Last time we had a post on Mary Poole - this week we turn our attention back to Sir (pSr). Such are the yin and yang of the blog. So I've had a couple of random observations about Perritt piling up over the past few weeks but they didn't really seem to have anything in common. So I've just been sitting on them. Inspiration struck the other day when someone asked me if there were any differences between the twins. Easy question to answer it would seem as there are many, many differences. But when you get down to it, it's sort of hard to answer because all of the little differences are so normal to us as parents. There's just a certain Perrittness to Perritt and a Mary Poolness to Mary Poole. This is obvious to us but harder for the passersby to detect. So when you're asked to name differences, it's actually a little harder than it seems because you have to take apart the whole Perritt experience and describe little snippets and how it differs from the little snippets of a deconstructed Mary Poole.
And in the end, you kind of just have to start somewhere so I answered, "Sure, well Perritt loves music and trucks . . . aaaaannnnd Mary Poole loves her flash cards and her kitchen." To which this person responded "So you're saying Perritt might be an engineer who plays the cello and Mary Poole will have a large recipe collection on index cards maybe?" I said "Sure. I suppose." But this got me thinking: What *will* Perritt and Mary Poole be doing when they grow up. Looking over my list of observations of Perritt, this thought was a nice way to tie in some of these observations of Sir - what if all of these little observations were clues about his future profession? What would his behaviors imply he would be good at? Here are some thoughts, a little Myers-Briggs if you will:
Trucks
Well this one is obvious. If the boy has no interest in trucks or machines later in life I will be totally and utterly shocked. Helluva Engineer? Maybe. I'd love the in-state tuition. But wherever it leads, this obsession at such an early stage is surely affecting his brain wiring and will play out somewhere in him later in life. Of that I am certain.
Lord of the Dance
So, yea. The dancing hasn't gone away. In fact, it's gotten a touch worse. The boy just loves music. In fact, there will likely be a whole other post on the wonder that is their Music Class. But here's another little vignette that sort of frames it up. So, Perritt got a little toy workbench for Christmas that has a toy drill press and a toy table saw on it - both of which you can turn on and both of which make some mechanical white noise loosely approximating the sounds of their real counterparts. It's really just different shades of white noise though. Or at least it sounds like white noise to the untrained ear. Perritt, on the other hand, turns on the drill and somehow hears a beat or music or some combination of both. When we turns on the table saw, he'll let it run, step back and then start to break it down a little. This is hilarious. He just likes to dance. But the real profession out of this isn't dancing to a table saw, but rather a particular feat of dancing he started doing on his own a few months ago. We have dubbed it the "Riverdance" because he seriously looks like he could be a dance double for Michael Flatley. Out of the blue, perhaps while eating something he likes or just because he's happy or maybe just to get attention, he'll sort of dance in place bouncing from one heel to the other heel in rapid succession. He'll keep up this little dance for about 5 seconds. The first time we sort of laughed it off, but then the second and third time we called him out on it and said, "What are you a Riverdancer?" and he just sort of stopped, looked at us, and then did it again. So now, when we say - "Perritt, do the River Dance" he'll do it with a big grin on his face. Mary Poole even picked it up. I have tried to do it too, but actually, it's pretty tough to sustain. So no Smith Family Lords of the Dance tour is imminent. (Editors note: It is with great caution that I ascribe "Lord of the Dance" to my son knowing that many years down the road, if this blog is read by a humiliated son in his teenage years or any of his friends, it will cause tension in the Father-Son relationship. Just trust me, Perritt, you'd be more sad if we didn't document this and it slipped into the oblivion of time/memory because it IS pretty humorous and we'll want to remember it for the wedding montage roast we put together of you one day. We may have video.)
