Brian’s Brain

Today, Patrick moved to the next room at daycare. He’s with the same teachers that Alex had when he was two. This is really strange. I remember Alex in this room, and I remember how he seemed like a big kid. I also remember thinking, I can’t wait until Patrick is this old… Well, that time has come.

To mark the occasion, here are some Patrick observations.

• One of his favorite requests: Daddy, read! (He’s not quite the book fiend Alex was/is, though.)
• In spite of the above: He refuses to let me read him bedtime stories. It must be mama.
• He’s in a hoarding phase. He’ll pick up something small and carry it around all day. The current obsession is a pair of Playmobil fish.
• Favorite food: Cheese pizza. Luckily for us, Alex has also developed a taste for cheese pizza – this is a recent development. It means we now have a exhausted-end-of-week dinner option that the whole family will eat.
• Patrick will also eat anything that comes from Mommy or Daddy’s plate. The same food, on his own plate, is unappetizing.
• Similarly, he wants to do whatever his older brother is doing. The same activity, on his own, would be boring.
• We’ve let Patrick watch some of The Jungle Book. “Watch movie” and “Jungle Book” are now two of his clearest phrases. His favorite part is the elephant march.
• His stubbornness shows no signs of going away!

Perhaps my memory fails me, but Patrick seems more inclined to cause trouble than Alex did at two years old. Patrick’s the kid you leave playing quietly in the toy room, and you come back and every single game has been emptied out of their boxes with all of the little pieces in a big pile. He’s the kid who figured out early how to drag a stool or a chair around so he can climb high and get forbidden toys.

Yesterday, here’s what happened. As usual, I picked the two boys up from daycare by myself while Molly made dinner. When I picked up Patrick, there was an incident report in his mailbox – these are triplicate forms they give us whenever something bad happens, like a cut, bad bruise, or a biting incident. This one read: Patrick put another child in a headlock. The other child bit Patrick.

(Serves him right!)

There was the usual evening traffic jam of parents and children at the front desk as I ushered the two kids out. Sandy stopped me there and reminded me that I was supposed to sign the incident form and just keep one of the copies. (Molly & I almost always skip this step.) So, I find a pen, find where to sign, figure out what copy to keep and what copy to give to them. When I turn around, Alex exclaims, “Daddy! Patrick went on the elevator by himself!”

“Seriously?” I said. I looked around and couldn’t see Patrick anywhere. At this point, I really didn’t know what to do. Alex was up in the reception area. Patrick was on his way down to the lower entryway by himself. Who knows, perhaps on his way out the front door!

I paused for what seemed like a long time, but was probably just 3-5 seconds, and left Alex with a friend’s mom while I rushed down the stairs. As I was going down, I heard the elevator heading up. Sure enough, by the time I got to the lower entrance to daycare, there was no Patrick, so I bounded back upstairs and found him crying and a little freaked out in the elevator.

Has he learned his lesson? Who knows. Something tells me it’s going to be a rocky year, though…

Now that Patrick’s turned two, we’re working on a new milestone: He only gets to use his pacifier when he’s going to sleep. It’s been tough, as he likes to have his pacifier for comfort. It makes me feel particularly mean-spirited and spiteful to look at a crying toddler and not give him the one thing that would make him calm down.

His older brother clearly feels the same way. Several times when Patrick’s been crying and exclaiming, “Nuk! Nuk!” Alex has gotten him a pacifier. On the one hand, it’s really cute… but it certainly isn’t helping us keep a unified front! (Or perhaps what’s going on is the kids are starting to realize they can present a unified front against us… uh oh.)