It never ceases to boggle (ah ha! another one) my mind the different ways that children develop. Gabe was all about moving around. It was as if he developed with the goal of getting at as many things as possible as quickly as possible--a quantity over quality form of development, perhaps. He rarely mastered any one skill along the way in favor of sticking as many proverbial--and literal--fingers in as many different pies as he reasonably could. Nothing was safe in our house (really, that part hasn't changed as we still can't safely leave the gates open for fear that he will empty the refrigerator or pull all the books off my shelves just because he CAN). For Gabe, we really needed every child-proofing safety precaution we could think of.
Little Butts, on the other hand, is all about perfecting skills before moving on to other ones. This includes basic gross motor skills AND fine motor skills (Gabe hasn't really shown much interest in perfecting ANY fine motor skills yet, though I'm hoping that changes soon as school begins to approach). When she learned to sit, she wasn't the least bit interested in figuring out how to crawl until she had sitting mastered. Now that she can stand, she's determined to be the best, sturdiest stander in the world before she messes with walking (I still think she COULD walk if she wanted to, she just isn't interested yet).
But she, unlike Gabe, will sit with a toy for thirty minutes trying to figure it out. Gabe burns through toys like there is no tomorrow. He'll get something new and it will be the object of his undivided attention for, maybe, a day, then it's on to bigger and better things. Norah, however, will come back, time and again, to the same toys to play with them until she's got them figured out. At this point, I think her attention span might actually exceed Gabe's, which seems rather extraordinary to me.
However, Norah is not a silent thinker. She is a groaning thinker. No matter where she is, I can always tell when she's found something to keep her interest, because a low, slow groan will carry throughout the bottom floor of our house while she's doing it. In a way, it's pretty cute. In another way, it's about impossible to watch anything on television while it's going on.
The Groaning Thinker. Again, I am pretty surprised at how well she is managing these little stacking rings. I don't think Gabe mastered this toy until he was eighteen months or more--and then I can't remember him doing it more than once or twice before he was bored with it.
And then there is the Trouble aspect of Norah's development. This one, obviously, we're no stranger to. Gabe was, and is, trouble--entertaining trouble, to be sure, but there's never been a time where we've felt entirely secure leaving him alone in a room for very long.
Norah's brand of trouble, though, is a little different. Gabe might break something or draw on something or step on a cat or slam his finger in a door or pull out one of those useless little electrical outlet covers and see what could fit in there, but there was always a certain level of innocence at play, of pure exploration--as if he was just doing these things to see what it was like or because he couldn't see what the problem might be. Norah, though, seems a bit more premeditated. I don't want to say malicious, because it's such an unpleasant word, but I can't think of any other word that fits quite as well. She honestly seems to do many things just because she knows she's not supposed to. Maybe it's the way she looks out of the corner of her eye, just to see if we're watching, or the impish little smile that will often crop up as soon as she hears one of us say "No!" to her. Actually, there really shouldn't be any maybe's about it. That seems pretty obvious.
Here's an example--the throwing food game. For weeks we've been scolding her whenever she purposely tosses her food on the floor, but she continues to do it, and seems to derive great joy from it.
Norah's brand of trouble, though, is a little different. Gabe might break something or draw on something or step on a cat or slam his finger in a door or pull out one of those useless little electrical outlet covers and see what could fit in there, but there was always a certain level of innocence at play, of pure exploration--as if he was just doing these things to see what it was like or because he couldn't see what the problem might be. Norah, though, seems a bit more premeditated. I don't want to say malicious, because it's such an unpleasant word, but I can't think of any other word that fits quite as well. She honestly seems to do many things just because she knows she's not supposed to. Maybe it's the way she looks out of the corner of her eye, just to see if we're watching, or the impish little smile that will often crop up as soon as she hears one of us say "No!" to her. Actually, there really shouldn't be any maybe's about it. That seems pretty obvious.
