reincarnation and favorite colors

this morning's cody-gem: "when i am a baby again, i want my name to be yody, because noone knows cyan."

and i think he's got such great logic.....and then i realize that i am SO in his world, and that if he said this in kindergarten, for instance, they would have NO idea what he was talking about, and they would just think he's weird. and then i realize that i'm only PARTLY in his world, and that EVERYTHING he does makes sense somehow and that half the time i DON'T know why he does what he does.

so anyway, in cody-code, the above means that his favorite color is yellow, and therefore he wants a name that starts with Y. cody starts with C, and the colors that start with C are cyan and cobalt, but noone in the kindergarten knows those colors. So when he is reincarnated, and comes back to earth as a new baby, he wants his name to be YODY instead of cody.
makes perfect sense, no?

why did that doctor hit me with a hammer?

yesterday we went to the pediatric neurologist. we've been wanting to go for a long time (ok, cody hasn't wanted to go, but i have). my secret dream is that we will find out that there is something physically wrong with cody that can be fixed with a little tweak, and that forever after he will be "normal".

not that i'd want him to lose his charm or anything, i just want him to have an easier time of getting along with the world and it's rules.

anyway, the neurologist commented on the circumference of his head, on the fact that he has little breasts, suggested possible adhd, odd, pdd...... and told me that most kids could have held it together more successfully for the full hour of the appointment.

actually i thought cody had done a pretty good job, considering that we had waited for the doctor for 45 minutes, and he had actually cooperated and built the little block towers the doctor asked him to build, and answered the questions, like "how many fingers do you have" with great thought- "i lost one, it fell off." (cody decided, around the time that his tooth fell out, that his finger must have also fallen out, since there's a space between his index finger and his thumb.)

it was when the doctor hit him on the knee with a hammer that all hell broke loose.
"why did he hit me?"

i dunno, seems like a pretty normal reaction to me......i must be starting to live in cody's world.

(so we're off to do hearing tests, vision tests, eeg, sleep deprivation tests, cti...........)

the great baking cookies race

baking cookies with cody is not anything like the dreamy visions i had of baking with my kids, before i had real live ones. it's more like a race, in which the finish line is unburnt cookies cooling on a plate. no, maybe more like a timed obstacle course.

2 seconds after i agree to the baking cookies thing, and..... he's off. and he's an unstoppable whirling dervish.
he's in the cabinets, pulling out pots and bowls and sifters. he's trying to eat the sugar, licking the spoon that he's using to mix the batter which has already dropped on the floor, pouring the milk straight into the batter without measuring it while i've turned my back for one second to write "buy more vanilla" on the refrigerator shopping list. he's feeding raw batter to the dog, deciding the cookies need jimmies (or sprinkles, depending on where you're from), climbing up to GET the jimmies, spilling them all over the kitchen floor, turning the light on and off on the oven, breaking the eggshells into teeny tiny pieces and ....

this has been great for my diet, since i get a lot of exercise running after cody all over the kitchen, and when it's all over i really don't want to eat any cookies.

rorschach inkblots and where you can stick 'em

yesterday we did the rorschach inkblot tests!!! who knew those things were still being used.? seems a little bit voodoo to me. cody took one look at it, had no idea what this guy wanted from him, and decided to write the alphabet instead. backwards. starting with Z, ending with A, in perfect order. that'll show this guy who's in charge here.

it's a one way street, because i said so

i never really expect the world to go according to my plan. that's one of the differences between cody and me. he totally does.
today he decided that our street should be a one way street. so he had me help him make a wood sign and pound it into the grass, next to the road. then he took a magic marker and wrote
ONE WAY
on it. actually, i think he wrote YAW ENO
anyway, then he sat on a rock and waited for cars to come. the first couple came the way he wanted......
and then one came...... THE WRONG WAY.
he was devastated.
his thinking just blows me away.

one more mcdonalds story and that's it

right. so there we are at mcdonalds, and there are three old men sitting at the table next to us. i see them looking at us.
"excuse me, do you mind my asking, are you his babysitter?"
we get this on occasion, because..... cody is black and i am white.
"no, i'm his mom."
"oh. is his father the same color as him?"
"no, his father is white. he's adopted."
my guess is that cody is not going to like this type of thing when he is older. on the multiracial listserv i belong to i see a lot of older black kids hate this kind of prying. (maybe because i grew up white), i have the patience for it, i find it amusing and i don't mind educating the public-at-large. i guess i will play along until my kid starts hating it, at which point i will respect his wishes on this one.
"well, good for you."
he turns back to his friends.
and then a minute later....
"can my friend give your son a piece of candy?"

teasing 101

yes, so we went to mcdonalds. little sister tyler was just a touch jealous of her brother, who got to go to mcdonalds when she didn't.
later in the day, we had to go pick husband up from work. little sister tyler fell asleep in the car, as she tends to do. when we arrived at home we woke her up.
and cody says to her, "tyler, while you were asleep we ate dinner at mcdonalds, and you missed it."
which kind of blew me away. ok, it was mean, and we explained that to him.
but he is a born joker, and he didn't really mean to be mean, he just thought it was funny.
and the thought process that went into coming up with that is much more sophisticated than i would have given him credit for.
another one of those "should-we-punish-or-praise" moments.

chez mcdonalds

we are being evaluated by a center for child development, which is great, (i hope). it's supposed to give us a diagnosis and a plan for us and for cody. it's a never ending bunch of tests, though. today the psychologist showed cody a picture of a cartoon peter pan. cody didn't know who it was. ok, he has seen the old peter pan movie with mary martin, but he has never seen the cartoon. didn't know who snow white was either, or charlie chaplin- "that's you!" he said to the psychologist.
the only ones he knew were winnie-the-pooh and mickey mouse- with some prompting. i told the psychologist this was a culturally biased test, and we moved on. (this was not the first time we have seen this particular test, by the way, and the last psychologist who administered it was OUTRAGED that my kids have not seen a cartoon peter pan movie or a snow white movie).

anyway, after the torture, i took cody to mcdonalds. i also had to stop in at a tax office (don't ask) but i figured that we'd take the food, and that would keep him busy. my bad. he cried the whole time in the office, because he wanted to eat AT the mcdonalds, it wasn't just the food he needed, it was the mcdonalds je ne sais quois. anyway, the people at the tax office were very nice, and they let me jump to the front of the line, and i got my business done in two minutes flat. (hmmm, maybe i should take him every time) then we went back to mcdonalds and soaked up the ambience to cody's heart's content.

but it's a great place to hide, mom

after one of those mornings where we were both on the edge,
i thought we'd get back into our groove with a few rounds of cody's favorite game,
hide-and-seek.
it was during round number three, when i honestly could not find him. i searched and searched,
and finally yelled, "cody, i can't find you."

i hear a little voice say, "i'm in the tunnel."

and i instantly realize where he is.

quick, get me the handbook!
should i yell at him, or calmly explain?
as my blood pressure rockets up into space at the speed of light,
i opt for the yell.
"cody, get out of that washing machine this instant!"
so much for the groove.

cody designs a pillow

today cody decided to continue his secret-code-artwork, and wrote letters on every surface he could find. i caught him writing on the floor, and sent him outside, figuring he wouldn't ruin anything out there.
i had forgotten that i had left a pillow to air out on the front porch.

the pillow now looks like the picture.
nice writing, cody.
sometimes i don't know whether to punish or praise him.