Mixing things up

There's so many things for a two and a half year old to keep straight, it's no wonder that Jonathan gets a few mixed up from time to time. We're still waiting to find out if he's colorblind. He's gotten to the point where he can identify the entire rainbow - but red and green are still a 50-50 proposition. Chris has thought about getting some of those test cards, where the numbers are hidden in the dots, but we haven't so far. It's not as though there's some treatment he's missing out on. We'll just have to wait and wonder a while longer.

Pronouns are another area of age-appropriate confusion. Jonathan's kind of flexible about the gendered ones especially. Some of this may be our fault, since we have continued his habit of calling all the Little People "Susan" - which leads to some funny moments as we ask Jonathan to go put away "the Susan with the mustache." He'll point to characters in his storybooks and refer to them as "him" or "her" seemingly at random.

Once in a while, the confusion is understandable but nonetheless embarassing. I know we have a lot of Charlottesville readers and this is a small town, so I'll have to be a bit circumspect. We have a neighbor, a very nice woman, who is somewhat masculine in appearance. She's usually dressed in casual clothes and has a short hairstyle. Jonathan and I were checking the mail the other day (another area of confusion - he thinks all the mail is his) when this neighbor pulled into her driveway. She waved a friendly "hello" as she unloaded her groceries. Jonathan, for reasons that remain obscure, said to me "That's a man, Mommy!"

I cringed and leaned over to hush him. He shouted again "That's a MAN! Him's going inside! That's a MAN!" I told him "No, no, sweetie, that's a lady" but he contradicted me each time, growing louder and louder. I offered him all the catalogues, the keys, a big stick on the ground - anything I could think of to distract him. Finally I picked him up, slung him over my shoulder, and raced down the hill at top speed.

Like the Grover book says: "Oh, I am so embarassed."