People person II

Over the past week or so, Isaac has been demonstrating an increased interest in people. I'm glad, because at one point I was afraid that he was only going to be interested in wheels. No, that's an exaggeration -- he was always interested in Mama and Dad, and in people he saw frequently like Oma and Opa. But now, however, the population of his world is expanding rapidly.

He still loves to pretend to cook, especially apple pie, and especially if he can offer you frequent servings of it. This week we've been playing outside, so he's been carefully carrying around an old pie pan filled with damp sand and giving me tiny handfuls of it. To reduce the rate at which I am required to accept this sand, since I'm often trying to garden at the same time, I began asking him who else wanted pie.

"Baby!" was his immediate answer, meaning himself. Then, of course, Mama and Dad. After that he said Oma, Opa, Uncle Joel, and Aunt Erica -- no surprises there. I helped him scoop out little portions of sand for each of these people. But then he went on to mention my paternal grandmother for the first time -- it was pretty exciting to hear him try to say her last name, especially as it's also my last name and the first part of his last name. Then, to spoil the atmosphere of familial significance, he said, "Black dog!" -- meaning his friend Payton's grandmother's black Labrador retriever, which had impressed him by licking him at a recent playgroup gathering.

But I realized his social circle was really expanding when he started talking about "Uncle Curtis." (Curtis is my uncle, actually.) We see Curtis briefly whenever we visit my paternal grandmother, perhaps every six or eight weeks, but it's not like they're buddies. In fact, Isaac has always seemed unusually scared of Curtis -- Izzy averts his eyes, shakes his head no, and generally refuses to interact. As usual he behaved that way during our visit on Easter, but as we were leaving we encouraged him to say goodbye anyway. So then he waved and said, "Bye, Uncle Curtis." (It was close to unintelligible, but we knew what he meant.)

That seems to have broken the ice. For a while now we've been singing a little song while we help him brush his teeth. The tune is "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush," and the lyrics are:

This is how [insert name] brushes his teeth
Brushes his teeth, brushes his teeth
This is now [insert name] brushes his teeth
So early in the evening

I originally started singing this song to capitalize on the popularity of Opa -- if my father does something, then Isaac is willing to give it a try as well -- but on Isaac's request the song has expanded to contain many of his favorite figures. (We have to fill up eight verses, after all -- one for each of his four molars, plus the front and back sides of the two sets of incisors.) So in addition to singing about Opa, Isaac wants us to include various dogs, the mailman, the firefighter, the garbage man ... and now Uncle Curtis.

I'm not sure this new trend means that Isaac will be ready to play with Curtis the next time we see him, though. Honestly, I attribute a lot of Isaac's new interest in people to his improving memory -- now that he can remember names and events, he likes to talk about them. In some cases, he likes to talk about them over and over, which may indicate his affection for narrative rather than for specific individuals. After all, for two weeks now, Isaac has been telling us this truncated story about the dog at playgroup: the "black dog" was "big," and he gave Isaac a "lick" (at which point he smiles), and he accidentally "hurt" Isaac with his wagging "tail" (at which point he frowns).

Nothing personal against Uncle Curtis, but he may not be any more significant to Isaac than a strange dog -- although apparently that's saying something.