Ah, yes. Potty training, toils and travails of. A subject that has no interest whatever for most, but which parents of young children can’t seem to stop talking about.

I’m in quite the situation, myself. My boy is not even two years old yet - not till September - but in certain ways he is very close to being ready for this step. He hates having his diaper changed. And today he’s begun removing his own diaper everytime he does anything in it. Everytime I turn around he’s gleefully hopping about, everything flapping for joy in the cool fresh air, with a barely wet diaper and and his pants coiled around his ankles. And he doesn’t even know the words yet that I’ll need to potty train him!

The popular wisdom right now is “wait; he’ll do it when he’s ready.” But I can’t help suspecting that this may be one of the reasons why kids are training later and later. Besides, I don’t trust popular wisdom. It’s the next thing to anarchy.

Enter my mother-in-law, who is all agog with this family who potty trained their infants and never used diapers at all. The way they did it was to sit the baby on the toilet with them, thus making it instinctive. It also involved a complex method of reading “signs” in the child’s body language, since of course a three-month-old can’t say “I hafta go”  - even if does know to let loose when held over a toilet.

Yeah…not for me, but thanks, Mom.

Next I read a triumphal story on a parenting board the other day about a four-year-old who potty trained himself “when he was ready” - that time just happening to coincide with a camping trip in which the whole family had to make regular treks to the bathroom together, because it was off-site.

And…and… I read a novel, otherwise awful, in which a sort of degraded society gets divided between those who do their business wherever they happen to be at the moment, and those who have a dedicated spot.

And it ocurred to me. The diaper, from the child’s point of view, is incidental. It’s not about diaper vs. toilet. It’s all about whether you go where you stand, or retire to a private spot. In other words, using the bathroom is a societal norm, a civilized activity. We do it because we are part of a group that does it by way of structuring our social relations.

Bingo!

All I have to do to make him see the light is to take the little rat with me…every time…oh, good grass. This is not fun at all.

I suppose that all natural human loves can be images of and partakers in Divine Love. It’s only just come to me how a parents’ love really does so.

In a happy marriage there is no need of a child to bring any completion or fulfil any lack within the relationship. The the man and the woman - diverse in sex, one in nature - have found unity and completion in one another, and they make a little world of themselves. Yet that same relationship will ordinarily flow out into living offspring. In fact, when parents bring a child into the world voluntarily and out of no obligation or sense of need, but just out of the desire to share their love with their own image, to allow their love to expand, as it were, and flow out, not only to an existing object, but to an object that exists because of the love that flows out to it - that is the when the phrase “Our Father, You Who are in Heaven” has the most meaning to us.

In case someone does not understand the comparison, I am talking about the truth that God is Himself a Realm and World that needs no other world to contain or give context. In diversity of Persons, Unity of Nature, His existance is named Love. Yet he pours out love even beyond himself, as impossible as this seems, which results in the existance of creatures and the bestowing of all good upon them. This is done freely and that is the beauty of it and the Honor of the Creator.

I believe that parental love is an image of this Divine Creative Love, and I think that the more freely parents bestow this ‘creating love’ upon the child whose existence they desire, the clearer the image becomes.

On the other hand, when the bearing of children becomes an obligation, as in so many corners of Christianity, the image is forbidden this, its most essential aspect.

Obligation is what ruins so many spiritual joys and godly virtues. I’m sure that is why, no matter how much the Jewish Christians of the Apostle Paul’s day were in need, no matter how good it was for the Gentiles to contribute largely to that need, he forbore to give them any command concerning the amount (or percentage) that each was to give. For “God loves a cheerful giver” and no one was to give “under compulsion.”

In fact, although the Kingdom of God is a place of order, of God’s rule, of Law of a sort, that Law is Love, and Love is free and is freedom. The whole tenor of true Christianity is one of goodness that is not under compulsion. Whenever I percieve the urge to codify and legislate what ought to be free and the springing up of grace, I feel that I am looking at something unhealthy and not fully Christian.

For kid-friendly egg recipe scroll to the bottom of the post. 

