Tonight the whole family was playing in the living room before bath. Sara asked Isaac for a kiss and he jokingly stormed away saying, “No, Mommy. Stop!”
Sara pretended to cry, dropping her head. Isaac got such a grin on his face as he wandered over to her. I wanted Sara to see it so I pretended to cry as well. Isaac walked over to me and put his hand on my cheek.
“Daddy,” he said seriously, “No crying at the party.”
Been a while since the blog was updated as we’ve been in a whirl of dance practice, dance recitals, dance competitions, and dance conferences. But that’s an even longer subject that I’ll tackle later.
On the Isaac front we’ve crossed a major threshold–Iz has gone from speaking a single word to entire sentences. It happened one afternoon last week and was almost like a switch was flipped. First he’s barking out words one at a time and then he suddenly starts stringing them together. Neither Sara nor I remember it being this sudden with Besh.
First, Isaac was playing with one of his Sesame Street toys making a plastic Elmo sing. Suddenly he laughs and says, “He’s so funny!” Sara and I were floored and just looked at each other. Then a bit later he was bouncing/rolling a ball around the living room. He picked it up and came into the kitchen.
Me: “Isaac, do you want to have a snack?”
Isaac: “No, I catching ball.”
But he’s still a very young 2 so while the words and sentences are coming in we still have trouble understanding him sometimes. Yesterday I was driving with the boys and Isaac was pointing out the window.
Isaac: “Daddy! Haws! Haws!”
Took me a while.
Me: “Oh, do you see a house, Isaac?”
Isaac: “Yeah! Haws!”
“That’s right! But that’s not our house.”
Isaac paused, looked out the window, then muttered: “I know.”
Uh oh.
The other night at dinner we had this conversation. Not exactly sure what led into it, so let’s pick it up in the heart of the action.
Mommy: “Besh, do you know what ‘beshert’ means?”
Besh: “No, what?”
Mommy: “It’s Yiddish and it’s where we got your name. It means that when something is so special and so amazing that the only explanation is that it was meant to be. So when we first saw a picture of you in Mommy’s tummy, Daddy started calling you the Beshert Bean because you looked like a bean. And then we called you Besher after we thought and thought and thought. Because you were so special you were meant to be with us.”
Besh gets up out of his chair to go cuddle with Mommy. Then he looks up.
Besh: “And where did Isaac come from?”
Daddy: “Bah. Isaac’s a second child. We both liked the name.”
Mommy: “Daddy! Tell him where we got Isaac’s name!”
Daddy: “Besh, what letter does Isaac’s name start with?”
Besh: “I!”
Daddy: “That’s right! And that’s the same letter as Idel. Do you know who Idel was?”
Besh shakes his head.
Daddy: “That was Doccy’s real name.” (Doccy was Sara’s grandmother who passed away earlier this year)
Besh: “Oh, so it’s the same letter.”
Daddy: “Exactly.”
Besh: “Daddy! Do you know what else starts with I? iPhone!”
Mommy and Daddy laugh.
Besh: “Oh, and iPad too! So he was named after them too!”
This weekend ended on a sour note when we spent a day looking for Besh’s lost glasses. Happily, they were found this morning, but it still made for a pretty crazy Sunday where we turned the house upside down looking for them.
One positive note was when I took Isaac with me to go pick up dinner. I was in serious need of caffeine so I hit the Starbucks drive-through on the way. Isaac has seen this drive-through a few times in his short life (I admit I’m hopelessly addicted) and recently we’ve even been able to order him the same drink as his big brother (kid’s milk with sugar-free vanilla syrup) if there are enough hands in the car to transfer the milk from the Starbucks plastic cup to his sippy cup.
On this ride, there were not enough hands (and he’d just had a drink) but that wasn’t going to stop him. As I pulled up to the ordering speaker and rolled down my window, I hear the following scream from the back seat.
“Hi! Milk! Isaac!”
So there ya go, not quite 22 months old and he’s already ordering at the Starbucks drive-through. Parent of the Year Committee, you have my number, I’m expecting your call.