The Most Guilt-Ridden Criminal Ever
As far as "terrible 2s" boys go, Perritt has to be among the better-behaved. Sure, he's striving for independence and he acts out. But really, I think I'd be worried if he didn't express some individualism. So when he does something bad, it's generally the garden variety "bad". Like "Don't throw your milk on the floor" or "Don't push the pictures on the wall" or "Don't sit in daddy's chair and IM his coworkers on accident - again." That does fall under "garden variety" doesn't it? Unfortunately, or perhaps expectedly, these boundaries aren't always honored. One of his biggest repeat offenses is "Don't play with Daddy's Blackberry" and "Don't take the phone off the hook and play with it because we don't want you to dial 911 like your sister did." But the phones are just too tempting. Every day with the phones and mobile phones. Lucky for us, Perritt has seemingly met us half way in his disobedient behavior. He's still going to do it, but he'll tell us immediately when he's done something wrong. He just likes to tell on himself for some reason. As an example, whenever he gets a hold of a phone, he doesn't hide in the corner with it, he actually seeks us out. It's a common occurrence to see Perritt walk into the room with a phone in hand, he'll make eyesight with you, pauses, he'll lower his head and skulk across the room very slowly, tail between his legs, with the arms all the way down and the phone in front of his waist. If you don't meet him on the way toward you, he'll sort of walk right up to you, hide behind your legs and sit down, leaning against your legs or sticking his head into your knees to make sure you know he's right there. The whole time, he's totally silent. Once he's there, clearly in the wrong, then he'll start mashing buttons on the phone until you take notice. And when you reach down to get it from him, he basically clenches his hands around it and balls up on it. Retriving the phone is easy because he doesn't put up a fight. He just likes to let you know that he has the phone and that he knows he's not supposed to have it, but he just can't help himself. So I suppose he could be a criminal, but I think he'd probably just end up at the precinct with the flat screen in his car and just sort of hang out in the parking lot until some astute deputy asked him what was up. At which time, he'd show him the tv and get thrown in the clink. So it would be a sort of short-lived career.
Opthamologist
This observation hails back from September of last year - so it carries with it the additional merit of aging with time, because Perritt still does this to this day. For several months now, Perritt has has this passive fixation with eyes. Specifically mommy and daddy's eyes. Even more specifically, with pointing to them and sometimes poking them so hard you think you may need to see a physician. This started a while back when we started teaching the twins body parts. "Perritt, where are your ears?" "Mary Poole, where are your hands". And again, this is a neat thing because it's like writing software. Once it's coded, the "program" never forgets. The first time they learn what their hands are is the last time they ever need to learn that. And the rest of their life, it's in their head. It's pretty cool. But I digress. So we get to eyes and Perritt loves it. He leans in and smiles and pokes my left eye. "That's daddy's eye" I say. He laughs and claps and quickly points to my right eye "That's Daddy's other eye" I say. He claps and smiles and points back to my left eye "Daddy's left eye" then back to the right "Daddy's right eye" then back to the left "Daddy's left eye. Daddy's right eye. OK, OK, that's enough. Oh yes, that's Daddy's right eye again. Mmm hmm. And his left eye. Ok,"
But Perritt's persistent. So before I can get up, he insists and this time pokes my right eye. Not lightly, but sort of like he wants to see how hard he can poke it back into my skull. "Whoa - no poking. No sir." And he retracts his hand only to shoot it back out to the other eye, stopping millimeters before his finger renders me blind in the left eye. "Ok, ok, that's good. Daddy's going to stand up now and see if he's bleeding." Seeing no blood I sit back down and turn back to Perritt and say, "Ok, Mr. Pokes A Lot, where are Perritt's eyes?" He pauses, considers where they are and then very slowly, almost in slow motion, moves his index finger up very close to his eye and very gingerly touching, as if touching something so delicate he doesn't want to break it, his finger glances over his eye lashes or the side of his eye as if to say "Right here Daddy, but I don't want to touch them because they are pretty sensitive." And I say "That's right, thats your eye - and we have to be careful with them because they are very fragile and it hurts when you poke them doesn't it?" He puts his hand down by his side and smiles. He seems to understand. Or not. A moment later, the slow motion finger and the slow motion arm turn into a rattlesnake as he lunges and all I see is a fingernail getting larger and larger on my retina. It passes just to the right of my dodging head. I feel like Neo dodging the bullet. "Alrighty then, sir. I think that's enough with the body parts, now. Let's go read a book."
He certainly has the fascination with these subjects down. The passion is there. Now if he can only learn to harness his passion. He'll be a great eye doctor. A demurely felonious, Riverdancing, eye doctor. With a pickup.