I continue to be amazed by the search phrases that bring people to my blog. Just to reassure everyone, there’s no indication who made the search or where they were coming from, at least not that I know how to or care how to find.

Last time I wrote about the amusing search “mean poems to say to enemies” and obligingly put up a few. Since then not a day goes by when I don’t get three or four hits from people with similar searches. Some of them say “mean poems to say at guys” and some simply “mean poems.” I think I may safely guess the gender of most of these searches. It makes me think there might be an unrecognized market out there…hmm, book idea.

One search that nearly broke my heart was the phrase “need Orthodox friends.” I’m not sure if that was Christian or Jewish Orthodox but if anyone needs friends all I can say is that I too am largely reduced to looking for them on the internet and I sympathize with this need. Feeling alone in your faith is not the normal way it was meant to be. However my husband likes to quote “Athanasius against the world” to me, reminding me that those times do come upon the Lord’s people and probably are coming upon us.

Who knows what monstrous deception is overtaking our world…what with epistomological questions, and tens of thousands of splinter christianities, and funamentalism darkening the face of all religion. It may be that in the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ many will find themselves alone in the coming centuries. But he will come again to judge the living and the dead. We wait for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Oh yes, and, if anyone wants an Orthodox internet friend, I can’t promise instant bff status but I would love to chat with you and see if we don’t hit it off. My prayers are with you, anonymous searcher.

 More practically, I recieved a hit from someone looking for ways to get a kid to eat eggs. Now people trying to get their kids to eat veggies or eat at all are another almost daily phenomonon. But to the question of eggs I do believe I have something to add.

 Kid’s tummies, if I remember my own, are far more sensitive than adult’s tummies. I was not able to eat eggs until I was in college. And as I remember I always liked the taste but as a child they were so rich that they made me ill.

My mom used to get eggs into us by making french toast. That is, you whip up a few eggs and milk, dip a slice of bread into the mixture, and fry it up in oil. Add syrup, honey, or powdered sugar and you are in business.

The problem is that it’s difficult to make good french toast. It takes a lot of time, it’s messy, and likely as not the bread is going to collapse under the weight of the eggs and come out dense and hard. And all that oil…yuck.

I’ve just perfected a whipped egg-and-bread pancake recipe that comes out exactly like a perfect french toast. And my Johnny loves it. If I have real maple syrup in the house I put a little on and tell him it’s “tree honey.” If not he eats it anyway. Now Johnny likes eggs so he is not a perfect test-case for those of you who’s kids can’t handle the stuff, like the child me. However it’s an idea to try. Here’s the recipe.

In a small cup, whip up an egg and a jug-capful of milk (about half a teaspoon?) Blend quite thoroughly with a fork.

Tear the crust off of a slice of bread. (The wonderful thing about this is that you can use whole-grain bread as it’s not going to be too dry or rough in the recipe.) Lightly shred the bred in small peices and drop them into the cup of egg and milk mixture. Stab the bread repeatedly with the tines of the fork, until it is throughly saturated with the eggs and milk.

Melt a small pat of butter in a frying pan. When the butter starts to bubble, turn the cup upside down and let the mixture plop in the center of the pan in a disc.

Now you can cook this mixture exactly like a pancake. Not too hot or fast, don’t scramble, test the edges. When it starts to puff up and the edges are becoming solid, turn it over with a spatula. Both sides should be brown and puffy and the center should be bouncy when you tap it lightly with a finger or spatula.

Of course we all know how to introduce new food to a toddler: show it to him, give it an exciting name that relates it to a food or object he’s already familiar with, let him see you cut or prepare it in some way, and eat a few bites in front of him as if you are tasting it to see if it’s any good and finding that it is. And then ask him if he wants to try it. If his mouth opens at all pop a little bit in to see if he cares for it.

He’ll let you know.

Johnny has been eating eggs a lot lately but I’ve been worried he hasn’t been getting enough carbs. Apparently Cheerios are now too boring to eat. And I know well that trying to force a kid to eat something is the surest way to make him loathe that thing forever.

