The Thin Beer

'Appy 'Alloween!

Sean has a little trouble with his H's.  So today we have been celebrating Alloween.  In Sean's room (in the house we are now renting) there is a costume trunk in the corner.  So, the whole family has been playing with the costumes for a few evenings now...hoping Sean would enjoy wearing one.  I got him to put on the pirate hat just once, for a half minute look in the mirror, and now he is simply no longer interested.  Maybe next year he will want to be a pirate?  He did like the soft shiny fabric armor that was part of the knight's costume. 

Mostly Sean wanted to celebrate Halloween dressed as a little boy.  Today he wore black and orange, to get into the spirit.  There was lots of dancing in the mid-morning.  Then a bus ride into town and some quick shopping with Mom.  We met a friend of Sean's while in the center and together we all visited the toy section of Magasin (the big department store here).  There were Duplo pieces and Brio trains to entertain the boys.  After that, we came home for lunch and a nap.  Sean got to his nap 20 minutes late and was pretty tired by then!  While he slept I worked around the house. 

By late afternoon Sean was awake again.  I tried to rush us out the door to find a pumpkin.  Yes, this year we are very late with the pumpkin purchase.  It must be a reaction to last year's pumpkin story...where we carved the pumpkin too early and it went completely soft and leapt off the windowsill the week before Halloween.  Ick!  Spoiled pumpkin gunk was everywhere.

Sean and I finally get out the door and we go up to a green grocer near us and find some small ornamental pumpkins on sale.  We find only one carved jack-o'lantern lit and grinning on a neighbor's gate post.  It was a nice treat to see that.  We had to go back and look again on the way home.  Then we met Kevin just as he arrived having come home from work by foot today.  Usually he bikes, but he didn't have his bike lights with him today....so he just walked.  He stayed outside with Sean while I went in to get dinner together.  It was nice for Sean to run up and down the street with Daddy, showing him the jack-o'lantern at the neighbors....meeting the black cat on our street.  Finally, it was time for Kevin and Sean to walk home and come into dinner.  The cat is now so fond of Sean, she followed him right up to the stoop and sat there while he went inside. 

We didn't carve the pumpkins this year....but they are ornamental ones and will look nice for the season.  Sean enjoyed saying "Happy Halloween" today and meeting his friend Stijn and playing with trains.  He asked for his Dr. Seuss' ABC Book at bedtime, as well as his Clifford book.  He thinks Clifford should be a truck for Halloween.  He's sleeping now in his dinosaur pajamas, with a tiny teddy bear in one hand and a tiny yellow dinosaur in the other.  He has a string of pink flower lights around his door frame and a giraffe nightlight in his room.  He doesn't say "Good night" when we leave, he says, "Bye Mommy! Bye Daddy!"  In the morning, when he wakes he'll say, "Done! Done! Done!"  or "Milk!" or "Bread!" or "New one!" depending upon the situation, and when he sees us coming down the staircase from our room, he says, "Hi Mommy! Hi Daddy!" with a very big grin on his face and laughing to see us.

Sean Update

Update on Sean.  His arm seems to be 100% healed now.  I made a second visit to the emergency room on Saturday night and the doctor was able to adjust Sean's arm and solve the problem immediately.  Now he really doesn't like doctors.

Somersaults and language acquisition

Sean has started trying to somersault---he stands up, bends over at the waist and plants his head flat on the ground, and then starts walking forward while trying to leave his head in place.  Usually, he falls over to his side before getting all the way over.

His vocabulary continues to grow.  One of the interesting things is the way that he overgeneralizes.   When he learned  "cup" (he still calls it "bah"), he used the same word for anything cup-like, including buckets and his drum.  He learned "knee" a while ago, and now he uses it for the entire leg including the foot.  He knows the word "spider" (it comes out "diber"), and he uses it for spiders as well as any little speck of fuzzy dust (and he's not confused that it's not an actual spider).  One of the most flexible words is "door", which can be used to describe drawers, zippers, pea pods, or almost anything that can be opened.

He has learned some of the wrong words for things.  Angela used to put on his socks and say something like "yeah, that's nice"---now he calls socks "yeah".  He has a pair of shoes with dinosaur pictures on them, and there was a dinosaur book at the rental house where the T-rex roars "brøøøøøøl" (it sounds like "brool" in our American accents), so now he calls any pair of shoes "brool".

