The life and times of Oscar Marcos Perez-Cytron. Born Thanksgiving Day 11/22/01.   Archives << current   If you want to add something to Oscar's baby-blog, send an email to megan@alpha60.com and we can set it up so you can post...

oscar's life   Monday, January 19, 2004 8:40 PM posted by Oscar   Another long hiatus... I've been working too much. We've had lots of visits the past two months. My mom and Nancy. Dad and Elizabeth. Mark and Dana. And Oscar has been changing so much. I looked back over the Blog for the last six months or so and it occured to me that I left out some of the most important events. I guess this reflects how much we are enjoying the small, everyday moments. But I've decided to go back and add some photos from family visits, trips and weddings--before they get lost on my hard-drive forever. Most recently, Oscar got to spend time with my Mom and Nancy when they visited back in November. The weather was very nice. Nancy brought Oscar a stuffed horse that makes galloping noises when you squeeze its ear. He loves it and just goes crazy bouncing on it like a maniac. Oscar loves it when people visit, so much extra attention. After Mark and Dana left, Oscar renamed two of his duckies Mark and Dana (he already has two frogs named Harry and Deepak--so labeled after Deepak's birthday in December). Last week when Dad and Elizabeth were here, it was insanely cold. But we still managed to get out with trips to the zoo, National Gallery and Natural History Museum (Christian likes the mammal exhibit, I like the rocks, and Oscar likes the big elephant in the rotunda). Latest developments: Concept of Family Oscar definitely understands the concept of family now. We'll often be out and he'll do a check to make sure that mama, papi and baby are together. He organizeds his animals into Mama, Papi and baby. We sing the song... "I'm a chickadee and I live in a tree with my mama chickadee and my papi chickadee and we're a family, a fam-i-leeeee...." Language He's keeping Spanish and English much more separate now. He understands that there are at least two words for any given object or phenomenon and he changes his pronunciation and rhythm when he's speaking one language or the other. He's even picking up different accents in Spanish. Some words like "manzana" he says like a Castillian (man-tha-na), others like pollito he says like a Argentinian (po-gee-to), and he says ai-yai-yai in puro Mexicano--I think he picked it up from Cien Mexicanos Dijeron (the Mexican Family Feud, which we used to let him watch back before we gave up TV). Social Life He's really interested in the other people in his life and talks and asks about them all the time. He likes to call people to say hello and incorporates them into his play. We show him pictures of family and friends and he can name everyone, even people he hasn't seen in a long, long time. Whenever he sees a picture of Christian's Uncle Pat he calls him Tio Gator (or Tio Ackee). He loves his music class and talks about the other kids quite a bit. Obsessions In his quest to understand the world, Oscar seems to go from obsession to obsession--horses, birds, robots, dinosaurs, Totoro, Nemo, buddha, eagles (so many here in DC that I never noticed), circles, rectangles, triangles, stars, trucks, birthdays, chanukka, tractors, trains, planes, sushi, snowflakes, elephants, hippos, snowmen/women/bunnies, squirrels, tofuheads... I think that learning about things this way is part of our cultural and aesthetic indoctrination. So many of these things are used as symbols that repeat over and over. And some are just quirky things that Christian and I are interested in that he views through the lens of a two year old and reinterprets. We can always tell what he's most interested in at the moment, because when relieves himself he'll call it a "robot-poop." "dinosaur-poop," etc. Pop Culture We've been taking Oscar to every movie that we can. Last night we went to see Teacher's Pet. This movie was interesting from a design/artistic perspective, but left much to be desired storywise. Getting there was quite an ordeal, because we went to Union Station to see the movie, only to find out that the paper was wrong and it wasn't playing there. Oscar looked so dejected when I told him that that there was no movie that we decided to hightail it all the way across town on the Metro to where it was playing at Mazza Gallery. On the way, Oscar threw a major tantrum, which we later realized was caused by an overly full bladder. He doesn't really tell us when he has to go, he just gets increasingly irrational and frantic. His favorite movies are still My Neighbor Totoro and Finding Nemo (which he watches in Spanish). He also likes the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies from Fantasia. All I have to do is utter a few words of dialog from My Neighbor Totoro and he catches the reference right away. Sometimes he makes references himself or re-enacts his favorite parts. Holidays/Celebrations We had a string of birthday parties this fall and ever since, Oscar has been obsessed with birthdays. But he's under the mistaken impression that all of these parties are for HIS birthday. Ah, Christmas--I was too busy this year. Call me the Grinch, but it seems like an unhealthy American fetish designed to stimulate the economy. I just wasn't brought up with this (my parents were too practical and too Jewish, I suppose) so it's one of many cultural things that I just don't get. As hard as I tried to play down the holidays this year, Oscar became enthalled by all of the wintery bliss--snowmen, snowflakes, presents, lights, trees, trains, cookies... I managed to keep Santa away from him for the most part (though we did go to see "Elf," which was a sweet movie)--and I hereby vow never to lie to him about the existence of Santa. What's the point? As myths go, it seems pretty simplistic--surely there are better ones out there. Religious I am not, but I prefer the real Christmas story: mother, baby, manger, well-wishers: seems like the whole message is that kids don't come into the world with anything and they don't need much to make a difference. Yes, the contradictory messages of consumerism and Christmas bother me.They bothered Oscar too, because as we watched the beloved Snoopy Christmas Special, he cried and screamed whenever a commercial came on. It was then that I realized that he has never really seen any commercial TV--and he hasn't yet developed that strange mental mechanism that allows us to suspend the narrative and go to a quiet place for three minutes while the commericials remind us that it is time to buy lots of stuff. But we did celebrate our own way. This year I made latkes and we opened our presents early, one day at a time in a Hanukka mode. We lit candles, Oscar tried to blow them out, still thinking it was his birthday. We sang a g-rated version of the Adam Sandler song and on Christmas day went to the Kennedy Center to see Keter Betts, sing "que bonita bandera," and then went to Chinatown Express for noodles soups and dumplings (handmade by the guy in the window)--it was a very nice, low-key day. Music He sings constantly. He makes up his own songs ("Like "Doo, doo, how are you," which is at least as good as some pop songs) and sings along to songs even if he hasn't heard them before. He still loves Manu Chao ("oh, oh, let me be, oh, oh, set me free!") and Jose Luis Orozco. He seems inexplicably drawn to Mexican political songs about Cesar Chavez, Benito Juarez and Cinco de Mayo. We're learning a lot from him. Potty Trained He's a big boy now. Totally potty-trained except at night. He even pees standing up now ("Like Papi," he says. Of course I'm jealous). I made him some special pants with iron-on Ernie patches. He's already outgrown them, but he still calls all of his big boy pants "Ernie pants." All of our hard work has paid off!