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Jeff's Life
Archive
Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at:
JEFF'S LIFE
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Monthly Column... |
We're Talking With Ned
by
Jeff Stimpson
 Alex likes Hebrew Nationals for dinner these days. So does Ned, as anyone would. Problem is, Ned also likes and eats a lot of other stuff, and we don't necessarily want him eating three hot dogs for dinner. So in the kit hen Jill cooked the hot dogs, but had to tell Ned that he was going to have ravioli and squash for diner. I was standing at the dining room table when Ned rounded the corner and said into his toy phone, "Hello, police Mommy is making hot dogs for Alex and she isn't going to give me any!"
A few nights later, Ned caught sight of our wedding snapshot on the bedroom bulletin board. "You got married!" he announced to Jill. "You got married with my dad!" He hugged and kissed mommy, as Jill recalls, "to commemorate this happy event."
"Where were you?" he wanted to know. Jill told him we got married at Aunt Judie's house. Paused. He frowned. "You went without me!" he cried.
You get the idea. Talking with Ned is a trip. I try to not make it a guilty trip, because Alex's talking is still pretty what Ned calls "hard." I've had dozens of conversations with Ned already, and he's not shy about the verbal pats on the back.
"I'm so proud of you, dad!" he tells me. "You're a good boy!"
In Barnes and Noble, I haul him over to look at my book, right there on the shelf. "Who's that, Ned?" I exclaim, pointing to Alex's headshot on the back of the dust jacket.
"Alex!" exclaims Ned, then he bolts back to the display of The Incredibles.
Ned does still reply "Yeeech!" when he encounters some of Jill's cooking that he doesn't like (despite having wolfed it just a few weeks ago, but that explanation to his mom requires, lucky for him, more English than Ned yet has), and he probably screeches more than is strictly necessary while playing "pillow" (a sort of bed-based NFL line of scrimmage, with me as the biggest defensive end). But all in all words are becoming more a part of just dealing with Ned. Which he have to do.
Time for bed, Ned.
"I'm not hearing that!" he'll claim.
Time for bed, Ned.
"I don't want you saying that word anymore."
What word? "Bed," he says.
I passed him once as he was kicking back on the couch and asked what he was doing. "Takin' a break," he said. Jill reports that Ned is also "blindly and robotically" (the loving mother - teach him to "yeeeech!" her cooking) repeating phrases freom TV, and that the other day he told her she had to buy Apple Jacks "because it's part of this complete breakfast." We don't want Ned watching too much Nickelodeon because we don't want him falling for the lies of contemporary advertising, such as that a "complete breakfast" comes with yogurt and strawberries and not bacon and toast with butter.
Still, it is cute.
"Stop LAUGHING at me!"
I'm laughing with you, Ned.
"Stop LAUGHING at me!"
He jabs a finger. His eyebrows crash together; his chin dips with what he must think is overpowering threat and dignity. "I'm not joooo-king!"
Funny stuff. Like when he stepped on the hard plastic octopus that Alex plays with in the bath and often flings on the floor afterward.
"Damned fucking toys!"
Whereupon the nearer parent yanks the reins. "Ned," Jill will say calmly. "We don't use those words, because they hurt people's feelings. We don't use those words, Ned." Of course we do, mostly me, when I step on something hard and plastic (I admire Jill's self-control, even I can't always equal it). With visions of notes home from his kindergarten next fall, I add, "That's right, Ned. You and Alex should just pick up your toys when you're done with them" Nice and calm. Don't make a big deal about it. Now we've taught him to talk by speaking to him, we have to cash in before he learns how to use silence, too. Like about 12 years from now, when I'll probably spend a few evenings dying for him to talk to me.
You'll understand when you're grown up, Ned. Are you grown up?
"Not as yet," he replies.
Copyright 2004 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
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