 This morning I tried a trick - whisking eggs, milk, and a little flavoring with some soft shredded bread. As I cooked it and noticed how mushy it was turning out I began to dread trying to get Johnny to eat it.

When the mixture was thoroughly cooked I sat down with it in front of Johnny’s high chair and made a great performance of eating a few bites. Then I offered it to him.

He took the bate, didn’t spit it out, and smiled. So far so good. He took another bite and another.

And then suddenly he started pushing it away.

“Would you like more eggs?” I asked politely as this has been known to do the trick…Johnny gets upset if I start shoving food in his mouth like a machine.

 He condescended to take one more bite but that was it.

Now normally at this point I would have thrown my hands up in bewildered misery, thrown the eggs-and-bread in the trash and started rummaging around for anything else I could get Johnny to eat. Today was different. We had some unexpected expenses this last week and payday is not till Sunday. What’s more I have no vehicle (this involves the aformentioned expenses) and no way to go to the store. What it comes down to is that none of the usual grapes, banannas and very little of the Smokies that are Johnny’s old standbys were available. I was saving the Smokies for lunch and for tomorrow. And I was tired. Too tired to fight with my kid and too strapped to waste a whole egg and a slice of bread.

So I just sat there. We stuck out our tongues at one another; we took turns making funny noises with our lips. A couple of times Johnny reached his hand out in that “give me some more” gesture but I just shrugged and said, “I don’t know what to do for you, Baby.”

And what a miracle, he eventually ate three more bites of egg mixture. Then he stopped eating again but I thought, hey I’m on to something. Low pressure, friendly interaction, and don’t let him know there’s any other food in the house.

I don’t know when it ocurred to me to give him some water. Maybe I was feeling thirsty myself. But I remembered he’d had nothing to drink yet this morning so I filled a small glass with water and began to help him drink it.

And miracle of miracles, after his third or fourth sip, I caught him looking at the bowl of eggs-and-bread on the table.

“Would you like more eggs?” I asked him, and tried giving him a bite. He took it. Then he looked at the water so I gave him more. Then eggs. Water. Eggs. Water. Eggs. Water. Till he’d finished the entire bowl of eggs and the entire cup of water. Now he’s happily runing around the house filling his diaper.

My nose tells me I should go.

But first I must reflect that sometimes when we have trouble getting our kids to eat, it’s because we are trying to forcre them into our own bad eating habits. My husband is always telling me I need to drink water at every meal but I usually forget. Now I was expecting my baby to do the same thing. Fortunately he has healthier desires than I do.

As I explore Orthodox Christian thinking, my ideas about children are changing. If God does not take personal offence at my every infraction or failure, as I once believed he did, then why should I take offence at my child’s infractions and failures? If he’s wrong it’s only to his own hurt and that should grieve me more than anger me. I’m trying to reserve righteous anger for those times when he is truly being stubborn even though he knows better. At this age (16 months) that doesn’t really happen when you watch closely. Ignorance, misunderstanding, blind desire, and fear drive most wrongdoing. That wrongdoing can and will become sinful and death-bringing if they become habits and last till he’s older. Well, that’s bound to happen…it’s the human condition. But the gentlest way to discourage as much of it as possible is the best kind of discipline. Sometimes when Johnny is truly frustrating me I put him in his crib with some toys until we are ready to start interacting again.

Then again, as in today’s example, sometimes it’s me who’s wrong, not him. And that should make me even slower to condemn my child’s frustrating behavior. I’m really glad I didn’t punish Johnny for not eating his eggs-and-bread this morning.

My first favorite method is to buy frozen peas and diced carrots and store them in a clear freezer bag so that Johnny can see what I’m pulling out of the freezer. “OOOO, Does Johnny want Blocks and Balls?” I ask with the veggie-light in my eyes.

 He clacks his tongue - every time - in that snacking sound Scottie taught him and looks delighted. I take a handful and run the veggies under warm water just until they are thawed. This way I don’t have to cook them and Johnny doesn’t have to eat mush, against which he was taking a stand before he was even twelve months old.

