He's much more agile and sure-footed than he was six months ago, balancing easily on one foot for brief periods and climbing (and even running) over very rough terrain. He's still quite astonishingly graceful on his scooter, but he's riding it much less than before because we bought him a balance bike which has become a new obsession. It only took him 4 days (maybe a cumulative one or two hours) to go from trudging along to gliding around with his feet up, zooming ahead - and asking me for a bike with pedals. There aren't any that he could realistically ride with such short legs - they may be stretching out, but they aren't long enough for even the smallest pedal bike. So that will have to wait.
Despite his grace and coordination and excellent balance, his hand-eye coordination is actually pretty bad and he really can't catch a ball yet.
A few days ago I got stuck in a traffic jam with Silas in the car, and we had a 25-minute conversation during which he made only one single grammatical error ("Why there's a red light?" instead of "Why is there a red light?"). When he's relaxed, and talking to us one-on-one, his grammar is excellent, his speech is quite clear (although he still cannot pronounce a few consonants and consonant combinations), and he's very articulate. If he's feeling grumpy or shy, he tends to mumble and garble his words, and/or trail off in the midst of a thought. When he's feeling a bit wild, he stops enunciating properly and it can be hard to understand him. He barely speaks at all to unfamiliar guests, even if they ask him questions, remaining quiet and wide-eyed for hours before he gets comfortable. This makes it very difficult for visitors to get a sense of who he really is, and sometimes I worry that it makes me look like a bit of a fibber!
I always regret not writing down examples of things that he says, so I resolved to write something down this time. At the moment he and Brian are playing with trains, and I've just asked him if he wants to eat more oatmeal, or if I should put it away. He says, "No, you should not put my oatmeal away because I will finish it in just a minute." Then he put all of his toy train cars in a single long train, and when Brian remarked on this, he said "Yeah, we'll have to buy some more toy trains at the store. Some more LOTS of trains at the store, to make my train even longer!" So, as you can see, his grammar is good but not always 100% perfect. He has an enormous vocabulary - for example, this morning he told me a cardboard barn was "too unstable". Also told me he heard "mysterious music" and that his train was "enormous". He often uses precise terminology. This morning, when talking about which playground we'd go to, he asked, "You mean, the one with the open car where you can turn the steering wheel?" (No, I meant the one with the huge sandbox and water wheel.) And when we gave him a lemonade popsicle after lunch and asked what it tasted like, he said "kind of juicy and orangey". One last thing: while I was in the bathroom, he came in and told me: "I found a tiny little thingy on my toe." I asked him if that was OK, and he said "Yes. I kicked it under the wall [baseboard] so we don't have to do anything now." Haha.
[A few days later, I'm sitting on the couch while Brian and Silas eat lunch, writing down Silas's side of the conversation as he says it.]
"Chugga chugga,that's what the train book says. Chugging happily along. That book is in Grandma Marsha's apartment.
Papa told me that he was going to work today.
Papa, if grownups are fighting, the police will come and say "what's wrong with you guys"?
Papa, can I have some milk?
Mama, I said to Papa that I want some juice, please.
Hey, I'm a doctor sometimes.
Yeah I give you a checkup to help you get better and well.
I help Harriet sometimes. Actually I help lots of cats.
This is cold milk. It has ice in it.
It came from the refrigerator.
I have to take off my shirt and my pants because they are a little bit soaky because I spilled my milk."
Papa, if grownups are fighting, the police will come and say "what's wrong with you guys"?
Papa, can I have some milk?
Mama, I said to Papa that I want some juice, please.
Hey, I'm a doctor sometimes.
Yeah I give you a checkup to help you get better and well.
I help Harriet sometimes. Actually I help lots of cats.
This is cold milk. It has ice in it.
It came from the refrigerator.
I have to take off my shirt and my pants because they are a little bit soaky because I spilled my milk."
Surprisingly, he's quite neat and tidy, very frequently asking us to clean up spills or wash his hands. He doesn't like to leave a mess, and often cleans up all on his own, without us asking. I strongly suspect this is a Montessori-instilled value, and from that perspective it's not shocking or even unusual, but it still really tickles me when he insists on putting away all his toys (and does it just right, not haphazardly), or requests that I wipe up a tiny bit of oatmeal on the floor. (He often helps, too, but he can't reach many of the cleaning supplies. We really must fix that.)
