Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Stealth evil, or proof, yet again, that this child is ours





We’ve been gradually weaning Lucas off his beloved dodie, in the hopes that this will eventually lead to currently-unfeasible hours of blissful unconsciousness rather than endless holy-crap-it's-WHAT- o'clock? summonses to help the small child find the smaller soother in the dark hours.
Simultaneously, although presumably not related (the sodding soother isn't THAT big), he's been upping the talking, or the attempts at talking, which go something like this:

Scene: the park, Sunday afternoon. Jonah and Lucas have wrestled the family ice cream cones from us gullible parents, are sitting on the grass with vanilla drool cascading down their t-shirts. Lucas finishes his ice cream.


L: hands upturned to show emptiness, eyebrows raised, signifying astonishment at this unforeseen development: All gone!

Lucas turns to his brother, notices Jonah has been unable to match L’s consumption speed, still has some ice cream left.


L
points frantically at Jonah:
More! More! MORE!!

J ignores him

L
enlisting parental help, pointing frantically: More! MORE!!


S: explain to Jonah what you’re asking for, poppet – that might help.

L earnestly, to Jonah; pointing at Jonah’s ice cream: yumyumMORE! Babba MORE!

You get the picture. It’s quick and dirty, but his needs, they are met.



Jonah, threats to ice cream ownership notwithstanding, is delighted by this new walky-talky version of the brother who, for most of his first year, was just an irritation crawling in between him fun. Consequently, he spends much of his time teaching Lucas new words, which veer in typical 3-year-old style from the scatological “say poo, Lucas’ to the surreal “say sandwich filling, Lucas”.
Last week Jonah hit upon a new game.
“Say dodie, Lucas” he commanded.

Lucas beamed, knowing the word well.

“Doodoo” he complied.

“Doodoo” he added thoughtfully.

“Doodoo?” – enquiringly, looking around himself.

“Doodoo?Doodoo!Doodoo!! DOODOO!’ he yelled, realizing one was not forthcoming and in desperate need of a dodie now that the sacred object had been mentioned.

Cue toddler in tears and much wailing and beating of tiny fists on the floor. Jonah, by this point in the proceedings, was howling with laughter. And we, secretly proud of the streak of mischief it takes to come up with this, are definitely not winning any parenting awards by letting it continue. Ah well – isn’t this what siblings are for?

2 comments:

In transit said...

HA! I laughed. You gotta get some entertainment value, don't you?

Sarah said...

kids, they're way better than telly, I think - which is just as well, since we don't have one of those.