isoglossia

Boys:

This report is late. I apologize. Things have been more hectic than usual, and not helping matters at all your father submitted the order to have the phone, which we never use, shut off in the middle of the month. That the internet, which we have occasionally been known to make use of, including for the filing of these reports, would be immediately and irrevocably ripped out as well did not occur to him as he blithely handed over the izklop order. So, sorry. Forgive me if I am a bit brusque, but I am posting this report from my empty office in Ajševica, and I wish to be finally quit of it forever.

We are moving. We are packing. You guys are not helping.

Before we began frantically jamming all of your precious toys into boxes, we took a few days off to introduce you to camping. There was a river at the Podbela campground.

And a lovely pit of gravel, which you couldn’t get enough of.

And even (can you stand it?) TRAMPOLINES.

With safety nets.

And though we had rented a camper, Adam insisted on feeping in a TENT.

On the way back down the Soča Valley we stopped at the World War I memorial to the Italians fallen at Caporetto.

Then Adam flew off to Germany for a weekend alone with his mother, while Alek and papa stayed home. Alek grew a little this month. How much, Sasza?

Adam refined his bubble-blowing technique, last seen in Croatia.

We will not miss the sloping mansard headcrack ceilings in this place, though they did provide some lovely afternoon light.

Our next boys’ monthly report will be filed from Sofia, Bulgaria. Nasvidenje, Slovenija!

Boys, I ought to apologize in advance for what is an entirely disjointed, wooly-headed monthly report held together by no more than a few stitches of thread and a giant letter ‘X’.

“Why does Alek got a ‘X’ on his head?” you ask, Adam, and that is both the quote of the month and the only truly significant thing I can summon to write about. I was tempted to leave it alone and let this month’s report consist of only those nine words and a single picture. But I changed my mind, if for no other reason than the tiny possibility that my words may sway some other young person from pursuing a career as a gravity-test dummy.

One day I came home from lunch to find your mother helping you to construct a Foon Puppet Theater. I was as surprised as I could be, but she seemed even more surprised, and kept asking herself, “Why am I dooling this? Why? Why?”

So, really, the big excitement this month was the enormous sharp bang that was the sound of Alek falling off the funt loom radiator, or rather that of your head connecting with the sharp corner of, I am guessing, the desk? because although I was technically ‘watching’ you, Alek, it is nearly impossible to prevent something like this happening, since every waking moment of yours is spent in utter jackassery and the wanton pursuit of bonks and cracks to the skull, and at some point a parent has got to dool some jackassery triage, if you take my meaning, and let gravity take its inevitable course. Which in this case led directly to a significant gap just above your right eye, a tidy egress for a large amount of blood which by the look of it was under some pressure and in some haste to meet the fresh summer air. Then on to the emergency room, perhaps our favorite place to spend a warm summer Friday evening.

In the stitches competition, Adam remains ahead in pure suture-count, but Alek is well ahead in terms of tender age. At the time Adam tore his face open, it really looked like a scar was likely, but no. Alek’s wound, stitches freshly removed, looks like it could have some staying power, but it’s in a pretty dashing location, so WHATEVER.

We didn’t take any pictures of you this month.

Alek is growing into Thomas fandom, and has added ‘Tuck’ to his lexicon, a catch-all that seems to apply to trucks, trains, and tracks with equal ease. Also added this month: ‘Cack!’

Adam, you had no problem with the first person for most of your life, but now you’ve suddenly gone all Elmo on us, and continually issue reports about what some person called ‘Adam’ wants, wishes, requires, etc. This seems to me a step backward lingustically, but WHATEVER. Tell Adam he’s not getting any more juice.

This reminds me that when we visited Germany last week, during which time we mysteriously took essentially no pictures of you or of anything else, you understood Olivka’s farewell tchuß to be an offer of a beverage. Language soup.

Wait, I was talking about progress this month, not beer and pretzels. So, you’ve made some serious leaps this month. When we break out the Old Bay, you can now peel your own frimps. Likewise, you finally figured out how to pedal your own bicycle this month, so there is one less reason for your father to walk around shaped like a question mark. You have totally MASTERED the alphabet now, including the alphabet of nations, from Algeria to Zimbabwe. Pretty amazing. You can throw a ball. Your dearest wish is to be allowed to go to school. Your interest in books grows daily, and you can practically recite “Green Eggs And Ham”. Your grandma Soozin brought you a reader called “Dazzling Diggers” last fall, and it’s become your favorite book since burning out entirely on “Can’t You Feep, Little Bear?” Last week I ordered two more books from the same series (“Terrific Trains” and “Amazing Aeroplanes”) and when they arrived you walked around the house for hours saying, “I am SO HAPPY dat dese new books came fum LON DON today!” Then again, you were equally excited about your new tube of toofpaste yesterday, so WHATEVER.

