get some extra cleaning done while Charles is soaking. Charles has never been fond of the subs that result, but lately he’s become almost phobic about it. Because Charles doesn’t like baths anymore, he’s generally crying the entire time anyway, but he bats at the suds to keep them away and looks in horror at any limb that gets soapy. Mom tells me that if she puts soap on him he’ll grab a washcloth and scrub it off immediately. I’ve always heard stories of boys being “allergic” to soap and water but I thought those were just metaphorical.
Two short stories.
The family went out to Walmart today and Charles returned with a new toy truck. While we were eating Charles had his truck and was showing it off. Corwin called across the table and said “Charles, that’s a very nice truck”. Corwin then leans over to me and whispers “Don’t tell Charles what I’m saying. I just told him it was good truck to be nice”.
Corwin had purchased another large Megablock™ airplane. He wanted to assemble it that can be a Sysiphean task with Charles around. So I allocated one of the rooms downstairs for project work and told Charles that he couldn’t go in. Charles was actually pretty good about it, but of course he had a question.
Dad: “Charles, no, you can’t go in there.”
Charles: “Why?”
Dad: “You’re not old enough and you’ll break stuff”
Charles: “Oh”
Corwin: “Yeah, Charles can come in when he’s four”.
I should have known that Corwin would chose a numeric measure to decide if Charles was allowed in.
Charles has taken to drawing with sidewalk chalk. Erica apparently took the boys out one day last week and let them go wild with chalk. Charles loved it. He’s been out every day since then, drawing. He mainly makes lines and squiggles by himself, but what he likes best is adding highlights to things Dad has drawn. For instance, I’ll draw a house (which Charles will acknowledge by saying “house!”) and then Charles will make a large number of short, parallel, randomly distributed lines on it, in a manner somewhat reminiscent of a drunken woodpecker. Judging from his previously displayed artistic temperament, I suspect he is of the school that believes in attacking the canvas (or, in the case of Charles, the concrete). When Charles does this, I can see the glow of concentration on his face as he simultaneously destroys and creates in a virtuoso performance. It’s the kind of skill he needs if he’s to compete in world populated with other prodigies.
I took the boys over to the park today so that Mom could get some things done and so Corwin could try out his new boomerang. I wanted to drive over so that we could go for ice cream afterwards, but Charles insisted on taking the stroller, despite the fact that my legs were very sore from doing some Corwin lifts the day before. As we headed over, I was walking faster than Corwin which Corwin thought was a problem.
Corwin: “Hey, wait up!”
Dad: “Why?”
Corwin: “You might leave me behind!”
Dad: “Yeah… would that be a bad thing?”
Corwin: “Yes. Six hundred eighty million and seven bad.”
Dad: “Oh. OK.” [Dad waits for Corwin]
At least I have a quantified measure of how bad it would be to leave Corwin behind on the way to the park.
The other day there was a big basket of clean laundry in the main room downstairs and Mom asked me to take it upstairs. Being a Dad, I immediately tried to delegate it to Charles. I asked him “Charles, can you carry this up for Mommy?”. Charles came right over and tried to pick it up. He actually looked a bit distraught when it became clear that there was no way he could actually pick it up. I told him it was OK and that I appreciated him trying.
Charles is handling potty training much differently than Corwin. The problem with Corwin was getting him to sit on the potty at all. The first time was a long struggle involving much crying and screaming (mostly on the part of Corwin). But once we got him to start sitting on the potty he was ok with it and was willing to “perform”.
Charles, on the other hand, has been happy to sit on the potty but he doesn’t seem to connect it with any bodily function. He sits for a while, then gets bored and wants off. But he’s very cooperative about the whole thing. I suppose we’ll eventually get lucky again and he’ll do some potty while he’s actually on the potty. Because of that, it’s important to track his overall posture and specific extremities to make sure that, should lightning strike, I won’t ruin it with some inappropriate language.
Charles, the boy who doesn’t mind poop in his diapers, does have a few neatness ticks. One aspect of this is his frequent hand washing. This morning I saw another part of it. He was having some Fruity Pebbles® and using a spoon. He suddenly started. I thought that maybe he’d bit his tongue or the spoon but it was neither of those - it was far, far worse. At first I noticed that some of the cereal had fallen on the chair next to Charles. I sprang in to action and gathered it up with my hand and disposed of the contamination. But Charles was still not mollified. I checked the other side where, to my horror, I saw that some of the cereal had fallen on Charles himself! The horror, the horror … Fighting back panic of my own, I managed to cleanse the foul dietritus from Charles. Then everyone was happy! 
Corwin fell off on playing it but lately become once again obsessed with his Harry Potter game. Apparently he’s gotten all the way to the end, although we haven’t witnessed it (Erica vouches for him, though, as she had to defeat the final boss monster).
One of the mornings this week, Corwin was off in my office Pottering when suddenly he yelps and comes running out in to the main room. I figure that some small animal, like a spider or mouse, must have jumped on him while he was playing. Corwin is too incoherent for effectively questioning so I head out to slay or remove the fiendish invader. I find nothing, however. Coming back and asking Corwin again, after he’s calmed a bit, I discover that it was a creature in the game that startled him so badly. That’s a boy who is immersed in his game.