Once the veggies are thawed - about thirty seconds - I arrange them on his tray, peas on one side and carrots on the other. “Look at these yumadoo orange Blocks!” I say. “And look at these delicious green Balls.” Johnny eats this sort of stuff up.

How did we get there? Well, I have to put part of it down to natural inclination: Johnny just fell in love with peas. He was practicing picking things up and the peas were the perfect size for his fingers. Also, they happen to be tiny eatable balls, and the ball is his second-favorite toy. (Apples - whole, not sliced - get similar preference.)

However I quickly learned that canned peas were not favored. They have an ugly color and they are mushy. Frozen veggies are inexpensive, they are more nearly fresh and very firm, and they have a wonderful bright color. The carrots came with the peas and Johnny soon learned to like them just as much. Putting veggies on his tray before any other food shows up really helps.

My other favorite method is by way of V-8 Vegetable Juice. I put it in a tiny cup. It’s easier for him to drink than fruit juice because it has the pulp and flows more slowly. If I am really, really, in a hurry I can squirt it into his mouth with a medical syringe. Tsk, tsk, that’s the lazy way out and doesn’t teach Johnny independance. Yes, well, at least my kid eats his veggies every single day.

Today Johnny started cimbing stairs. Since we don’t have any in the house, that was quite an accomplishment.

I tend to get rather sedentary during the winter and so far Johnny, a very very physical person, has put up with the new boring regime fairly meekly. Today he had enough. His persistence in piling my lap with shoes and outdoor articles of clothers…er, clothing, was amazing. When he wasn’t doing that he was hanging on the doorknob gazing back at me and making noises expressive of unutterable longing.

Finally I gave in. I hardly knew I was doing it. At one moment he had put his red shirt in my hand so many times that it was easier to just put it on him that to keep putting it back in the laundry basket from which he had retrieved it. His jeans and coat followed, and by that time I was resigned. I put on his shoes and coat and we ventured out into the snow with his ball.

He glowered at the neighbor who was shoveling the walk and kissed me possessively (his new stage is jealousy of anyone who looks at Mom; except when Dad is home in which case he is jealous of the attention Mum gets from Dad.) He threw his ball and tried to run into the street, only to be blocked by a pile of plowed snow. He stared at the snow in perplexity until I threw his ball back down the sidewalk toward the house and got him moving again. By the time we were back at the house I was so cold I knew I couldn’t take another minute of it and we went back in the house. Johnny was distraught. I distracted him with food. We had a nap.

He woke up and pretty much was immediately back at it again. Apparently freezing our noses off for three minutes didn’t satisfy his desire to get out of the appartment and play ball (which he pronounces “BAH!” in a very solemn tone.)

I compromised by letting him throw his soft rubber ball in the appartment-building hallway and chase it up and down. There are four sets of stairs - two up and two down - in said hallway and I suppose it was inevitable that he would want to explore them eventually. First he tentatively threw the ball up the stairs. As it bounced down I said “plop, plop, plop” - one plop for each time it hit. He thought that was so funny that we spent probably ten minutes just throwing the ball and saying plop, laughing hysterically, and then fetching the ball to throw it again.

But Johnny is not easily satisfied, as I may have mentioned before. He knelt on the first step. He climbed it. He came down. He went up three steps and down again. Then he went all the way to the top, me walking behind and taking pictures for the “Johnny - the Second Year” scrapbook that will be coming up next September.

Johnny was so delighted (oblivious, of course, to the roiling fears that had sprouted from my innards as I held out my hands ready to catch him all the way.) So naturally, he proceeded to take a comprehensive Tour of the Building’s Stairways. He walked down the upstairs hallway, and descend from the other set of stairs, me holding his hand. Once on the bottom level again, he found a basement stairway and threw his ball down - an excercise in “putting” that meant he got to go down after it. (Living room rule.)

After this, an exhausting bout of going up and down over and over again, couple with erratic ball-throwing, ensued. And yet when I took him inside for his dinner, he still threw himself on the door in anguish and begged for more. Some shaved turkey and grapes and banannas and Ramen Noodles distracted him and now he’s in bed.