He's gotten really interested in puzzles. He's been able to do the 20-30 piece ones we have at home for a few months (if I recall correctly, starting the day after I last wrote that he still needed help), and seems game to try just about any puzzle we show him.
He has declare don several occasions that he wants to play the violin. We'll see if he really means it.
He's just beginning to sound out some really simple words - both in terms of reading them and writing them. He loves to use my computer to type, slowly and painstakingly coming up with "KKKAARRRRRR" and such, with a little help.
Linguistically, Silas has become a real joker. He loves to make up and define nonsense words, with increasing giggles. "Mama, you are very glorbxy." "I want two gleeglax." "What's a gleeglax?" "A GLEEGLAX IS A GAGA! HAHAHAHAHA!" He makes up and conjugates alien-sounding verbs, and has even come up with very linguistically-appropriate adverbs and adjectives. It's pretty cute except when we want to actually ask him things and he only wants to speak in gibberish, and then it can get old pretty fast!
The Boxcar Children have become steady evening companions here - Silas has heard several chapters every night for the past several weeks. He LOVES the book (we never read enough chapters to satisfy him) and we're on our 6th straight novel. He certainly doesn't have any trouble paying attention for 45+ minutes, but lying down is another matter. He gets so excited that he pops out of bed to ask nearly constant questions about the plot. It's funny to read them again as an adult. As a kid I didn't understand the magnitude of wealth and privilege the Alden children have after the first book, and I didn't really see how lavishly their grandfather bankrolls all of their adventures such that all their independence and grit is without any real risks of any kind. (There are always guards, kindly storekeepers, maids, relatives, and so on looking after the kids.) Plus the sexism is appalling - but we edit that on the fly as we read to Silas. Otherwise, the books have a lot to offer. They have interesting, gentle mysteries that Silas likes, and the characters treat each other with genuine respect, including difficult or grumpy characters, many of whom become much kinder after being treated nicely. Basic, New England-style "golden rule" stuff. The books are limited in perspective, but really good-hearted.
We also read through the entire My Father's Dragon series, the Catwings series, Ramona the Pest, and Winnie the Pooh. He also likes Peter and the Wolf (with the music) and I've started to introduce the least scary/upsetting Classical Kids stories/music. Silas loves listening to orchestra music and has really enjoyed hearing my orchestra dress rehearsals. Lately he's also taken an interest in some other music I've played for him: Beatles, some samba music, some reggae, etc. I'm quite surprised that he was interested in classical music first - I would have thought it would be the other way around.
One of Silas's favorite things to do is watch videos of real trains. I think he likes the steam train videos the best (just 30 minutes or so of steam trains on tracks, coming and going), but he likes just about any train video, including toy trains. This has introduced us to the world of adult rail fans on YouTube - people (all men so far) whose trainspotting hobbies have mixed with some good camera equipment, resulting in copious numbers of train videos. Silas also still loves Dinosaur Train, and sometimes watches Daniel Tiger, Mister Rogers, or Peg+Cat. We're still only doing screen time on the weekends. That might change over the summer.
Silas has two real friends at the moment, M. and A. A. is one of his classmates (just for another week, though) and M. is the daughter of some of our friends. He loves these two girls and talks often about how he'll play with them. They play very well together, disappearing for long periods without any need for supervision or intervention. It's nice to see him making real friends.
