Kimball Tidbits

Kimball is acting more and more like a big kid all the time. He can't fool us, though. He's really still a sensitive little baby who needs a lot of reassurance, but he tries to be so independent. He still has tantrums every now and then, and some of them get pretty bad. Sometimes he even tries to hit and scratch when he is very upset, which makes us sad, but we try not to take it personally. Especially because right afterwards he looks at our sad faces and gives us a long hug. I think it's just a frustration reflex that he just can't help. Luckily, those incidents are very rare, and most of the time he is our sweet, tender-hearted little boy. We think he is the best child in the world and are so glad that he is ours!

The other day he was playing outside and scraped his leg. He didn't even cry; I didn't know it had happened until I saw blood getting everywhere. So he got a bandaid. All day he showed me and anyone else that was around that bandaid on his leg. That night after his bath, we took it off, and he completely lost it. He started bawling. Not because it hurt, but because he wanted it back. Jordan put a fresh bandaid on, and he stopped crying immediately. The same thing happened the next night, but the scrape had healed enough that it didn't need another bandaid. When Kimball saw me toss it into the trash, it was like his world had ended. He was so proud of that thing.

Once I was vacuuming the front room and couch. The front door was open so Kimball could stand on the porch and look outside. He must have been trying to get my attention, but I was oblivious. All of a sudden, the vacuum turned off. I turned around, and there was Kimball with the plug in his hand. He took my hand and tried to lead me outside to play. "Now that's one way to get my attention!" I told him. I was almost done vacuuming, though, and just wanted to finish up before we went outside. But every time I plugged the vaccum back in, he went right ahead and unplugged it. After he had outsmarted me like this several times, I outsmarted him by pugging it into an outlet high up and out of his reach. He looked and looked for it, but couldn't figure out where it was. Luckily for Kimball, I finished the chore quickly and we were out the door and ready to play.

One night when Kimball was in the tub, he pointed out a scrape on his leg that he had not noticed before (a different scrape than the one in the story above). I told him that he had fallen down and that was a scrape, an "owie". He bent down and tried to give it a hug with his head!

When Kimball wants me to sing to him, he waves his hand as if he is directing music. It's almost done in a commanding sort of way. But he's also become very picky about what I sing. It takes many attempts of me singing the first few lines of a song, him shaking his head and saying "uh-uhhh", and waving his hand again before we can settle on a song we can both agree on. One song that never fails is the one that goes, "it's always fun when grandpa comes, when grandpa comes, hooray!…"

Kimball was particularly good and happy one day, but after one of his naps he was verging on a still-sleepy kind of tantrum. In addition, we are trying to wean him off of his pacifiers during the day, because he has recently picked up a new obsession with them. Nothing seemed like it would stop the oncoming storm, but in a stroke of brilliance, I picked up a stuffed monkey and his blankie (neither of which he wanted), and wrapped the monkey up like a little baby, telling him "look, it's a baby monkey! The baby monkey is sad. Can you rock him back and forth?" His face lit up, and he took the monkey and cradled it. Then he snuggled up to the fan in his room and gave it a hug. Kimball, fan, and baby monkey: one big happy family. For the rest of the day, the monkey was his "baby". We took it on a bike ride, and Kimball even insisted that it eat lunch with him. Luckily, minimal pesto sauce was spread on monkey and blankie.