Apart form using the antenna as an antenna, he is also using is as a ramp to enter into a room. He is still constructing engines out of anything and everything. He made Owen’s stroller into a vehicle by putting a book bag as a motor and mixing truck’s drum as the exhaust. He is very concerned about his little brother. He forbid him to use his pecr.
“It is very very dangerous, you go poke your eye out!”
Chris thought Owen how to give zerberts and now he is unstoppable zerberter. He is still super smiley and chatty. He can now stand for half a moment without holding on to anything.
Owen is particularly fond of beer bottles and shoes.
Trevor took it upon himself to clean the house. He did it despite the fact that there weren’t any fishes in his cleaning bucket.
The last few days have been so full of new that I completely lost trace and can’t even remember any more at which point in time I find myself. And space is getting iffy too. Chris came, and we managed to convince my mother to join us too. Both to the infinite pleasure of Trevor. And Owen was so excited he grew a new tooth. Yesterday. Or maybe the day before? Now I am no longer so much seeked for, everything is “where is jaaasnaaaa?” accompanied by a sad and disappointed face when the forementioned is not readily available. So I make up for my jealousy with gifts and bribes – I make sure I feed Owen solids at least once in the day, and Trevor got a lighthouse and a ride in the kayak. I got kisses and smiles for both . Of course Jaaasnaaa happened to be walking Trevor next to the firebrigade house exactly when they were happy to invite little boys to sit in the truck and were giving out coloring books. But hey, you can’t have it all.
Trevor is using more and more words in Croatian, which, while it makes me happy, makes my concentration requirements during conversation even higher. But amusing, like a guessing game. And he’s constructing and inventing words more than I heard him do before. Owen is getting more mobile and thinking that if one sits him in one place on the floor, in half an hour he will still be within belly radius, one is direly mistaken. While he was a pretty tough and active little baby when he came, what was then seems floppy in comparison.
Two nights ago, our neighbors made an open air projection of an old Croatian childrens’ movie on our little square and called it “The Pjaceta Film Festival”. This was made for fun and for all the neighbors and friends young and young at heart, and since Irka, who was the main organizer, is one of Trevor’s favorite people on Cres, she called him the guest star. He lived up to his name by intensively watching the film for about an hour and then getting up from the fist row and demonstratively going to bed. Totally cute. I use this space to applaud our neighbor’s efforts and energy, because such an event is exactly what the kids here need. The comments during the movie gave me back hope about the innocence of childhood, which I recently have come to suspect was slowly vanishing from the face of the world. With this positive tone, good night to you all
Trevor has made up a new song which goes along like this “Apple falls from the tree and bird poops…” and then some mumbling and repetition and so on. He is in a propeller phase where he must look at the propeller of every boat we pass. He is speaking more Croatian words though he is not interested in grammar. He wants me to jump into “mora” (sea) and when he is in the shower says “not my hair, only tjela (body)”. He is starting to say “Dobar dan” (good day) now and then and his firetruck “gasi vatru” (puts out the fire) and when sun goes down there is “samo mjesec” (only moon) in the sky.
Trevor is more comfortable with the “mora” now though he thinks other people should jump first. He now has a lot of friends on the beach, though most of them are at least 20 years older than him. Yesterday, a new girl was standing with some of his friends and he got her to put on his shoes and go play in the sandbox with him very smoothly. As always, he is cautious around kids his own age.
Owen-towen is growing like a weed too. He now has top teeth. Ironically, they are the I-teeth so now he looks like a little baby vampire. He has mastered crawling though he still does not do it too much. He is still the most distracted baby while feeding, but now he can actually get back to the boob after he rolls away from it. He has also figured out to go to the fuller boob once the one he has been draining is empty.
About a week ago Trevor and I went into a store that’s near the beach to get some ice-cream and he saw a toy mixing truck (which he calls a measuring truck for some reason) and asked me to buy it for him. Being evil as I am I blackmailed him by saying that he’ll get it if he gets into the water whole, including his head, not just ankles and hands. Since then he would go into that store pretty much every day and look at the truck and then bravely start towards the deeper water and then at about above knee height chicken and run out. Yesterday however he didn’t want to go even near the sea, he didn’t even allow us to take his clothes off. I was already late, everybody was leaving and soon there was no one left on the beach except us. The sea was clam as it usually is in the evening and the sun has pretty much set, and since I just got back from my swim before I changed into dry clothes just for fun I asked him do you want to earn that mixing truck? And to my surprise he said yes and got his clothes off and went into the water. He again got to knee height and did his usual play and didn’t really dare go further. Our deal was that he has to get his hair wet, so I said that he’s still not getting the truck at which point he bent so that he got the front and top part of his hair wet and started yelling that he did it and now he will get his truck. I said that was not our deal and he has to do better than that, although at that point I would have gotten him that truck anyways, just for being so resourceful. He did get back into water, shyly trying to figure out how to get out of this a winner and not actually get wet more than he was, at which point a tiny little fish came into the shallow water and we started chasing it and he got much braver, probably being too interested at the fish to think about the perils of above knee sea level. To make a longish story slightly shorter, when the fish ran away, he was already quite wet, and when he saw a speedboat in the distance and I asked him if he wants to be a speedboat himself and that this would finally get him that truck he didn’t hesitate much and he was in, laughing. As nobody took any pictures here is an illustration of him wetting his hair, being a speedboat and a picture of his prize.