Last, the difficult stuff. Silas is always working on SOMEthing, and right now I think he's working on his concept of justice. This has lead us to some pretty dark places. Most notably, he overheard me one day saying that I heard a very sad radio program about a sick girl. I didn't even describe the program, but I think my sadness made an impresion on him, and he asked about it the next morning. I told him she was sick because there was a war in her country. He asked what a war was ("War? What is a war? I never heard of that."). I said war is when grown-ups are fighting and they can't figure out how to stop. I did not mention weapons or death, so as far as I'm aware he's imagining people hitting or yelling. Nevertheless, this DEVASTATED him. Immediately he wanted to take his doctor kit to help the children, wanted to give them his food, and asked me to send a message to the grown-ups to tell them to stop fighting. The compassion pouring out of his little 2-year-old heart was unreal. Particulary upsetting, as it turned out, the fact that the girl in the story (I didn't tell him that she died) actually had a mother, who was trying her best and yet could not help her daughter. I think this was his first encounter with helpless parents that couldn't fix big problems. For about 5 days after hearing about war Silas struggled mightily to take in this knowledge. His sadness was so extreme, and so overwhelming, that we immediately started looking for resources about how to help him. Everything we found informed us that children just need to be told that wars will not come to their country, that only grown-ups need to worry about wars, and that they will always be taken care of. We could not find a single resource about this kind of thing in 2-year-olds; even children through age 7 or 8 are said to just need reassurance that they are safe. Unfortunately, this did very little to reassure Silas. He insisted he was not worried about himself, only the sick children who could not get enough food or medicine because of the fighting. We sent donations to Save the Children, and only after I had explained to him how pushing buttons on my computer could result in money being given to children in South Sudan (internet banking: not obvious to toddlers) did he start to feel better. He brought up wars, and his sadness about them, maybe 10 times a day for quite a few days, and his behavior was absolutely off the rails. He was melting down 5 or 6 times a day. Finally, the sadness seems to have passed and he is able to talk about it without falling apart.
However, he has new concerns, though thankfully they are milder. First of all he's very concerned about jail: who goes there, how they feel when they are in jail, why they made bad choices, and so on. (He learned about jail from a passing reference in a Boxcar Children book. After several days of feeling incredibly anxious that I introduced him to an adult concept I shouldn't have, I realized that almost all Disney movies, which people freely show toddlers, have mentions of bad people having justice done to them - brigs in ships, etc. Silas's focus on these issues, which he could easily have ignored, is development-linked, I feel quite sure.) Once again, reassuring him that children are never allowed to go to jail (which isn't even entirely true, but I didn't tell him that) did not help - he seems very worried about the inmates. He is also concerned about why and how people get old. He likes to bring these things up either when talking to puppets, or when he's lying in bed. Talking face to face in daylight is often too intense for him.
He is also worried about justice and fairness in the context of his personal relationships, and this is really where his (totally reasonable and expected) lack of maturity shows up. He is extremely good about never taking toys from his friends, and never pushing or hitting. He uses his words impeccably. Unfortunately, he expects the same high standards from everyone else - even little babies. Today a tiny, barely-walking toddler innocently took a ball from him, and Silas imperiously pointed his finger, shouting in an outraged voice, "You may not take that ball! I am using it!". The nuance of when to stand up for yourself, when to move on, and when to talk to a grown-up is pretty complex and we definitely do not have it down yet. He also doesn't really know how to "go with" a creative move from a friend, often insisting that they play HIS way. Silas is extremely bossy when playing for us, often wanting to dictate every single move. He provides us our own toys to play with (so, "sharing"), but tells us how to move them and gets upset if we play wrong. We are starting to push back on this point and model more strategies for playing with people who aren't doing exactly what you want! Silas has also had some jealousy lately. His teachers report that he commands respect from his peers at school, being principled and well-behaved and kind, but he also wants to be first all the time, and after a year of scrupulous turn-taking, has occasionally been demanding his way at the expense of others. The other day, while talking about a friend who grabbed some toys from him, he announced the he was perfect! Of course this made my blood pressure rise a little bit, but I think he meant that he never takes toys from others - which is actually true. In response, we have started asking him if, after playing with somebody, whether he was a good friend to them, and whether they were a good friend to him, and talking it all over.
Last but certainly not least, Silas is FULL of questions all the time. He wants to know how everything works, where things come from, what they're made of, and so on and so forth forever. The things we find ourselves explaining are sometimes remarkable. A very, very select few that I happen to recall from this week: explaining why we don't all share all cars and instead use keys that only we keep, why basil seedling leaves turn to the sun, how oatmeal is harvested (for the 50th time, he never gets tired of that one), how the little balls in the classic push-popper toy get energy to bounce (from you, as you push the toy, and you get your energy from food, which got its energy from the sun, which got its energy from the big bang, and after that I don't know)...
A brief list of summer plans, coming up:
1. Potty training, early on
2. A week in Brightwater with friend M. and her parents
3. Day trips and weekend getawys
4. Hannah's wedding
5. A trip to the Mt. Washington cog railway
6. Hopeful playdates with various friends
7. Hopeful returns to Trampoline World, various museums, beaches, etc...
