How the World Works

James is busy figuring out how the world works. He wants to know what goes up, what goes down, what goes in, what goes out, what bounces, what breaks, what tastes good, what doesn't, what's hot, what's cold, what's slippery, what's hard, what's squishy, what fits in his mouth, what doesn't, what he can fit inside, what he can't, what he's not allowed to touch and what he's REALLY not allowed to touch. This is exhausting, but it's also fun. We're rediscovering how the world works. For example, did you know that books make a funny sound when you let the pages flick really fast past your thumb? Or did you know that a single roll of toilet paper can stretch all the way from the bathroom into our bedroom and then back to the bathroom again? There are so many things to discover!

My suitcase was particularly full of interesting possibilities when I arrived back home on Wednesday. James was happy to see me and gave me a big hug. Then he started going through my dirty laundry. I had brought back a present for him, a cute little shirt with long sleeves and a white collar. He was more interested in the granola bars. J had packed a whole box of high-fiber granola bars for me, and by the end of the trip I was quite ready to not see another high-fiber granola bar for a good long while. Not so for James. At one point he was flying about the downstairs with one granola bar in each hand and a third clutched between his teeth. We gathered them up to put away at one point, but apparently we missed a few. One turned up the next day in the wicker basket of children's books by the couch, and then two more were in his toy chest. He's been allowed to keep a few, and they are now mashed beyond recognition from being carried around in his teeth.

Speaking of things going in James' mouth, he has become a complete barbarian at the dinner table. Yesterday I was attempting to feed him nickel-sized slices of carrots. He likes carrots. He liked these carrots so much that he put about seven of them in his mouth, cheeks bulging, and clearly with no way to swallow. He pointed at the bowl and made his sign for more. "James, can you swallow some of those?" He pointed at his sippy cup. "James, would you like your sippy?" He made the sign for please. I handed him the cup, and he put his finger in his mouth, pulling out one carrot, two carrots, and then spitting all of the remaining carrots onto his tray. He sucked vigorously on the sippy cup for about ten seconds, then started putting the carrots back in his mouth. All of them. He got his cheeks fully bulged again, and then made the sign for the sippy. (Guess what he did next...)

Something must be going down though, because he is clearly getting bigger and more active. He has started to climb. It used to be that when I went in to pick him up out of his crib at the end of nap time I'd find him sitting in the crib with Steven and sucking on his binky. Then it became common to find him standing in the crib and looking at the door expectantly. Now when we go in he has a leg wedged into the slats in the side, and he is clearly trying to push himself up and over. He can already climb onto the futon in his room, and he is getting closer to climbing over the barrier to our stairs (two big rubbermaid containers) and onto the couch, the back of which has become the last refuge for iPods, books, keys, and other valuables that we don't want put into his mouth.

He is apparently big enough to tune the piano. Our clavinova is a pretty nice instrument, so we were puzzled when it began to sound "off" a few weeks ago. It was subtle, but J and I both noticed there was something wrong with the sound. "I swear it's gone sharp" said J. She and I tried to rehearse a little this afternoon, and the piano was so high to my trumpet (which is always in tune, naturally) that I had to push my tuning slide all the way in and was still flat. We played the middle A with my tuner out, and it was nearly a B-flat. After rummaging around for the owner's manual, we found a way to reset the tuning to A=440. We also found that you raise the pitch incrementally by pressing down the lowest A and the lowest B on the piano together at the same time.

Guess who likes to reach up and push the lowest few keys on the piano? Yes, it's the same little boy who has figured out how to make tractor sounds while he pushes his little John Deere around.