Occasionally I get asked if Isaac is going to get his own blog. I usually just smile and say something like “We’ll see.” What I really want to say is “OH MY GOD I WANT TO GET SOME SLEEP FIRST!” and then pass out on a horizontal surface (preferably soft but I’m not picky) for about 50 hours.
Not to say that Isaac isn’t producing some blog-worthy moments. Especially now that he’s just started walking (still working on it but he’s doing it more every day) and interacting more with the world around him.
He also has a new nickname: Houdini.
We aren’t sure when it started, but a few key moments outline the rise of Isaac’s claim as a great baby escape artist. For many months now he’s twisted and turned when on the changing table, much more than Besh ever did. But now he’s taken to trying to escape all forms of confinement no matter their origin.
First, somehow Isaac figured out how to remove his diaper. That’s not amazing, you think. Lots of babies do that. Sure. But Isaac does it without taking off his clothes. He’s figured out how to play with the tabs through his clothes and then somehow shimmy, shake, and twist his way out of the diaper so that it ends up around his knees (or as far as it will go inside his onesie pajamas).
Second, during a trip to Target, Sara had Isaac strapped into the baby chair of the shopping cart. She grabbed a package to put in the cart and turned back to discover that Isaac was standing on the chair-seat, a proud look on his face. The strap was still done.
Next, Isaac decided to turn his attention to the child-proof locks in the house. Even though he hasn’t mastered walking, he has mastered the finger reaching in to hook onto the latch and disengage the door lock. This comes complete with a mischevious grin if he notices anyone watching him.
But wait, he’s not done. This past weekend while sitting in the high chair at Chuy’s, Isaac figured out how to unlock the belt latch. He casually undid the lock and dropped the belt to the sides.
And to top it all off we have his greatest magical trick yet. Last night he woke up doing his I’m-very-upset-and-not-going-back-to-sleep-unless-you-come-in-here cry around 2am. Usually this means he’s peed out, whether through diaper manipulation or random gap. Sometimes he’s just teething or upset but still dry. So Sara went to check on him and came and got me (pee out). But the strangest part–even though his sheet was wet his pajamas were dry. Completely dry. His body was dry too.
So either we had the biggest teething-sleep-drool ever (and, seriously, that’d be a lot of drool) or Isaac is working on magic tricks in his sleep.
The title of this post comes from the Thanksgiving card that Besher made at school and presented to Isaac today. It had a drawing of a turkey and this post’s title which he had dictated to one of his teachers. He handed the card to Isaac, at which point they both started giggling and Sara and I totally didn’t tear up. Not a bit. Nope. Completely dry eyes.
It’s been an amazing year with Isaac’s birth and the best brother relationship we could imagine–actually, far better than we ever imagined. And we hope it continues for next year, but we’re thankful for it now.
One other story to be thankful for, a conversation Besh and I had in the car the other day:
Besh: “Daddy, I’m glad I have you and Mommy in my family.”
Daddy: “We’re glad we have you too, Besh.”
“Yeah, because if I had another family and then I met you and Mommy then I would have to be in your family too.”
“Oh, you would come over to our family.”
“Yeah! Well, I would stay with my first family but I’d be in your family too. I’d have two families.”
Between Sara and my genes, there was no helping that Besh would be a bit competitive. Sometimes it comes out in funny ways, like this exchange the other day (it reads harsher than it was, he was pretty light-hearted about it all and we thought it was funny).
Sara was in the kitchen getting Isaac’s bath ready while I was in his room getting Isaac ready. Isaac was probably playing his favorite game: let’s-see-how-many-diapers-I-can-crap-in-while-on-the-changing-table.
Besh walked up to Sara and said, very matter of factly,
Besh: “I love Nonni and Zeyda more than my parents.”
Mommy: “But Besh, *I* am one of your parents!”
“I know. I love them more.”
Sara laughs and says “Go tell Daddy.”
So in he walks, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders.
“Daddy, I am so sorry to tell you but I love Nonny and Zeyda more than you.”
Me: “What?!”
“I’m sorry. BUT…I love Isaac!”
A recent conversation between Besh and Mommy in the car.