Nice work, Scarface.

In comparison to Adam, Alek was an idyllic, silent, sweet tiny lovely delicate little baby whose poop smelled like a summer field of French lavender and whose penis would never spurt urine inappropriately. Alek, you slept without even being taught how, you cooed and purred when being bathed, and generally you comported yourself as though plotting to ensure that Adam would be banished from the Duchy of Carniola before his third birthday.

The above paragraph being written in the past tense, it is safe to assume that Aleksander is now severely pissing us off.

What happened? The several viruses you’ve somehow picked up in the last few months justified some restlessness and whining, but at some point that anomalous behavior got jammed in the ‘on’ position. We would do anything to shut you up. And to get you to sleep again. You have not slept through the night in months now, and your current sort of wakefulness is not a quiet sort of wakefulness. We could set our alarm clocks by your wee-hours awakening, if we had any interest whatsoever in setting them to SCREAM O’CLOCK. How does a tiny quiet baby go from natural-born sleeper to full-time PITA?

Answer: world-class teacher.

To your credit, to this day you still have never urinated into my face. This is not a claim your brother can make, not by a long stretch.

And Adam, to your credit, our draconian regimen of not taking you to the swimming pool as daily as you would like seems to be beginning to show signs of starting to consider wondering about maybe bearing fruit, where by ‘fruit’ I mean ‘occasional isolated obedience’ and ‘slight down-tick in whining and in howling time out sessions’.

I suppose that one reason for a cutback in the whining is that your mouth is too busy with other business. Forming a certain question, for example, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

Exile in Why?ville

Me: Wow, that sun is bright!
Adam: Why?
Me: “The sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees.”
Adam: Is dat why?
Me: Yes. Dat is why.
Adam: Why?

Also contributing is all the singing, reciting, narrating, and commentating you’ve been doing lately. As mentioned before, we got you the They Might Be Giants ABCs/123s discs, and you have been watching them in an endless slackjawed loop for the last 30 days without pause, the only distraction being your allowing us to moisten your eyes with artificial tears like in “A Clockwork Orange” lest you miss one precious second of “The Seven Days Of The Week (I Never Go To Work)”. This has resulted in a really remarkable spike in your letter and number learning, and is singlehandedly responsible for all the singing in the place, often with a level of verbatim-ness that borders on the Rain Man. If any parents of similar aged children are reading this, in all sincerity we cannot recommend these discs highly enough, assuming that you, like us, weepingly and despairingly and daily resort to the DVD as babysitter/opiate drip. If you are going to spend the next three years with kids’ songs stuck in your heads anyway, these are the ones you want haunting your every waking moment. We can say with no expectation of compensation from They Might Be Giants, their label, or the Deeply Felt Puppet Theater that this is truly top-notch stuff.

And Adam has learned to write his name.

Overall, this month has been all about burgeoning curiosity, demands for explanations of the inexplicable, great leaps in understanding of how the world works, and your overhearing, retaining, and soaking up information like a sponge. It’s terrifying.

“Alek is not embarrassed.” I have no idea what caused you to produce that particular sentence apropos of nothing, Adam, other than perhaps the fact that he should be, and continually. “By da way” has also appeared in your active lexicon, though you don’t seem to be entirely sure how to operate it, since it precedes pretty much every utterance now. My own current favorite: “I’m afraid nope”.

Oh, and Alek’s vocabulary is expanding, too. Just this week he added a whole new high-frequency phrase: GUK GAK!

Adam’s skill and craftiness has exploded, too, particularly in the area of track-building, Lego^® shruckahs, and cololing in your cololing books. You’ve learned all the letters and seem to be planning on reading and writing before too long. Added to this your deep interest in how clocks tell time (something I didn’t learn until I was fifteen or so) and it looks like you’ve decided our lives would be enlivened by a precocious little know-it-all.

And Alek, seriously, you are running us ragged. This was the month that you began really expanding the physical limits of your ability to wreak havoc — climbing up onto furniture you only dreamt of scaling before, tearing precious photos from bulletin boards, ingesting the magnetic alphabet with which Adam was just learning to write GUK GAK on the front of the fridge. I worry that your mother is going to lose her mind one of these days, and she wasn’t even there last night to see you hurl the green plastic watering can off our fifth-storey terrace into the teeming humanity below.

“Papa, I need moal mugnit lettules and numbahs. MAYBE SANTA WILL BRING DEM.”

I point to Adam’s bad example as justification for Alek’s recent nightmarishness, but his good examples are bad, too. Alek watches everything Adam can do (color inside the lines, pour juice, engineer a sophisticated rail system, make the trains run on time, make a shoe smell, etc.) and decides that he needs to be able to do that, too. Any failure in these goals sets off a hissy-fit that is literally painful to be within earshot of. Any thwarting at all brings forth The Piercing Shriek Of Doom. Alek, take this advice. Take it early, take it often: LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS.

