We are halfway through our second week of deep winter and no Montessori. Upstairs I can hear you objecting to having your diaper changed, for even though we have begun discussions of what potties are, and have a few books about it, potty training is still a largely hypothetical concept for a boy not quite one and a half years old. As you yodel your objections I want to note something funny that happened yesterday on the back stairs.
We were getting our coats on and getting ready to do something, or go somewhere, or something, and you were a couple of steps up on the deliciously forbidden back stairs of desire, lounging with the smugness only a toddler who has pushed a boundary can express. You had two peanuts in your hand. You threw them in the air and one when skittering behind a box on the landing by the back door.
"Oh no!" I cried. "Where did you peanut go?"
You turned your palms upward in an exaggerated shrug and said "Iuuuhno."
I laughed out loud.
"Did he just say "I don't know?"" asked your father, who was standing by the coats getting his warm stuff on.
"Did you just say "I don't know?" I asked you.
You smiled, did your theatrical shrug again, and again said "Iuuuhno."
Your dad picked you up and said "Are you just going straight to complete sentences and skipping words?"
You giggled, obviously pleased with yourself.
"He can say that, but he won't say 'up?'" I remarked.
Later, at dinner, as you slowly fed yourself pieces of cut up portobello mushroom and sundried tomato pizza with a side of shelled edamame, much of which you moved piece by piece into your water cup (another new phase, which we idly wonder if it might be evolutionary, given the abrupt appearance and singular focus you bring to the enterprise), we laughed over the fact that your first sentence, rather than being "I love you," is "I don't know."
Also, you've finally dropped the morning nap and are sleeping sometimes as late as six thirty in the morning. It's a whole new world.
