isoglossia

It has come to my attention that I may have to have my face removed. Fortunately, Aleksander has long been preparing me for this eventuality. We have a game we play of an evening, a little game we call “Face…Off”. Aleksander comes waddling over with a big grin on his face, and I then remove it. The face, I mean. As far as he knows, anyway. It cracks him up no end, and provides pretty solid entertainment for Adam and me, too. Occasionally Alek tires of having his face removed, and clambers clumsily up onto the sofa to rake bloodily at mine like a deranged Nicholas Cage.

For some years now I have been entertaining the idea of a surgical solution to the chronic problems I have going on behind my face, and after the latest bout I am ready to pick up an X-Acto knife and start the cutting myself. Enough!

It is only late February and I have already finished a book! My Montana family sent the latest book spun off by late-night cable television, and less than six weeks later I have finished it. What’s more, I am proud, if that is the word, to have read every word of this book while seated on the toilet. [CLICK HERE TO UNREAD THAT SENTENCE]

This bodes well for the year in literature. The last time I mentioned my reading material it all sounded so high-minded. During this recent illness I did get a bit more of the Davies history read, but now I am beached in the midst of the 30 Years’ War, and from what I’ve seen so far it may take me as long to read about it as they did to wage it — this is a reflection on my recent reading ability, not on Davies’s prowess in captivating the reader with descriptions of the extended executions of attempted regicides.

Reasons to subscribe to the Harper’s Weekly email week-in-review continue to stream in:

President Bush, whose approval rating was at an all-time low of 19 percent, was in Africa, where he said that the United States “is not seeking African bases” when asked about AFRICOM, a U.S. military command program for Africa, and danced with Liberian President and AFRICOM supporter Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. “The president seemed keen to impress the crowd,” said one onlooker, “with his David Brent-style gyrations.”

And finally, this is what a slow week at work looks like:
I crack up me.

This should be an especially robust and content-heavy Boys’ Monthly Report, since the planned January report was ground to nothingness between our return from Poland early in the last month and preparations for London at the end of it. Yet I find I have little to say about the growing of Adam and Alek, possibly because putting it all into adequate words becomes more and more difficult as they move away from being babies and more fully into being people, people integrated, indeed, into what is undeniably a family.

Adam’s little neurosis about “scary” disappeared as soon as it began, though this month he had ample cause for stress and fear, as we abandoned you for two weekends in a row, first as a dry run for our weekend away and excuse for a day of skiing and then for the actual trip to London. But both of you seemed to take it entirely in stride, to the extent that we think you missed Rada, your wonderful nanny, when her work was done more than you missed us while she was performing it. Don’t worry, this didn’t hurt our feelings one little bit.

Looking back at the last Boys’ Monthly Report I find it hard to believe that Alek had just started walking. As we’d hoped, the bipedalism has reduced shark bites to our feet and lower legs, but it’s brought out a whole series of, shall we say, tradeoffs. You can and do scamper about with enormous speed, and even clamber up onto things, which is alarming since you haven’t entirely worked out how gravity is distributed throughout the flat. This has led to some world-class bonks and even Krakatoas, but fortunately your head appears to be made of brass. Adam’s is a little less rugged, which worries us as you have discovered the joys of pounding him on the top of the head with whatever comes to hand. And you’ve apparently already caused him some brain damage, because his only response is to LAUGH AND LAUGH.

Now that walking is taken care of, Trebek, you’ve moved on to its rhyming twin, talking. You got ‘mama’ down without our even noticing — in this area, particularly, it’s interesting to us to see how deeply blasé we are about these milestones compared to the first iteration. You could master cold fusion and we’d be all, “Hmm, Adam didn’t do that until he was 18 months old”. I am pretty sure that when Adam produced his first ‘papa’ I wet myself with joy and pride, but Alek, you’re stomping around the place many months in advance of your brother’s similar achievments two winters ago, babbling “PAPA PAPA PAPA!” and I’m glancing up from my magazine going, “Yeah, WHAT?”

The talking thing is pretty cool, and it seems to be coming up the curve in a way subtly different from Adam’s first steps in language acquisition. I think this is because, as with so many things, you have Adam as a reasonably-sized role model, whereas he just had these two enormous totem pole-like beings to learn from. In addition to the clichéd ‘mama’ and a fair approximation of ‘papa’, you have some other early speech patterns. One is the sustained monologue, in which you seem to be keeping up a running narrative of the transgressions and humiliations you must endure as the Littlest Stephens. It goes something like this:

BUBBAGUMPBIBIMBAPMOZILLAMAGILLAGORILLAMANDYPATINKIN
FYVUSHFINKLEFRAGGLEROCKEVELKNIEVELMOOGOOGAIPAN…

There’s also your howl of amused defiance, but it’s harder to hear, as it’s usually being drowned out by our shouting at you to stop and the the sound of your sippy cup drilling through the television screen or your brother’s fragile skull.

All kinds of old favorite toys are being de-mothballed, and of course Adam finds that after months in storage, he cannot live without them.

Lately we’ve been conserving water.

Last weekend we reversed the boys’ roles and sent Alek out with Rada so Adam could have some face-time with mama and papa. We went for a ‘hike’ toward the base of Sv. Katerina/Kekec, but for various reasons didn’t do much climbing. Adam got a good closeup look at the Nova Gorica fire station.

Adam went through a long period of completely ignoring papa in favor of mama when he was small, but since now Adam acknowledges my existence, so does Alek. Which is nice, I suppose.

Adam can list the things he’s BANNED from:

• Tic Tacs
• Drinkin’ papa’s bedside water
• Cameras
• Drinkin’ ice water in the funt loom

Adam is apparently on an enduring hunger strike, while Ike is endlessly, voraciously feeding, dense, approaching Adam’s weight, an oak where Adam is willow. Older brother is a delicate cherry blossom while Alek rolls over him like a sumo wrestler. Adam’s baby pictures look like mine, Alek’s like his mother’s. It’s so interesting to us to watch you two growing to be so different. It’s hard to remember much about Adam at the same age, but occasionally we come across an artifact to remind us how alike you are.

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INT. HORRID NOVOTEL WEST, HAMMERSMITH NIGHT.

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