And get used to being thwarted. Your brother did, and he’s FINE.

Jesus, where can I even begin? This has been the month when we thought maybe you two had won, and we’re still not sure we won’t be clambering into a helicopter on the roof before the next month is out, leaving the place to you and your oppressive regime of endless howling and wanting.

Then you’ll be all nice for 25 seconds and we’ll congratulate ourselves on having procreated until the next whine marathon throws us back into our circular recriminations of so whose bright idea was it to have two of them?

Basically, it’s been 30 days of ear-splitting noise punctuated by the occasional crack of a head against a floor or television set — or, remarkably frequently, another head. The weather has not helped, as spring postponed itself behind a veil of nearly constant rain and drizzle, turning the apartment into a stressure-cooker of times-out and germ incubation. And so of course there’s been the related health lock-down as well. When neither of you was coughing up parts of yourself, nearly all of our energy has been spent in trying to come up with ways to distract you from destroying each other. As soon as we got a break from nearly constant nose-siphoning, for example, we fed your shared locomotive obsession by paying a visit to the old Yugoslav steam engine near the railway station:

And there was the first-ice-cream-of-almost-spring outing:

Serving as both a scream-defeating distraction and an incentive to get Adam’s behavior to suck marginally less, there’s been the Swimming Pool Project. This began as a simple If you want x then behave y arrangement, but it quickly devolved into a byzantine array of charts, graphs, calendars, and color-coded stickers for bad, medium-bad, and marginally not-technically-horribly-bad behaviors in a complex Behavior Matrix. Of course Adam understands all the rules and corollaries thereto.

Anyway, he did get to go to the massive Vodno Mesto Atlantis as an Easter Monday treat, evaded the sinister pitfalls of the Behavior Matrix by the skin of his teeth for a return visit (during which he mastered the water slide), and today as I write this he is one time-out/Alek-choking away from the Behavior Matrix’s incontestable decision on whether another visit will take place soon.

Though Adam is the one determining whether or not we go, Alek took to the water with even more enthusiasm and natural talent.

Alek’s other budding enthusiasms include rubbish inspecting, which is nothing new.

We’ve really been impressed with what a pretty little monkey you’ve been turning out to be, but the sweeter you look the more vexing you become in actual fact, which turns out to be rather important. This is a kind of transition month for you, Alek, as you begin to really shed your baby shell and emerge as something approaching a boy. This is accompanied by much deep frustration on your part and a certain amount of resistance from your brother, who is not ready to let you out of his stick-shaped shadow nor to share the limited amount of boy resources in this house. This has only added to the enormous amount of stress in the place, and there really are days that we’re ready to sell you both for medical experiments.

Fortunately, you’ve developed a habit your brother never cultivated: you’ve got a duda addiction bad, a real monkey on your back. We’re trying to break you of it, but it’s no easier for us than it is for you, since it’s often the only way we ever get any silence these days.

A trip to the playground keeps you two from each other’s throats for ten to fifteen minutes, with luck.

Left: quiet Alek puts in a token appearance. At right, the real story (please mute your computer’s speakers). If Adam’s phase provides any guidance, things should quiet down sometime in mid-2010.

I do not know what this is about. Ask your mother.

Now it’s time to admit that we have turned in desperation to the benevolent cyclopic gaze of the TV screen, in amounts that shame us as much as they bring relief. If endless iterations of Thomas The Tank Engine: The Early Years Disc One will not soothe it, it cannot be soothed. Unsoothable. Papa spent long hours slaving over a hot Handbrake to get the Apple TV packed with kid vid, and now it’s paying off in daily languid waves of LCD opiates.

In addition to the deathless embrace of Thomas and Friends, this month we’ve been watching a lot of They Might Be Giants’ ABC/123 stuff, and you guys are deeply in its thrall. Above, you are watching “One Dozen Monkeys”, which, coincidentally, is also the scientific unit for measuring the destructive power of a 15-month-old baby.

And here we all are watching something about two girls and a cup, I guess:

One day you’ll look back on all this television and thank us for convincing you that trains have personalities and weltanschauungen, you’ll be grateful that we exposed you to the twisted outlook of TMBG at such tender ages. But to be thankful later you’ll have to make it that long, so STOP CHOKING EACH OTHER, YOU MONKEYS.

Please don’t destroy each other. Not quite yet.

Boys: time is short. Stress is high. Let’s have this month’s report be in the form of a bunch of disjointed observations scattered amid some photographs.