But there’s alway tomorrow.

Today my baby displayed his first evidence of shame. He bit my neck and I scolded him, rather mildly. But another woman was present, and little Johnny surprised me by bursting into tears, burying his nose in my neck, and covering his cheeks and eyes with his hands.

Am I proud? No. I think it’s so sad. Already innocence has taken a step toward the door.

I have to teach him right and wrong. But the effects are…well, the law incites sin.  It’s a horrible paradox. I’m so glad that the Orthodox Church offers salvation at an infant level to infants, as well as at an adult level to adults.

Of which saint, I wonder, should I ask prayers for the wellbeing of my precious son’s soul? And will I ever again have the courage to bring into this perilous, sinful, dying world a creature in whom is “the seed of corruption?”

Children come into this world serious beings. I know this is true because I watch Johnny, and once watched younger siblings, in their serious endeavors. Always the very young are seeking to acquire skills and accomplish feats. No one blames them that their goals are meaningless in the wider scheme of things. We know they are trying instinctually to become fully human.

 Now why does this attitude peter out so quickly? Why do teens, for instance, talk unendingly of fun and we young adults complain of the effort it takes to accomplish our little tasks? Why do so many who should be growing into elders grow fat and poor instead? Why are we so life-weary so young?

And does this, by any chance, have something to do with today’s religious, sexual, and artistic incapacitation?

And yet the occasional efforts to fix this moral laziness are so destructive. I really abhor most of these so-called educational toys that parents are often guilted into giving their kids. Johnny wants to practice putting one block on top of the other. How disengenuous would it be for me to sneak in a little pre-school by painting numbers and letters on the side?

So I vow that in our living room culture, “fun” is going to be the dirtiest word. Fun is way too cheap a form of enjoyment to satisfy a merry little soul like Johnny. And the next dirtiest word will be “education.” To aquire true learning he must transcend mere education - and besides, everyone now knows that education (modern word for a modern concept) stresses kids out rather than challenging them.

All I want to do is keep my son from forgetting about the joys of accomplishment, of relationship, and of action. I must not, by pampering, neglecting, or frustrating, rob him of the power to act rather than merely thinking or intending…

This means escalating the challenges, facilitating the goals, and nipping in the bud all those little shoots of laziness and self-protection that come along so quickly. It means having the personal courage to enjoy work as much as he does. It means sustaining the attention needed for praising or blaming fairly. It means having the nerve to leave him alone sometimes so he can internally work through his external experiences. It means nourishing him physically, environmentally, spiritually and emotionally…without pampering or pandering. It means so preparing him for a hard but rewarding life that any other would be distasteful to him. 

In fact, it means creating a whole moral Universe for him to live in instead of the one actually surrounding us. Yes, all that just to let him keep his birthright.

What must I give up, what unnatural efforts must I put forth?

Do wrong so that we can have the pleasure of fixing the wrong we’ve done? Johnny votes ‘Yes!’

Our CD Tower is this lovely wooden piano-themed fixture. It undulates rather than rising straight up, and its sides are covered in carved, painted, and polished piano keys, almost lifesize. It’s one of my favorite pieces, and like most of them it came from my Crazy Aunt No. 2.

It is a source of fascination to Johnny as it was to his Uncle Chaz before him (Chaz used to come down to my bedroom for fifteen-minute visits: we’d converse, listen to music, make shadows on my wall, and he’d usually end up pretending to play piano on the side of my CD Tower.)

Now Johnny (who prefers to plunk away at the real piano when the cover is off) has done his own pretending. (Can a fourteen-month-old play-act? Yes, when expedient. The other day he mimed drinking from a cup, complete with very accurated sound effects, in order to get it across to me that he was thirsty.)

But for Johnny the real attraction is the stacks of CD’s. They make a lovely clatter when a little boy pulls them out of their slots and flings them on the floor in sparkling plastic heaps. Then, of course, he has the pleasure of seeing his Mum freak out, holler “NO!” (this greatly amuses Johnny, who sees his Mum as the original push-over.) And then he gets to show off his “putting” skills by putting the CD’s back in their slots.

