You’re Okay and All, But…

When Cavanaugh was talking to my friend Jocelyn on the phone, she asked him about taking a shower at the pool. When they got off the phone, I asked if she’d read my story about one of my favorite trips to the pool and most fun days with Cavanaugh ever. She’d read the post, she said. Then she followed up with something along the lines of, “I love your blog, the writing’s good and all, but really I mostly read it to hear what’s going on with my buddy Cavanaugh down in Texas.”

So, for Jocelyn and the rest of you that want to know a little more about what Cavanaugh’s up to these days, here’s an update.

• Cavanaugh loves to sit in the front seat of our cars and pretend to drive. He also loves to wear glasses.
• He says, “not quite yet” frequently, when he doesn’t want to do something like take a nap or stop watching a ToddWorld (or Bob the Builder or any kind of truck) video.
• If Cavanaugh really wants you to know something, he starts gesticulating wildly and saying, “umm” a lot between pauses and stop-and-start descriptions of his very important message.
• If he’s feeling worried about something, he says, “I would be scared.”
• He’s been experimenting a lot with somersaults lately and often just stops with his “bobbin” up in the air and his head on the ground, then watches you from between his legs.
• One of his favorite games is peek-a-boo. It has many variations. He hides in pillows he stacks up on the couch and which he calls his “cage.” Mike and I were both caught off guard by the whole notion of a cage and can’t fathom where Cavanaugh learned it. Good Night, Gorilla maybe? Besides hiding in his pillow cage, he will put his hands over his face (with his fingers spread so he can see you) and he’ll say, “Where did Cahna go? I don’t know. Where is him?” When we were up visiting friends in IL, he and his buddy Gilly started a new version of hiding in which they took turns closing their eyes tightly. In perfect toddler logic, since they couldn’t see us, we couldn’t see them either. “Where is them?”
• He can count to twelve, though often starts at about five, and is especially enthusiastic when he says, “Eleven.”
• Some of his most common (and Mike’s and my favorite) mispronunciations include “moosie” for smoothie, “bobbin” for bottom, and “ketchit” for ketchup.
• This week, Cavanaugh started saying, “I like it so much” and just expanded that to tell Joce, “I like it so much a lot green.” The book Rhyming Dust Bunnies has had him obsessed with color all week. “I like so much green, purple, and blue, yellow.” He’s knows all the basic colors because he learned them playing Playdoh with Mike.
• His favorite color has been pink for months now. First, we went through a pink socks phase, which I wrote about here. When he got to pick rain boots this spring, I saw some beautiful teal boots with yellow ducks all over them. I would so have worn them if they had had my size. Anyway, we’d checked out boots on the Target website before going to the store. I had been talking those boots up. As we walked in the door to Target, Cavanaugh looked at me and said very seriously, “Mama likes the duckie boots. Cahna likes Hello Kitty.” Let’s just say I’m not the kind of mama to stand between a boy and his boots. Here’s hoping for more rain.