Life As We Know It....: Complicated Conversations

Obviously, as the kids get older, our conversations become more complex. They're curious about lots of things, including why we have day and night, what makes the trees lose their leaves, and most recently, death. Anderson has made great strides with both his expressive and receptive speech, which is great. However, there's still a significant delay there, and the more complicated our conversations, the more evident it becomes. This generally leads to a) laughter on our part because the things that come out of his mouth are sometimes quite funny, especially if you have the inappropriate, 12-year-old boy-sense-of-humor that we have, or b) extreme frustration because ZOMG explaining things for the gazillionth time gets to be annoying, you know?

Last week, I was showing Anderson a video of himself...

(Notice my thick accent? Also of interest, look for my comment about Anderson waving bye-bye to Daddy; he was hand-flapping and I was in denial. My how things change...)

He immediately noticed two things, neither of which matched my purpose for playing the video (shock!!). He noticed our former dogs, Rex and Darla, and he noticed how I said their names accidentally when I was trying to get Amelia's attention (what good mother doesn't call her children by the dogs' names at some point?). This has sparked many, many conversations about Rex and Darla, whom he clearly doesn't remember at all. We explained awhile ago that Rex and Darla were in heaven, and that pacified him at that time. No longer does that answer work. He knows more now; he has the context of Haddie to understand what dogs are like. Combine two dogs that he doesn't remember but were obviously with him at some point, as evidenced by the video, with what he understands about Haddie, and you get a very confused little dude. Some of his comments this past week include:

* "When we were finished with Rex and Darla, we got Haddie. When we finish with Haddie, we will get another dog!" Ummm, we don't...'finish'...dogs.
* "Rex and Darla are in heaven. I'm going to get in the car and drive to heaven."
* "When we go to Nana and Papaw's, I'm going to go to heaven."
* Me: "Man! I can't find that pencil! It's gone!"
A: "Just like Rex and Darla..."
* "When you're dead, you never see me again."

He doesn't mean to be morbid; he just doesn't understand. And no amount of explaining, comparing, or discussing is helping at this point. We're just going to have to wait this one out and continue to do the best we can with the explanations. All while trying not to pull out our hair because of the monotony of the repeated, endless conversation.

In other Anderson news, he continues to struggle with settling in at night. He's still totally obsessed with the idea that the power could go out in the middle of the night, unfortunately. As a result, he's not getting to bed at a decent hour. He's starting to get dark circles under his little eyes. I think when he goes for his check-up next month, I'm going to talk to his doctor about what we might be able to do in terms of helping him settle at night and get some good rest. He's a grouchy bear and he's got to work on giving up his afternoon naps before Kindergarten next year. Sigh.

Leaving you with a fun, never-before-seen video of him. As I've mentioned before, he LOVES music like me. Loves it. It's kind of funny; his new favorite genre of music is alt-indie (so is mine...coincidence?). When he hears something that sounds like this kind of music, he says, "Is that a dark doors song?" He knows that alt-indie is what they play in Hollister 24/7, so that's what he calls this type of music. Anyway, he is also musical himself. He walks around, banging two objects together as percussion, and he..."sings". Except he doesn't say words. He says approximations of words. You know, kind of like you do when you're listening to Pearl Jam. You never know the actual words, so you just say whatever nonsense words sound fitting and match the music. He does that, and it's both fascinating and hilarious. Hilarious because he doesn't care at all if anyone sees or hears him and he's often loud, and fascinating because the boy completely, 100% understands rhythm. The rhythm (or off-beat rhythm) that he keeps with his "drum" and the way he coordinates his "words" in time with his beat is pretty impressive. Anyway, I videoed the other day. Enjoy.