It’s a win-win.

Forget the experts for a moment - the truly wonderful thing about baby talk is that my baby loves it! No, he doesn’t seem to know it’s silly. And in fact I’m not sure it is. Like everything Johnny and I do together, it’s quite serious. Not glum, dull, drudgish, or somber. Serious as in meaningful.

I recently read an article from a University extension newlestter suggesting that some babytalk is necessary, natural, and useful. Calling a dog a doggie would help to emphasize the ‘g’ sound to an as-yet undiscriminating ear. Calling a baby a silly name doesn’t help them learn anything.

Utilitarian thinking strikes once again; aparently those who reduce human beings to a science cannot fathom the purpose of anything beyond the most basic mechanical helps. Where, I ask, will tomorrow’s fantasy writers be if everyone’s Mommy goes around saying, “he ate, he is eating, he will eat” and no one’s Mommy ever turns with a flourish from the stove holding a steaming plate of eggs and crows, “Mum gots Yumadoos for Johnny! Johnny gobble em!”

As a matter of fact the words of babytalk are merely the most external phenomena of a whole living room culture - mine and Johnny’s. It has its folk songs, its conventions, its rituals, its unspoken understandings and values…and yes, its language. Not merely words, but language, with linguistic rules.

One of our favorites rules is the “doo rule.” In this rule, any adjective can be turned into a noun and applied to a significant object by adding “doo” onto the end of that adjective. It’s also an intensifier.

According to this, Johnny, Daddy, and Mum might at different times wear the coveted title “Lovadoo”.

When Johnny gets his nose tickled by a ripe dandelion head, he hears about the “fluffadoo.” (Later on, when Johnny is in bed, he misses the scene where his Mum’s light mess of hair gets puffed on by his Dad and the word ‘fluffadoo’ comes out again, amid many slaps and scoldings.)

Of course there are yuckadoos and (according to a special extensions of the doo rule) yuckapoos, which should be carefully distinguished. My hope is that this will come in handy when potty training begins.

Once the poo-extension had been introduced, other extensions appeared. In this version, a verb can be tagged on to the end of a noun. Why? Well, to describe that noun according to its characteristic action, of course. What could be more natural?

According to this rule, the Mamasnatch appeared. I earned this name because of my propensity to pounce on poor Johnny out of nowhere, scoop him up in the air, swing him around, kiss him five or six times, and then plop him back down amongst his toys before he had time to pull his diplomatic “putting” crap on me. This  snatching skill also comes in useful when Johnny is running away from various necessitious operations such as a diaper-change or a nose-blow or a face-wipe. In fact it’s quite expressively indicative of that whole helpful-yet-interfering character of Mamas everywhere.

Another practice is to use primarily the most basic present tense form of verbs. It’s almost as if the verb gets turned into a noun in order to make it more pliable when its first being learned. So if Johnny throws his ball, threw it, or is being told to throw it, he hears the same basic form of expression: “Johnny throw ball.” Afterwards I usually clarify, “Johnny threw that ball” (I can never bring myself to sound quite so Dick-and-Jane as to actually say “the ball”; needless to say, “that” is one of Johnny’s favorite pointing words.)

What about pronouns? At an earlier stage Johnny’s Daddy and I commonly addressed Johnny as “him.” That is, we used to describe Johnny’s actions to him in third person: “Oooo, Johnny eat him yumadoos!” or, “Johnny break him toy. Naughty!” I’m sure this arose out of a desire to make Johnny more aware of his actions…besides, it was cute.

Of course, he soon reached a level of self-consciousness at which that form of address was ridiculous. So what did the Mamasnatch do? She invented a new form, of course! 

