Today, Tessa is trying to get him to get a
book off the bookshelf for her while she is nursing. It is
standing up so that the cover is facing out. He goes over to
the bookshelf and looks around. She says, the one on the top
shelf, standing facing out. He starts to grab a book laying it
its side under several other books and says, “I think this is
it.”

She says, “no no, the one on the
far right.” (Yes, he knows his left from his right.) He looks
around, with full body movement they way one does when looking
quickly around a shelf that is three times your size and then
goes right back to the same book and says, “I think this is
it,” and starts trying to pull it out from under the pile
again.

She says, “no no, to the right of
that, the one standing up.” Same thing: he looks around with
big sweeping motions, back to pulling on the same book, “I
think this one is it.”

“No, the one with
the letters R-O-B-I-N on it.” (Yes, he can pick out objects
just from a series of letters.) Same thing: big, fake-look,
sweeping scan of the shelf, and goes right back to pulling on
the same book, “I think this is it.”

After a couple more rounds like this she takes a
difference tact. His hobby horse is leaning against the shelf,
so she says, “You see your horse?” He goes over and touches the
horse’s head. “It is right next to your horse,” she says and he
grabs the book and brings it right over.

Now, I would not have thought too much of that but last
night, he gets a little too crazy in the tub with Eve, and
since he is already washed at this point, I just say, “so sad,”
grab him out of the tub, throw a towel over him, and tell him
to dry off. He wails for a second with a pissed cry, tries to
get back in, and failing to pierce my stellar tub defenses,
goes in a corner, squats down, and squeezes out a little pee
with a clearly defiant air about him saying, “you peed on the
floor.”

I grab him and put him back in
the tub, quickly finish up with Eve, whom I have some how
managed to keep from drowning all this time, and leave him in
the draining tub water to rinse the pee off his feet (less than
2″ of water: enough for rinsing pee, not enough to drown). As
I’m doing the post-bath thing with Eve on the changing table, I
hear a Little Lex voice talking about getting out of the tub
now. I go and look at him and say sternly, “you stay in the tub
until I am ready for you.” He obeys, I go back to Eve, and a
minute later he says, “you pooped in the tub. You peed on the
floor and then you pooped in the tub.”

I
am crushed at the sound of this. I walk to where I can see him
from their room, and ask, “did you poop in the tub?” He looks
me square I in the eyes and replies with a confident, “yeah.”
Dejected, I approach the tub to survey the carnage, but to my
great relief and confusion, I find none! Then, I look at him
grinning up at me and I realized exactly what was going
on.

He is 2. Not quite 2 and a half. And
he is already messing with our minds. As Tessa puts it, “we’re
in for a long life.”