The Graham Boy: Loves

It's four days from Graham's second birthday. On my sidebar, I allude to Graham's "still unfurling" personality and of course, even at two, there is much yet to be revealed. However, a lot of unfurling has happened since I last wrote about our youngest, so I thought I might fill in some of the gaps. This might take a couple of posts, but we'll start with some of the things Graham particularly likes these days.

Graham's Loves
Graham loves trucks, especially in our several books that feature photographs of real ones. Graham is enamored of doggies, and seizes every opportunity to imitate their panting sound. He always goes to bed with his arm wrapped tightly around our stuffed Clifford ("The Big Red Dog"), and his head covered with his doggie hat with the ear flaps. Graham is extremely fond of the ipad. In fact, he loves it so much that I've just put it away for several days (or perhaps longer) in an attempt to loosen his little heart's death grip on it. Graham adores a Nickelodeon show called "Bubble Guppies," especially the catchy theme song, which never fails to get him bouncing. Oh, yes, he's still quite the little dancer and commences bopping when he hears almost any song with a good beat. His perennial favorite is Toby Mac's "Me Without You."

Graham has a thing for coats, jackets, and shoes and can often be seen modeling his brother's or sisters' outerwear around the house. (I'm a big fan of him in Esme's shiny purple coat with the hot pink fur trim.) Graham is thrilled by any physical play with Mommy or Daddy, and enjoys being tossed, flipped, bounced, tickled, or kissed, typically demanding more with sparkling eyes and a huge grin. Graham's most beloved foods are kidney beans, coconut milk yogurt, gluten free Rice Krispies with coconut milk, oatmeal, fruit, hot dogs, and most meats. Graham craves outside time and always expresses extreme disappointment if someone is going outside and has the gall not to take him along.

Most of all though, Graham still passionately worships... the vacuum cleaner. You'd have to see it to believe it. Sometimes the first thing he does on waking in the morning is run to the closet, open it, and beg, "Datyoo? Datyoo?" He's happiest when someone is running a vacuum. Having one or both of our vacuums in the middle of the living room, with the cord unwound and sprawled all over the floor, is an acceptable second best. Putting a vacuum cleaner away in Graham's presence, or even attempting to wind the cord, is still the cue for him to flip out. "Noooooooooo! Datyoooooooooo!" Followed by tears, screams, throwing self on floor, etc.

What is it about the vacuum cleaner, you ask? We have no idea. We're still utterly mystified by the whole thing. I should mention, though, that on researching toy vacuums for a possible birthday present, I began to notice a pattern in the customer reviews. Thoughts such as, "Our 18-month old is OBSESSED with vacuums," kept cropping up, along with one that ran, "Our two year old stands by the closet and screams whenever we put the vacuum away." I'm not making that up. Evidently, vacuum-passion is somewhat endemic among American toddlers. Someone really should fund a study on this phenomenon.

To be continued...