Introducing “Yoom”, the pronoun that is both objective and second-person. In contractions it gets shortened to “oom.” Like so, “Johnny eat-oom eggs?” or “Yoom socks (are) falling off!” Tell me that m-sound on the end of a pronoun of address isn’t comforting to a child who is first facing the dreadful reality of personal accountability. It softens it. Too many kids hear the word “you” in such a harsh, or accusatory, or dissatisfied, or exasperated tone of voice most of the time. In my opinion people have forgotten that the reason we have our children is to grant them the discipline and uinderstanding to be the people they have the potential to be.

Did I mentione the rituals, songs, conventions, and values?

In our living-room culture, duckies hold a place of special honor. When Johnny gets out of bed in the morning he has three ritual actions with which he begins his day. First, he kisses the cross that hangs on his bedroom wall. Then he pounces on his Daddy, sleeping or awake (so much more to his Mum’s delight if sleeping.) Then he snatches up the nearest duckie in a manner reminiscent of his Mum and begins to sing, “AAAHHHH…duttie. AAAHHHH…duttie.”

He’s referring, of course, to the duckie verse of the Johnny song.

Little Baby Johnny,

In the Bubbly Stream.

All the yellow duckies

See him getting clean.

Little Baby Johnny

There’s no need to scream.

All is warm and pleasant

In the bubbly stream.

All the yellow duckies

All the yellow duckies

All the yellow duckies

All the yellow duckies,

All the yellow duckies

See him getting clean,

On his scrubbing team

In the Bubbly Stream.

How do I know that Johnny won’t end up behind in language skills? Well, theoretically I know it because the living room language evolves and grows up with Johnny. Where once I said, “Johnny drop him ball” I now say, “Did you drop yoom ball? ooooo…” When it’s clear Johnny understands what I’m saying, I straighten an expression out, gradually filling in be-verbs and pronouns. I don’t have to be afraid he’s going to miss the point in the midst of all those extra words because he already knows the high points, the basic structure of the sentence.

But I also know from experience. In this case I’m doing much as my Mom did.  And I have to say, that from my naturally inarticulate beast of a brother, to my calculated sister, to the ever-verbose Me, no family I know uses language as colorfully and to such effect as we do. It’s a pleasure to go home for the holidays.

Remind me to post my brother’s “Dave” story some time…

“From his viewpoint it must be akin to alien abduction.”

Johnny’s current stage is to practice “putting” things.

Earlier it was “unputting” them. I would build a castle of blocks; his delight was to knock them down. I would put a pen away in the drawer, he would labor away at the drawer to open it and pull all the pens out.

 My hope was that this pulling out and knocking down would translate into the knowledge of building up and putting away. Luckily, it has.

Now he actually wants to practice setting one block on top of the other. The old pan I gave him to play with (no, we aren’t that poor, Johnny simply prefers “real” objects to toys) turns into a basketball hoop and a storage place for little yellow duckies and triangular red blocks.

Part of his typical morning routine will probably include removing the couch cushions and setting a broken necklace, three or four blocks, a yellow duckie, and a couple of pens in its place. Then he climbs up and sits proudly next to them for about half a second. Then he throws the necklace, blocks, duckie, and pens on the ground. Climbs down after them. And starts the whole process over.

I think he must be imitating my picking-up and putting-away practice. (No, I don’t stash pens and jewelry under the couch cushion.)

What’s truly funny is when his little “putting” excercises generate evidence that he has been rooting around in places he’s not allowed.

Last night when I opened the hutch doors to get some noodles, I found the rice bag neatly nestled inside one of Ian’s toy stacking bowls. Scottie and I laughed over that one, but not as much as over the little yellow duckie I found planted, like a little flag of defiance, deep in the bowels of the chemical cabinet, the one I always keep tied shut and usually discipline Johnny or at least scold him for trying to get into.

Why do I find these things so funny? They aren’t ridiculous. They are amusing to the eyes of love. Johnny trudges around the appartment with such a businesslike expression on his face. Everything he does is so serious.

Except when his Daddy comes home or when we have been tossing his boll into that old pot and one of us scores. Then he jumps up and down, something a kid his age and weight shouldn’t even be able to do. And screams with delight.

