Memory

I am talking to Jessica on the phone. Faelan gets off my lap and says,
"I forget."
"What do you forget?"
"I forget Jessica."

Faelan is sitting at the table, cutting pears slices into little bits.
"I remember!"
"What do you remember?"
"I remember pasyou."
"You remember pasyou?"
"No."
"You remember Pascal?"
"Yeah!"
"You remember Matthew?"
"Yeah! I remember Matthew. I think I should go see."
"You think we should go see Matthew?"
"Yeah. And Briane. Pashew and Briane. At house."
"We should go to their house?"
"Yeah!"

Yoga terms

Faelan knows two, as far as I know: downward dog, and cobra, which has morphed over the last month into "cobra dog."

Conversations with the many-legged

A big fat fly flew into the kitchen and landed on the lights embedded in the ceiling.
"Don't!" said Faelan. "Don't walk on ceiling, bug!"
"Where should it walk?" we laughed.
"Walk on Daddy. Bug walk on Faelan."
"Oh."

Later, a tiny spider rappelled down my hair to the book I was reading with Faelan, and I blew it on to the window sill and pointed it out to Faelan. "Nice to meet you, spider," he said politely. Then he tried to kiss it.

Eh?

As we were walking home tonight, Faelan stopped nursing to say "You know what? This one too hard." Then he pointed to the other one. "This one okay." And he popped back on, on the other side.

Choice Vocabulary

Things Faelan says at 21 months:

"Border," as in, we're going to the border.
"Vancouver, in town," which is what he maintained was written on a business card with a road map of a place in Surrey printed on it.
"Going concourse!" He announced this as we went down an escalator into a Skytrain station.

"Amity," and "Joel," as in "Should Daddy read it?" "No, Amity read it."
"Leaving two minutes!" This he said at home, after I had spent half an hour counting down to the time we were to leave the playground. When Joel asked where we were going, he said, "playground!"
"Pay Cod! Pay Cod," is what he says if I forget to sing the doxology before breakfast. ("Praise God from whom all blessings flow...")
"Downward Dog," which he announced it when he did one on the dining room table.

"Fantastic," about a book that he was pretending to read.
"I don't like it." This he says about Joel's toothpaste and tomatoes.
"I need it." This he says about anything at all which he would like to touch.
"Pick it up!" Meaning, "pick me up."
In his sleep the other night, he suddenly wailed "Mommy! Eat it blueberries! Eat it booo baaaeey!" Which means, "I want to eat blueberries."

Miscellaneous

Last night, Faelan requested a song about "broken glass." Joel figured out that that would be "Papa's Going to Buy You a Mockingbird."

I just learned that my father's father loved P. G. Wodehouse's novels, and that my greatgrandmother's little sister Margaret, known as Auntie, was sixteen years younger than her, went to college in Abilene, married a Dean and moved to Old Glory, Texas, which was originally a German settlement which got it name because its founders wanted to be sure people knew they were loyal to the USA, seeing as they moved there during one of the World Wars.

Singing

Faelan now sings little bits of songs. He'll burst out with "alleluia," "impossible," or "everything grows" at the slightest provocation. Last night he told me, "Daddy singing."
"Is he singing Twinkle, Twinkle?" I asked.
"Yah! ...little star, how wonder what you are."

Updated on the 12th to add that his version of Twinkle, Twinkle now sounds like:
Tinkle little tar,
How I wonder are.
He sings it all the time while accompanying himself on the piano or drum.

We Interrupt this Poem

The other day, I was reading Pirate Story from A Child's Garden of Verses to Faelan. It begins

Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing,
Three of us aboard in the basket on the lea.
Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring,
And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea.

Where shall we adventure, today that we're afloat,
Wary of the weather and steering by a star?
Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat,
To Providence, or Babylon...

At that point, Faelan got up, climbed into the laundry basket, and started rocking it back and forth. "Boat!" he cried. "Boat!"