Besh: “I want a sister.”
Mommy: “But, sweetie, you have a brother.”
“I know. But I want a sister. It’s supposed to be one boy and one girl. Two boys? What is that?”
“I hear you, honey. But we love Isaac. We wouldn’t want to give him back.”
“Yes, we love Isaac. But now I need a sister.”
“Well, Mommy’s not really ready to have another baby right now.”
“Let’s ask Nonni! Nonni would do it for us.”
“Oh, sweetie. Nonni can’t have babies anymore.”
“She can’t?”
“No. When a woman gets older, she can’t have babies anymore.”
“Oh. You mean her baby room is closed?”
“Yes, sweetie. Her baby room is closed.”
We’re pretty sure he heard the word “womb” and turned that into “room.” Either way.
A few Besh shorts for Monday morning:
—
Recently I splurged and bought myself a kinetic sculpture for my office/theater. If you’ve seen Iron Man 2 then you’ll likely remember the scene when Tony Stark goes to visit Pepper in her fancy CEO office. The sculpture that keeps flipping around on her desk–yeah, that one. What can I say, I’m a geek.
Anyway, once I put it together and had it running Sara and Besh were upstairs and I was showing the sculpture to Besh. Sara thought it’d be a good opportunity to teach Besh the words “perpetual motion” (because, you know, four year olds need to know how to say that kind of thing–kinda like when I teach him the punch lines to jokes that he can’t know the setup to 
). This was the conversation:
Mommy: “Besh, you see the sculpture?”
Besh: “Uh huh.”
“Do you know what you call it when something never stops?”
[Besh thinks, and then...]
“An argument!”
Pretty funny since that’s not the case in our house.
—
Another conversation with Besh at dinner the other night about the ongoing brotherly lovefest:
Besh: “When Isaac gets bigger, I’m going to give him his bath. Yep. That’s going to be my job at night.”
Mommy: “What made you think of that?”
“Because I love it when Daddy takes me (Besh speak for “gives”) my bath. So, I want to be the one to do it for Isaac.”
—
On the drive home with Mommy the other day Besh said something about Horton Hears a Who, then something about elephants.
Mommy: “What do you think elephants eat, Besh?”
Besh: “Beet roots.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Well, one time, I saw an episode of Curious George with mice. Then Curious George and the man in the yellow hat went to the zoo. The artist was there. And he said to them, ‘Aw, I just ran out of beet roots.’”
Sounds more like an episode of Twin Peaks than Curious George, but apparently this was an episode he’d seen months before and not since. Which is just another reason to be more aware of what we say in front of him.
Today’s quote comes from one of these short stories direct from Sara, but appropriate given how infrequently I’ve been posting these days. Hopefully that will change.
—
Yesterday morning, Besh ran into our bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror and said, with a lot of happiness and expression, “Good morning! I haven’t seen you in a while!”
Besh then started messing around a little in the bathroom, making faces and sounds in the mirror. Since we needed to go I said (in a slightly serious tone), “Beeeeeeesh!” To which he replied, “What? Isaac thought it was funny.”
—
When Besh was getting ready yesterday morning, he called to me downstairs: “Mommy – do you hear the birds? Do you know what they’re saying? They’re saying, ‘Supercalifragalisticexpialidocious…’” He then proceeded to sing the entire song including the dum diddlies at the end.
—
And one from me–the other day we were all in the car listening to the Broadway channel on Sirius (that’s what we listen to when Besh is in the car–if it’s just Isaac then we turn on Howard Stern because, and I’m not making this up, Isaac loves Howard: he stops fussing, he’ll sleep, he cooes). A song comes on and Besh listens for a bit, then says:
“Mommy, is this song from In The Heights?”
Besh hasn’t seen In The Heights. And the song wasn’t from the show. But I smiled and shook my head because I think it’s pretty cool that our 4-year-old was asking that question.
Of course, it’s also a bit wrong that I have a 4-year-old asking if a song is from In The Heights. But that’ll be nothing compared to Isaac growing up listening to Howard (assuming he renews his contract, of course).
