Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Rockets and Purple Shovels

Nathan has suddenly started saying many words, and often repeats the last word of a sentence when someone is talking to him. He has turned into a little tape recorder! Last week we were in Tampa with the entire family - Tom and I, Ben, Jen, and Nathan, Becca and Adam, Seth and Amy, and our friends Rick and Stella. We had a wonderful time doing many fun things, but here I just want to talk about Nathan. He of course has said Mama, Dada, and Nana for a while now, but he had not called anyone of the rest of us by name. By day 2, he knew all our names, and some of them came out really cute! Tom wants to be called Grumpa, to distinguish himself from Nathan's other 2 grandfathers who go by Grandpa and Papa. Now Nathan calls Tom "Dumpa" and they did some serious bonding. He calls Becca "Bucka" and Adam "Ah." We couldn't get him to put an end syllable on his name. Seth sounded more like "Set", but he had no problem saying Amy since he has a babysitter named Amy and he has said her name for a long time. Rick sounds more like "Ri" and Stella is "Sta."

Tom and I were here for dinner last night, and before the meal was ready, we were out in the back yard with Jen and Nathan. Ben was in Florida for work. Glenn, the next door neighbor, was in his yard setting off rockets. Nathan, held safely in his mom's arms, was fascinated watching the rockets go way up into the sky, and then come floating down under small parachutes. When we came in for dinner, he kept talking about the "rahtet," bringing it up again and again in a questioning tone of voice, obviously wanting to see more rockets. I think he said "rahtet" about 100 times during the meal. Jen asked him, "Do you want to see Glenn set off another rocket?" and Nathan replied, "Yeah!" in that enthusiastic way he has of making the simplest suggestions sound like the greatest idea he ever heard of.

He said it so often that Jen texted Glenn, asking him if he could possibly set off another rocket or two after dinner. Glenn was happy to do it. This time he came over to our yard, and set up the rocket just a few yards off the deck. Jen stood holding Nathan again, and he was wiggly with excitement. However, the noise when Glenn set off the rocket startled Nathan. It sounded much louder up close than any of us had expected, and it made him cry. Poor baby! Jen calmed him and told him that he was fine, and it was just a scary noise, but the rocket was fun to watch. He didn't buy it. Jen asked him if he wanted to see another rocket, and he said, "No!" just as emphatically as he had agreed earlier.

Glenn actually had several more rockets, but we came into the house, where the noise was much less scary.

Since Ben was out of town and since Jen had to leave especially early this morning, I stayed here overnight so I would be here when Nathan got up. He woke up happy and chatty, and started out by looking for his purple shovel. He says both of those words, and repeated them again and again all morning. Sometimes he was just showing me the shovel, and sometimes he put it down and then went looking for it. But he said it again and again and again, just like he had said rocket last night. It's amazing how persistent he can be.

This afternoon I got tired of hearing about the purple shovel, and I asked him if he remembered the rocket that Glenn had sent up into the sky. He told me about that again for another hour - "Den" (for Glenn), "rahtet, "sky," and down - over and over and over, complete with pointing up and down appropriately!