Right Back Atcha, Mommy!

When Dex noticed I was taking pictures of the drawing machine, he quickly built his own camera and started clicking it at me.

Drawing Machine

Last Sunday morning Dex and I built a "drawing machine" with his fancy gear legos.

We put a marker on the arm and when Dex turned the crank, the machine moved the arm and the marker drew on the paper.

Ring Ring

This morning as I was typing up my reading reflections for my field methods class, Dexter was building "machines" with his gears legos. He came over to me and handed me a little contraption - a long, skinny red lego with a gear at each end. "It's a telephone!"  I picked it up and said, "ring, ring." He looked at me and realized he had to quickly make another telephone in order to receive my call.  He didn't have any more big gears so he made an identical "telephone" with smaller gears and "answered" it.

D: Hello?

M: Hi!  Is this Dexter?

D: Yes.

M: What are you doing?

D: Do you know why it took me so long to answer the phone?

M: No. Why did it take you so long?

D: Well, I had to build a little phone.




I asked him to describe it to me (prompting for describing and comparative words) which he did.
Then he said:

Don't forget to tell Daddy where I work if he forgets.  Tell him I work at the Weekend Workbench.

I agreed to do that and we hung up our phones.  Then he called me back and said, "Do you remember what I told you?"  I said, "Yes. Tell Daddy that you work at the Weekend Workbench." "But only if he forgets," Dex corrected.

Whipping Up a Whipped Cream Frenzy

Dexy and Daddy made home-made whipped cream for some strawberry shortcakes. After we finished the strawberry shortcakes, Dex got My Bologna all worked up by letting him lick whipped cream off his fingers.

 This, in turn, got Dexter all worked up.

And so the cycle went...

Long Building and Tall Man

I helped with the design and construction of the long building but the tall man (on the right) was all Dexter.

Some Sort of Special Drawer?

The other day Dex and I were driving in the car we were listening to the Moth Story Hour on NPR. A woman was telling the story of preparing for the birth of her first child. In predictable fashion, she first explained how she had it all meticulously planned out. She had read all the books and decided how she wanted this birth to go. She even made 30 laminated copies of a typed 8 page detailed plan for everyone in the hospital about how she didn't want any medications, wanted a totally natural birth, no instruments, etc. But after 30 hours of painful labor she was hooked up to every device in the hospital with pain medication zooming through her veins.

As she began to talk about how different the experience was with her second child (she no longer felt the need for total control), Dexter quietly asked, "Does it hurt to have a baby? Did it hurt when you had me?" I explained that it does hurt when a baby comes out, and that it did hurt when he was born but that the pain is only for a little bit and then there is a lot of joy and relief when the baby arrives and when he came out Daddy and I couldn't have been more excited and happy. Thinking I could turn this into a learning moment about the importance of facing challenges rather than avoiding them I added, "sometimes the most important things in life are difficult but they sure are worth the effort." For a few seconds I thought I was off the hook. But then he asked, "Do you have some sort of special drawer?"

How does one respond to this?!  I wanted to laugh but I didn't want to make him feel foolish. I wanted to make sure he didn't have the wrong idea in his head but I didn't want to go overboard with details. Finally I said, "It's more like a baby gate. Girls have a place on their bodies where the baby comes out." Of course the next question was, "where?" I explained that girls have that place between their legs. "Can I have a baby?" "No, boys can't have babies.  Girls and boys have different bodies and only girls can have babies." "How does the baby get in there?" Oh Geez, here we go... "Moms and Dads share a special kind of love and the difference in their bodies allows them to make a baby together. But the baby only grows in the Mommy." I waited a couple seconds for the next question. But it never came. At least not yet.

Inspired by Elissa's Colored Ice Balls

Elissa told me about making colored ice balls with Ian during the last deep-freeze. We decided to give it a try with Dexy.  We filled balloons with water and food coloring and then put them out in the snow to freeze.





After peeling away the balloon casing, we ended up with beautifully colored ice balls that we used to line our front walkway. Unfortunately, the drifting snow quickly covered them up.