a weekend of riotous living

We visited brother over Labor Day weekend, giving me another chance to engage with the BB Talks Constantly meta. Though it’s not quite accurate to say he talks constantly. He’s not like an overly chatty coworker whom you can tune out; he wants to actively converse with you all the time, meaning you need to reply. I wind up talking as much as he does.

I think wanting to chat is part of the reason he asks “why” so much (even if you’ve answered that “why” once or twice or ten times before). He just wants you to keep talking about the subject.

As a three-year-old, he has opinions about everything. On Saturday, brother suggested we go to an art exhibition at the botanical gardens that night. They’ve gone in prior years and enjoyed it. But BB was adamant he did NOT want to go because it was too dark. Mom tried reassuring him, to no avail. Suddenly he spotted a picture of himself at the exhibition (on my phone, texted to us by brother). “I want to go there because it’s my favorite,” he said. Well okay!

So we left that evening for dinner at a Thai restaurant, ice cream, and the botanical gardens. Along the way, we came up with a very fun car game: sneezing on passing cars. You wait until you pass another car and then go “AACHOOO!!” in the direction of the car. It’s hilarious every time.

The garden art exhibition was very cool. Most of it was outdoors, with a magical-forest-at-night atmosphere. There was also the saga of BB’s coin (a nickel, his prized possession). Not losing the coin was the challenge of the night. He originally had it in his pocket, but it bounced out while he was jumping in the lobby (I retrieved it). Then he had it in his hand, but he dropped it while crossing the grass lawn in the dark (luckily he noticed immediately and I was able to find it at his feet). He somehow managed to keep it through playing at the water fountain, luminous hopscotch, and a lot of running around. Eventually he handed it to me so he could play/climb on the pitcher plant bongos, and I kept it safe the rest of the night.

Sunday morning I may have goofed by showing him a scary video. At breakfast, Mom and Dad were discussing how China’s advances in robotics were causing an unemployment crisis. The subject shifted to robots generally, and I mentioned I saw a video thumbnail/description of a robot that crashed during a race. BB (always listening!) wanted to see the video. I pulled up the first google result. It was a looped short of a spectacularly bad crash; some of the robot’s limbs flew off, and the rest of the robot flailed and twitched wildly until several guys ran onto the racecourse to pick up the parts. It was so scary that BB was like two-thirds covering his eyes, but also didn’t want me to turn off the video. I turned it off anyway. But I still had to deal with him asking “Why did the robot fall?” all day.

(Another example of BB always listening: At a different meal, Mom and Dad were discussing the Lindsay Clancy trial and whether she had the requisite mens rea for first-degree murder. I brought up my favorite mens rea + insanity case, in which the defendant had a delusion the devil granted him invincibility and decided to test it out by crashing into another car. Suddenly BB asked “Why did he do that?” I didn’t think the little guy was paying attention…)

The major event on Sunday was POTTY TRAINING. His mom thinks they probably waited too long, because now he’s 3y3m and stubborn. But they’re giving it a try. On Sunday he wore no diaper, and the whole day was punctuated by everyone asking him “Do you need to pee?” and persuading him to sit on the potty with the egg timer, to no avail. No pee in potty. Two accidents.

After dinner, he left the table while everyone else was still chatting. Then suddenly he started wailing. Everyone was like, ok cool it what’s the matter. He said, “I’M PEEING!!!” Brother ran and rushed him to the potty and he was able to finish peeing in the potty. The entire house erupted in cheers. BB was so excited and happy and was rewarded with brand new Lightning McQueen underwear and Grandma’s special chocolate.

The next morning he refused to use the potty when asked, and stamped his feet and ran off to pout in the corner. It’s going to be a long journey.

More BB miscellany:

• Hot games of the weekend:
• I told him about the time I got stuck in the elevator at my old apartment and he was very interested. We did a bunch of roleplays of being stuck in the elevator, alternating being the person stuck and the person taking the call who comes to help.
• We spent a while on…timeout roleplay? We were playing with his wooden letter set, and (for example) the letters b and e would start fighting because b took e’s toy truck. So we would put the letter b back in the toy box, telling him that we DON’T hit and we DON’T take toys, and if he couldn’t play nicely and share, he couldn’t go outside. Then another letter would start fighting with e. Mom and brother were highly amused.
• We were giants throwing mountains at each other (the gray triangular couch cushions). I got to tell him about the prologue to Journey to the West, in which they were gonna have a peach party, but the monkey eats ALL the peaches and they are SO mad they stick him under a mountain and he can’t get out.
• He's more aware/interested in the fact that letters spell words. He’ll read letters he sees. “H-O-M-E. What’s that?” Or make up his own letter combinations. “J-K-M-O. What’s that?” And I tell him that one isn’t anything.
• He's all-in on phonics. At one point I told him, “P is for phone.” He said, “NO. fff fff F is for phone!” You can’t fool this kid. His mom says he gets very tilted that one of his tapes uses boX and foX for the letter X, but he also doesn’t want it turned off, he’s just mad about it.