Gavin is turning into quite a little storyteller. All day long he tells me stories. He sees the blender. "Mommy," he says, pointing and the blender. "Brrrrrrrrmmmmm" Meaning that the blender goes "brrrrrrmmmm" and we made a smoothy for breakfast a couple days ago. He sees the toaster. "Bop! Bop! Bop!" he says, meaning of course that the toast goes pop... he also says this when he sees bread, which is of course nothing but unmade toast.
He sees the lamp in the family room and signs daddy, then points to the lamp and says "Daddy!" Which means that Jason fixed the lamp a few weeks ago by putting in a new lightbulb. He looks out into the backyard and curls his arms up like a backhoe scoop (you'd have to see it, that description doesn't do it justice) and says "Deet! Deet! Deet!" Which means that we've been spending time in the backyard digging in one corner preparing to plant bulbs.
He sees a frog - in a picture, his stuffed frog, whatever - and then he tips his head way over to one side, bringing his shoulder up to meet his ear. This means that frogs sleep. Which is what I told him when, while digging in the backyard, I unnested a toad who had bedded down for the winter. I picked up the toad and moved him to a corner where I'd already finished digging, dug him a new hole, and stuck him into it. Then I told Gavin that the frog was sleeping so we needed to leave him alone. Now, to Gavin, all frogs sleep.
He sees a garbage can and he goes into this elaborate story - he bends down with his arms out, touches the floor, stands back up with arms out and overhead like a ballerina, tips his head back and throws his arms back over his head, then brings them back down again. This tale relates how the garbage truck came one day and picked up the garbage can, emptied it out, and put it back down again. This was one powerful event in his life. The first week after it happened, I swear we heard about it no fewer than 47 times a day.
Today I taped together some board books that have been ripped apart by exuberant reading. He watched me. And afterward, when we were reading the books, he would come to page with tape on it, sign mommy, point to the tape and say "Mommy!" I have no doubt that from now on, he'll tell us this story everytime we read those books. Or everytime he sees a roll of tape.
All this being said, I had no idea that in addition to telling stories, Gavin was also writing them. Albeit under a pen name and with a different picture. But still. This is him, without a doubt.
Posted by allison at November 17, 2005 07:09 PM