Of Jokes, Hallways and Adoration

The knock-knock jokes have taken on a life of their own at lunch time now. Felicity is very pattern-oriented, and to her, lunch time around the table means knock-knock jokes. Kwamai coaches her frequently on exactly what to say, so she has taken as her standard punchline "....smack in the face" with a cute giggle to follow. So: Knock-knock, who's there? Wiggles. Wiggles who? Wiggles smack in the face! At least she has the formula down quite well.

I can tell she grasps grammar concepts well. We have a video called Sign With Your Baby which Felicity likes to watch (Kwamai like it, too, in his day). It is really for parents to learn signing, but it has cute babies in it, which is good enough for her. But when I ask her "Do you want Sign With Your Baby?" she'll answer "yes, I want sign with my baby." She has also taken the cue from the babies in the video to begin noticing every airplane that goes overhead. I guess she figures that's what babies are supposed to do :)

Kwamai, for his part, is in what other parents assure me is a stage. I've started referring to it to him as the hallway between being a little kid and a kid. He wants more responsibility and freedoms, and yet he wants his life to be non-stop fun. And everything, everything, meets with his disapproval -- superficially and at first, at least.

An upside is that on his landscape right now is more of a desire to do things with me, as opposed to Erol. But it really needs to be just me and him, no Felicity involved. Last night he went with me to Adoration for about 15 minutes. I have the 8pm Wednesday hour, and while I didn't recommend he come with me for that, I zoomed him down to St. Peter's for a few minutes before I needed to leave. I told him that Jesus was very happy about him coming to see Him for a few minutes. But Kwamai didn't quite get how Jesus would be excited about it, because Kwamai said he was the one excited about it.

Sigh, it's good for me to keep in mind that transitions are hard, and childhood is really just one big transition. Always a new adventure.