Johnny has long used “putting” for a very important mechanism - getting to where he wants to go. When he was about two weeks old he began to express unutterable longings to patrol the entire appartment nine or ten times a day. He wanted to look at all the pictures and see a close-up view of every object. How did I know this? Well, I can only describe his behavior as “steering.” Once in my arms, he would look around for what he wanted to see, and then his whole body would turn into an intensely vibrating rudder to “steer” me in the direction he wanted to go. Once he got there he would stare with a most intelligent expression at the picture or the globe or the magnet. Then off we’d go to the next.

 Crawling and walking followed much later, but though his speech skills are highly undeveloped, he still has his ways of communicating where he wants to go if he’s not being allowed. The most amusing example is when someone picks him up and he has a toy in his hands.

Hey - that’s rude. I was manipulating this immensely important Object down there, and suddenly I find myself suspended in space miles from the floor. I can’t help it I’m inexpressibly cute. From an adult point of view, I can understand the desire to squish Johnny in your arms and kiss him at least twenty times. From his point of view the experience must be something like alien abduction.

Johnny handles this situation diplomatically - he ostentatiously throws the toy to the ground before him. Then slowly, gently he begins to slide or lean down after the toy. The message is so clear that most people burst out laughing and let him down. Johnny only uses kicking, screaming, and etc. as a last resort. He learned that from his father.

My one-year-old son, Johnny, is a merry little soul. I read a sentence somewhere about “the solid, unkillable children of the poor” and that reminds me of him. We are not destitute but Scottie and I both come from lower-middle-class families and Johnny has not exactly had all the advantages. He gets plenty to eat, people give him second-hand toys (but he loves the yellow duckie I got him from the dollar store best) and we keep his bedroom heated even when the rest of the house is cold. And somehow I was never afraid that this one wasn’t going to make it. He’s just too strong.

The funny thing is, Johnny’s a risk-taker. It’s as if he knows he’s one of those unkillable children and he has a surfeit of safety he needs to use up. Naturally, I have to restrain him from danger at every turn. It falls to me to determine what discipline is necessary when he insists on running into the street or playing with bottles of chemicals.

All of this came together this morning in one of those moments where you have to punish a child but you are trying really hard not to laugh. Johnny would not sit down in his high chair for any pleading or scolding or reasoning. He just looked at me with that exact grin you see in the picture and reasoned back, calling up his best baby words in well-modulated tones.

 So it came down to a smack on the bottom. The point, especially at this age, is not to hurt him. It’s just to put some force behind my command. So I smacked him and gently, carefully sat him back down. This happened maybe three or four times.

I was making his eggs and realized he’d been quiet for awhile so I turned around and he was standing up again. I was so frustated I didn’t say or do anything. I just looked at him with a cocked eyebrow and gave him a chance to do the right thing.

He cocked his eyebrow back, that arched one he gets from me. “Naughty” he said clearly, and looked back at me sternly. Within seconds he was bending over my knee while I laughed silently.

 Johnny, like Harriet and Lord Peter’s son, is simply willing to accept a punishment every now and then in exchange for  adventure forbidden. It’s even possible that he was simply born with extra good judgment. (From my viewpoint it’s a dangerous risk to allow him to stand up in his high chair. From his point of view it might not be a risk at all as long as he keeps one hand on the backboard.) When I try to imagine what this will look like twenty years from now I see a strong, confident young man who, though not reckless, can judge with finer precision than I where to draw the line and when to take a chance.

A cautious, docile child is easier to raise, but a cautious, docile adult will miss out on a lot of life because of his inability to calculate and stratify risks, or to make decisions and feel confident about them. I believe it’s a mistake to try to break the will of a child like Johnny.

In fact, I believe it’s a sin to break any part of a child, spiritual or physical. Building up, not destruction, is the aim of the good parent.

In this context, discipline becomes more an informing ritual than a harrowing experience. That firm smack on the bottom when he disobeys a command from his Mum may be the danger that makes his life worth while but it’s also his first, most deeply-felt clue that there is a moral dimmension to the Universe.