A Henry Visit

“Vo-yitta ya va kyi da DZA?”

Standing in his crib, James held both arms out in his “question” gesture and waited for me to answer whatever it was he had just asked.

I studied him for a moment and took a guess.

“Are you asking whether Pax and Kylie are still here?”

He grinned, nodded, and rubbed his chest in a “please” sign.

“No, they went home last night after you went to bed.”

“Dah-wee dow. Eeeee”

He waved good-bye to them.

“But do you know what? Henry is coming today. Do you want to see Henry?”

Henry is the same age as James, and we watch him several times a month while his mother works at RWC. James was so excited to see Henry that as soon as got downstairs he stationed himself at the window to watch our driveway, forgoing breakfast and the usual morning tour of toys.

These two boys really enjoy each other’s company. So much so, in fact, that it’s rather hard to keep track of them. Last week when they were playing with chalk, James had us so distracted by his sitting in the chalk that we completely failed to notice Henry was eating the chalk. And later when one of them was eating stones in the driveway, the other got away with a nearly successful attempt at prying the license plate off the front of our PT Cruiser.

Today they played “who can fill the most poopy diapers?” They both won. We’d be in the living room, I’d smell something, and say “Who has a poopy diaper?” I checked Henry first, and of course he did. While I was cleaning him off, James managed to open the desk drawer and dump an entire bag of crayons onto the living room carpet. When I still smelled dirty diaper and took James up for a changing, Henry ate an orange crayon. I think they were planning their diapers together. A sort of coniuriato faetidae. My neck is still very stiff, and they were deliberately taking advantage. It’s hard to keep an almost two year old from throwing his toothbrush in the toilet when he knows that you can’t chase him or pick him up from a bending position. J isn’t any better—she tweaked her hip badly on a run yesterday, and has made a solemn vow to do stretches before any exercise we undertake this month.

I picked up as many of the crayons as I could find, but you always miss a few. When we picked up toys in the afternoon I found several under the couch—it is one of James’ great pleasures in life to look for lost items under the couch—and I also found some crayon scribbles in my Hebrew lexicon that weren’t there this morning.

Today was the last day of my summer vacation, and the weather was as mopey as I was. It was gray and rainy all day long, and the two munchkins didn’t appreciate being cooped up indoors. Fortunately there was an aunt who needed rescuing, and J loaded them into carseats for a trip in the PT Cruiser. (Which, fortunately, still has both license plates legally affixed.)

It was a babbly day for James. Sometimes he is quiet all day, sometimes he attempts to have conversations in his nonsense language (although you do pick up some English from time to time) and on days like today, he talks from sunup to sundown.

“Go be kwa ya HEE je dad da DOT DOT DEE! DEE!!! DEE!!! Ha hahaha! Do yay muh muh muh tay kwi kwi mo do.” (He pauses for dramatic effect and continues with emphatic gestures and a serious slow cadence) Da bah tzi YAH do kwi bo du! Du!”

And so on and so forth.

Henry isn’t as interested in talking, but he went along with James’ itinerary for their play pretty passively. They mostly shared toys fine, although it was easy to tell that balls and wheeled objects are of a much higher value than other toys. In monetary terms, those are the $10s and $20s. James has a bad habit of stealing Henry’s toys between visits, and we’ve tried recently to make a serious effort before he leaves to locate everything that came with him.

Last time we were very proud that he went home with a spiky yellow ball, only to discover afterwards that we had two cups, two toy trucks, and a construction block. It doesn’t even matter if you check very thoroughly under the couch. Today we found a tractor-shape in the secret compartment of the toy grain silo. James is sneaky.

The most precious object of all the day, however, was the golden star balloon that James got at the store yesterday. He always points at the helium balloons when we go the grocery store, and I bought him one yesterday in celebration of our anniversary and also as a bribe to keep him still in the cart. He was deeply excited to carry it around all day, to sleep with it in his room, and to pummel it within in an inch of its life whenever he could get his hands on it. James and Henry both “loved” it hard today, and it isn’t floating nearly as easily as it used to.

It’s upstairs in his room with him now as he sleeps, and it will be the first thing he looks for in the morning. Because when you’re an almost-two-year old, you love people and things with wild abandon. And when you’re an almost-two-year old’s Daddy, it’s nice to be loved with wild abandon.