Owen was jealously eying all events and the prize, although I think he would not need to be blackmailed to get into water, rather to get out of it.
Big Malac spent the morning yesterday combing through the firestation. Can you imagine greater joy?
On return, he made some improvements to his own fire truck by adding a string as a hose. Previously, he got to sit in a really old tractor providing he does not get it dirty.
He still goes on light house maintenance runs daily and takes some time examine the boats. He likes to count the “bambams” hanging off the sides of the boats. He loves to look at the fish around the boats but still has to work out how to “pec” them.
At the beach, he only goes in the “little water” where he fills up his little buckets to play with them in the gravel or sand. He seems to be more confident about the water, particularly since we’ve equipped him with butterfly floaties.
Mali Malac is thisclose to his degree in crawling. He is now eating baby cookies and drinks water from cup or spoon. He can eat mushed fruit without getting too dirty. He even tolerates cereal. He is a fussy milk drinker during the day but at night when he is too tired to be excited and distracted by every possible noise and shadow he can drink with the best of them. He is starting to make sounds that mimic what we said. I swear I heard him say “pojel” (ate).
The first week in Cres was a bit rough on Trev. He had a bit of a stomach virus, then he refused to sleep for two days followed by two days where he mostly slept. In between was a lot of frustration and just general bewilderment. Once he got enough sleep he got back to being our focused exacting little wonder guy. He loves lighthouses and carries a little key (taken from either bathroom or bedroom door) every time we go to the beach so he can go into the lighthouse.
Trevor’s pretend play is getting more intelligible to us. He now speaks in complete sentences while playing so I can actually follow. For example, this evening he made a carwash under the table after I told him to keep the trucks on the floor because they are dirty and should not be on the kitchen table. He had a little button he pressed and started making water sounds while the truck parked underneath was getting washed.
Apart from trucks, Trev has found folding chairs to be great toys. He is making cars and tents out of them. Likewise, his auntie found him some old wooden connecting blocks that he loves to play with. He still gets really frustrated when something does not work the way he wants to, but I think he is starting to improve. He is better able to explain to us what he wants to do and what is happening instead.
Trev is still very weary of going into the sea. The other day he walked in with his auntie, put his head next to the surface and blew some bubbles. Then he waked out and pretty much stayed out for the rest of the day.
Owen is a delight to all. When we put him in the jolly jumper on the front door, a lot of people walking through the street stopped to coo at him. He figured that out and after a while he would only jump when he saw someone coming. He is working so hard trying to walk, it is hilarious. He is very difficult to nurse as he is so distracted he can’t get more than a few sips before latching off. He has been like this since he was a tiny baby, but now that he can roll and move around, it is getting nearly impossible to nurse him. No matter, I nurse him calmly at night and in the morning so the few distracted attempts during the day are not too bad. He loves to eat fruit so we are introducing solids with no fuss. So far he loves apples, peaches and pears.
It’s been a month now with the boys and I already don’t know what I’m ever going to do when they leave. Every day there’s something new and it’s hard to think of where to start when Boj asked me to write an entry. About Owen, I can only say that I am absolutely amazed by the kid, he’s the sweetest baby one could possibly imagine. Being the younger brother I guess he feels he has to learn everything faster so not a day passes that he hasn’t some new look or action or wish. The best is his laugh when he’s amused by his older brother. If you can imagine a hearty laugh, that’s exactly it, but in miniature. It’s impossible to think of him as being only 7 months old then. Trevor is a box of surprises. Boj was worried that he is acting strangely since we came to Cres, and I suppose he has been a bit “musicav” (Croatian for fussy or something like that, I really can’t think of a better word) but being a big boy of 3 and a half I think he’s just stretched between growing phases, having a brother and all the boats and fishes and fire engines and trucks and crankies around here. Yesterday I think he regained some of his focus. Admittedly he did wake up at 4, had some pancakes and to my pleas was relatively calm and quiet for another hour and a half. So then we went for a walk, somewhere where he could play with his new toy dump truck and sing without waking up everybody in town. Which was actually quite a long walk for such a small boy. But as there were plenty of things to see on the way I don’t think he even noticed until we came to one point in the bay of Cres that he thought we’re going back to town from the other side (the bay looks like a lake from that point) and when I explained that the only way to get there is to head back he decided that’s ridiculous, sat down and for about half an hour built houses from rocks (now, that’s focus).
Focus on the fly houses
And since some fly decided it was a good hideout he decided those were fly houses. Which is just one of those adorable things he says. Like when he saw a little bird hopping around he called it a bunny bird, which I heard wrong and asked him why is the bird funny and got a slightly annoyed answer that it’s a BUNNY bird since it hops around. And my Trevor favorite I think is “get it for me!” whenever he sees a school of fish in the water. His progress on voluntarily speaking Croatian is slow but we’re getting there – sometimes he uses a word here and there without noticing it. Two words he has definitely adopted are “ribr” and “pecr”. Ribr being an anglicized version of the word for fisherman, which he decided to use for fishing ships, and pecr being and anglo-croatian construction referring to his device for fishing (a large bright orange piece3 of rope – bigger rope = bigger fish!), derived from the word “pecati” – to fish. Now, to get him into the sea…
. Of course Jaaasnaaa happened to be walking Trevor next to the firebrigade house exactly when they were happy to invite little boys to sit in the truck and were giving out coloring books. But hey, you can’t have it all.