Awesome:

• Adam has learned to say, “Papa, you are on TV!” whenever a show about mountain baboons or warthogs comes on.
• Alek’s speechifying has progressed from last month’s practice babbling to running around yelling, “Oook ah dey!” while waving whatever thing he’s obsessed with during that 15-second window.

• Alek is moving away from the duda, at least during waking hours, though occasionally a surrogate is called for.

• Adam is learning to do lots of things Own Self. Top of this list in terms of improving our quality of life is Own peepee. The whole trousers/underpants up/down procedure no longer baffles you, nor does the all-important aiming, MOSTLY, so while you still often like the company, the fact is that you can now accomplish this most basic of bodily functions unassisted. Major.

• You guys are actually playing together on certain levels, more and more every day, rather than simply braying at each other or shrieking into each other’s faces. It’s really nice to see, drops the ambient din level significantly, and lessens the supervisory element of the parenting load on us ever so slightly (though we still have to maintain some semblance of Fratricide Watch with half an eye).
• Adam is actually hurt and offended if he ‘hears something’ without first having been invited to pull someone’s finger.

• Alek has graduated from the highchair to a booster seat on a chair such as a greater person might use, and has even had some middling spoon success.
• Adam has taken to singing “Love In An Elevator” every time we get in it. Given his age and limited phonetic inventory, this really is a good deal funnier than it may sound.

Slightly Less Awesome:

• A month full of wretched, March-y illness. We’ve all had it at least once, passing it around and marveling at this cold’s tenacity and shape-shifting virtuosity. Latest incarnation: Alek’s ear infection.
• The nasal results of the above item. Ike in particular has been sending out juvenile sea slugs at an alarming rate. Not, I might add,willingly.

• Screaming. See above list item, though not limited to. Screaming, Adam, when your bedtime story comes to an all-too-predictable close, just as it does every time we read it, screaming at a pitch that wakes up Alek (and this is saying something) so that we all get to recommence the bedtime regimen from the beginning, only this time we’ve all got blood streaming from our ears.
• Speaking of bedtime, Alek, you are rapidly outgrowing your crib. We’re afraid we’re stunting your growth and that one day you’ll emerge all contorted and hunchbacked. Yet we’re unwilling to upgrade at this point, so we’re just going to risk it.

• Adam, here is an update on your Time Out progress: there is little to report. Times Out continue to be awarded liberally, yet your behavior does not modify. You tearfully state that you do not want any more Times Out, but cannot seem to wean yourself of such activities as spinning in a circle so that your outstretched palms smack your brother in the face. A new list of Instant Time Out Violations is being promulgated, but my hopes for its efficacy are dim.

• Alek: must you strew our dirty underpants around the place? Can’t you let them await the wash cycle in a decent approximation of peace? And does the strewing have to occur just as we’re opening the door to admit visitors? Really?
• We are very lucky to have a reasonable pool of pictures to choose from for this month’s report, because both of you, but Alek especially, have been so copiously bonking this month. Most of Adam’s wounds are under his clothes, but Alek has had a month of shiners, forehead goose-eggs, abraded noses, contusions, etc. such that we’ve shied away from taking pictures lest they fall into the hands of social workers. So thank god for Photoshop’s healing brush, is all I can say.

Other stuff:

A long spate of dreadful February and March weather kept everyone indoors much more than was convenient, desirable, or hygienic. Still, one positive result of this was a flowering of art production, as mama taught Adam how to branch out into various mixed-media endeavors. His first work features the contents of the fice cupboard. He especially likes to work in turmeric, though we may be seeing the advent of a coriander period.

Carbohydrates feature in this latest work, with emphasis on the pasta family, though rice and couscous are also represented. Clearly, humidity-controlled display facilities will be called for here, and interested curators should also be aware of brittleness issues associated with this work.

(I promise I won’t do this at all often. Or, maybe, ever again. Maybe.)

Really, the rainy, blustery, overcast, and/or generally crappy weather has been brutal this month, and the lack of exercise and fresh air has really been something of a problem for all concerned. Magda’s ingenuity in coming up with new ways to keep you boys from eating your own feet, or each other’s, has been most impressive. Of all the art projects mama has dreamed up, my favorite result is this rocketship collage Adam did with crayons, glue, and a torn up Wired magazine (which, frankly, had it coming).

I find myself repeating the same sentiments in every monthly report, but overwhelmingly the one that threatens to stagger me on a regular basis is the sense of time hurtling past. The growth of you both is so crawlingly incremental that it seems impossible that you will ever wipe your own bottoms, let alone go off to school, present a rational argument, be acquitted, et cetera and so on. But with each passing month I am more sure not only that these things will happen, but they are in the process of happening. Having created you makes me feel omnipotent, hugely proud, occasionally embarassed, and very, very mortal.