Mom Remembers

A couple of months ago I was trying to encourage Soren to draw. For 15 or 20 minutes every afternoon, we would sit at the coffee table with paper and pencil. I would draw stick figures and doodles; Soren would watch, his own paper untouched. After a couple of days repeating my usual pictures over and over, I ran out of ideas and started writing the letters of his name. One day I wrote and drew pictures of all the things I could think of that began with S: Soren, snake, superman, spider, stars, etc. The next day we focused on the letter O. It gave me ideas for drawing, which kept Soren entertained even if it wasn't fulfilling its original purpose. A couple more weeks went by and I didn't put any effort into reinforcing the letters. So I was very surprised when, one day while reading a naptime story, he pointed to the page and said very distinctly, "ess". He was, in fact, pointing to an S. And he was very excited about it. So, instead of reading the book, we sp

As some of you may know, Scott and I are not set, as once we were, on what we will be naming our second son. I never thought it would be this difficult to decide, seeing as how we had no trouble at all picking out Soren's name. But Soren's perfect name is the trouble in this case. I want our second boy to be as perfectly named as our first was and I'm finding it very hard to be as head-over-heals in love with any other name as I am with "Soren". One of the names we are seriously considering is "Carl", which is a family name from the Duede side (while "Soren" is from the Larsen line). Although I don't think that "Carl" is a particularly sonorous name, it is a name of honor and great significance in the Duede family. Carl Duede was a famous aviator and inventor in the early 20th century. Primary among his extraordinary accomplishments was his successful construction of an airplane at the age of 14, only 2 years after the Wrigh

Soren's linguistic development has really taken off all of a sudden, to the endless delight of his parents. His vocabulary is blossoming at a rate of one or two words a day when he used to only learn one or two a month. Everyone tells me is normal (not extraordinary) but it is still very exciting to watch happen. He uses words to communicate now, not just as coincidental by-products of a situation or emotion. He loves to identify things: animals, household objects, and even the letters of his name. Yesterday he used my very favorite word: "mom". Up to this point, he has never referred to Scott or I as "mom" or "dad", although he has enjoyed identifying his "dad" in pictures. But yesterday, while he was playing with his Aunt Breezy, he started squirming to get away, then pointed at me and said "mom". I don't want to get all sappy on everybody, though, so I won't tell you how that made me feel. I'll just say that