Let's Talk

Mal was slow to the verbal game, but now that he's off and running... He seriously cracks me up every day.

Today, he was having me be "the horse." Okay, sidebar story: "The horse" is actually a beautiful giant white pegasus puppet. When D was little, we bought it on Amazon (before Prime) for a friend's birthday. It had been like $65 but was on sale for $5. I used to have a limit of $7 on any birthday gifts for D's friends, and I always managed to come up with some cool stuff. Anyhoo, the pegasus didn't get to us until after Ansley's birthday party, and we'd gotten her something else, but D loved the pegasus, anyway, so we kept it. And now Mal loves it.

So.

I was being "the horse" and Mal was showing her (Mal says she's a girl) around his room. He got to this toy boat he has for his (at this point theoretical) baths, and said, "Horsey, here's the door, and here's the steering wheel, and here are the stabilizers." Um, what? I'm pretty sure that's from Peppa Pig. And they're actually where you'd tie up to the dock, but I'm not correcting him.

Tonight, I defaced a $30+ pair of Hanna Andersson pajamas (I didn't pay full retail, though!) because Mal REALLY wanted to wear his "stars and Ms" PJs (Wonder Woman; look at the logo and think of it from his perspective, viewing it from above), but they're winter pajamas and we're looking at near-record heat from now until the earth ends, apparently. So I cut off the arms and the legs. It's not like he could have worn them this winter, anyway. He's growing like crazy.

Look at this! The picture on the left was a year ago today, and the one on the right was last Tuesday, I believe. Now, he has been wearing those shoes for a year, but they are almost too tight. The clothes he outgrew long ago.

Before James got home this evening, I put on makeup for the first time in a long time. He doesn't usually notice/care about that kind of thing, but I was feeling mehh and wanted to spruce up. A couple of hours later, we were all in Mal's room, James finishing up his dinner, when Mal came over to me to hug me and said, "Mommy, so beautiful! Wearing makeup!" Hey, at least one guy in this house notices.

He's a fun kid, and he likes to go out and do things, but he can also be a homebody. Several times, he'll ask to go somewhere (the pool, Nana and Pappy's, the library) and once we get all dressed and ready to go, he's on to his own other thing and acts affronted that I'd suggest we go anywhere.

Lately, he's taken to saying "I'm scared" when he doesn't want to do something. I have to be careful with this one, because I do want to be sensitive to any fear he has. But also, he says it about going places and doing things he loves.

He DOESN'T love taking baths, but today was the first time he's told me he was scared. That, I get. He thinks the water is too loud. So I'll need to start filling it up before he gets in. We need to do that tomorrow. He has dirt tracks down his legs. Seriously.

Although I don't think it's therapy-worthy, Mal definitely has some sensory quirks. He is weird about noises being "loud." HE is loud. Loud isn't what bothers him. It's unexpected or prolonged or something out of the ordinary that bothers him. He will often turn his tablet down so low there's no way he can hear the words. The "air kites" down by the lake make him nervous, and although they're likely loud if you're riding in them (paragliders with fans), they're by no means "loud" at our house.

Mal has this battery-operated "drill" that has been slowly winding down for weeks. Finally, Monday, it stopped working altogether, so I had to switch out the batteries. On and off for four hours, he cried about how it was "too loud! Make it quiet again!"

Also, if it's windy, he thinks it's cold and that we need jackets and hats and gloves and scarves. There's no convincing him that it's hot and windy. He will say "brrr" when the wind blows, even if it's 85 degrees and 75 percent humidity in the full sun.

So I try to pay attention to what he's actually experiencing and take it seriously as a mystery to be solved, because he's trying more and more to communicate how he wants things. It's exhausting but fun work!