There are also just a few words that he has invented.  He calls cars and trucks "dumbrah", which might be a corruption of "dumper", the Danish word for a dump truck, but maybe not, because we never used that word very often.  Still, dumbrah has always been his word for cars and trucks.  Now, he has coined a new word "doorah", which describes smaller vehicles, like motor scooters.  I'm very interested in this language he's inventing---apparently dropping consonants in the middle of the word creates a dimunitive form.

Happy grundlovsdag!

Tuesday was grundlovsdag (constitution day), a holiday.  Denmark has a glut of holidays in May and early June: store bededag (great prayer day) in early May, then usually Kristi himmelfartsdag (ascension Thursday, it floats around with Easter), then pinsedag (Pentecost Sunday) and anden pinsedag (second Pinsedag, the Monday after), and then grundlovsdag.  It's a nice time of year to have time off from work.

Sean continues to amaze and entertain us.  Today, Angela asked him to say the alphabet, and he got the first two: "A, B".  That's pretty good.  One of his favorite new phrases might be "damn it".  He honestly has not heard this very often, but he picked it up.  He uses it when he's been in his high chair too long at meals and wants to get down and play.

He has very definite food preferences, picking out and eating all the strawberries from his fruit salad and the baby corn from his Thai curry.  Yesterday, when he got tired in the morning, he turned on his musical lullaby toy we use at his bed time and naps and tried to climb into his bed.

This is one of the first days in the new apartment.  He really wants to turn that thing on, so he can dance.  I love the morning hair.

Here he's playing in the drawer we use for bread (no bread box).  We've just told him to be careful of his fingers, notice how gingerly he closes the drawer.

Here's a big smile.

This is the Yankee's hat that I brought for him from New York.

Milestone

Sean just said his name, for (we think) the first time.  He's recognized it for a while, but we're not positive that he understood that it referred to him instead of just being a word we used to get his attention.

Now, we're sure.  He can point to Sean, point to Sean's nose, point to Sean's belly (and it's a different belly from Daddy's belly and Mommy's belly, so he really does understand).

When he says it, it comes out like a very short "Juh".

Latest photos

The weather is turning nicer, and the days are getting longer.  Here is Sean having a tea party with the cat:

Here he's playing with one of his toy cars:

And here, cuddling with his Dad:

Working on his art:

He likes art!

Here we are, walking in the park on a sunny day:

At the top of the slide:

He can go down by himself!

Playing in the sand with Mom:

This is a place called Legeland (Playland).

More Legeland:

With Mom at Legeland after playing:

Rødgrød med fløde

This is Sean at Good Friday dinner at our friends' place.  He is enjoying his dessert of 'rødgrød med fløde' (literally, red porridge with cream).  It can be made with almost any reddish berries: strawberries, raspberries, red currants, black currants, or cherries.  This one is raspberries and black currants.

Learning fast

Now Sean has decided that he loves the cat.  He sat at breakfast and told her he loved her twice.

Wa wa woo

More on Sean talking:

He used to wake up in the morning crying, and our sleep ended there.  For the last month though, he has started waking up more gently, sitting in his bed and talking to himself for a while.  After he gets bored with that he will start to cry or call for us.

This morning, I was lying awake listening to him slowly escalating, but still too tired to get up and half hoping he would somehow go back to sleep.  To get us up, he shouts "brah" and "bubber" (bread and butter, ie, I'm hungry) and "bah" (cup, ie, I'm thirsty), and "doh" (door, ie, let me out of this room).  Then, he starts saying "mama" and "dada".  Then, this morning, clear as a bell, he says "Mama!  Dada!  I love you!".

It came out like "wa wa woo", but we know what he meant.

Sean Update

Last week Monday Sean said his first word.  Ok, he has been saying Mama and Dada for quite some time now, but we aren't sure exactly when these words transitioned from baby babble into deliberate naming of the two of us!  So, on Monday it was really delightful to hear him say, "Woof!"  I was showing him his little doggie from his Kitten Rescue puzzle...(the doggie is a member of the firefighting crew that is rescuing a kitten from an apple tree).  Of course, I give the kitten and the dog the appropriate voices for the little games we play with the puzzle pieces....and then Sean joined in too.  Kevin had read somewhere that babies develop language first around the things most important to them.  I had been trying to teach Sean signs about eating and drinking and wasn't sure if he was really picking up on them.  A woman I met here told me her daughter's first signs were for kitten and doggie....when I got home that afternoon I thought I would try out these sounds with Sean.  He thinks it is really funny to say "Woof!"