Here's an example--the throwing food game. For weeks we've been scolding her whenever she purposely tosses her food on the floor, but she continues to do it, and seems to derive great joy from it.
Naughty, but funny. I love that the cheesy smile is coming along with it now. I'm sure it doesn't help that Gabe goads her on with the toddler equivalent of a move that Stephen Colbert often uses at the beginning of his show, quieting the raucous crowd down with one hand while "secretly" encouraging them to be louder with his other hand.
Again, I really expect that she's going to be a handful as she gets older. I'm OK with that, I think, as long as she continues to do it in an entertaining way. Trouble is so much easier to forgive if you're laughing while you're doling out forgiveness.
Possibly the greatest aspect of Gabe's developmental approach is his near complete lack of shame. We can ask him to do pretty much anything and he'll do it, enjoying the silliness of it all. A week ago or so, Libby bought him some Buzz Lightyear PJs (funny little side note here--yesterday, I picked him up one of those shake and go vehicles, this one a Buzz Lightyear spaceship. Most of yesterday morning he was shaking it and saying "Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger" over and over as he set the ship in motion. The first time he said it, though, I swear he said "Bud Weiser, Space Rager." It's apropos of nothing, I just thought it was a funny thing to hear). For some reason, one of the prominent "styles" of boys PJs right now is to make them out of skin-tight, elastic cotton. To me, they look like exactly the sort of thing a male cage dancer might wear in a bondage bar (minus the S&M accessories, obviously). Every time he puts these things on, I want to ask him which of the Village People he's supposed to be (probably because one of his PJs is a construction worker and another is a set of camos).
Anyway, he was wearing his Buzz PJs yesterday, which are, I think, even more inappropriate because, in addition to the clingy "wifebeater" tank top, they also include a pair of hot pants. It's a hilarious outfit that I made even more hilarious by rolling up the bottom of the shirt to make it look like some sort of midriff disaster. At least he has the midsection to pull it off.
Utterly hilarious. Who designs these clothes? I suspect the children of this generation will be doing some research and tracking down these clothing designers when pictures like this start to crop up on memory collages at weddings and other major milestone events. Someone should pay for this fashion disaster sometime, I do know that.
Possibly the greatest aspect of Gabe's developmental approach is his near complete lack of shame. We can ask him to do pretty much anything and he'll do it, enjoying the silliness of it all. A week ago or so, Libby bought him some Buzz Lightyear PJs (funny little side note here--yesterday, I picked him up one of those shake and go vehicles, this one a Buzz Lightyear spaceship. Most of yesterday morning he was shaking it and saying "Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger" over and over as he set the ship in motion. The first time he said it, though, I swear he said "Bud Weiser, Space Rager." It's apropos of nothing, I just thought it was a funny thing to hear). For some reason, one of the prominent "styles" of boys PJs right now is to make them out of skin-tight, elastic cotton. To me, they look like exactly the sort of thing a male cage dancer might wear in a bondage bar (minus the S&M accessories, obviously). Every time he puts these things on, I want to ask him which of the Village People he's supposed to be (probably because one of his PJs is a construction worker and another is a set of camos).
Anyway, he was wearing his Buzz PJs yesterday, which are, I think, even more inappropriate because, in addition to the clingy "wifebeater" tank top, they also include a pair of hot pants. It's a hilarious outfit that I made even more hilarious by rolling up the bottom of the shirt to make it look like some sort of midriff disaster. At least he has the midsection to pull it off.
Utterly hilarious. Who designs these clothes? I suspect the children of this generation will be doing some research and tracking down these clothing designers when pictures like this start to crop up on memory collages at weddings and other major milestone events. Someone should pay for this fashion disaster sometime, I do know that.
My god, I can't figure out what's best here - 'Oh Norah!' or the extreme buzzy closeup or Norah's low-frequency working hum or Gabe's 'working boy' outfit in the last shot.
ReplyDeleteYour kids are NUTS and it is AWESOME.