Picasso had his “Blue Period,” my son has his… Lollipop Period.

No, really.  They’re lollipops.  He and his sister went with Mama to get  haircuts, and got lollipops afterward. His first lollipop.

He kept saying it over and over again: “Sissy n me got our haircut. She got a wed lollipop, n I got a lellow lollipop. And we shared a, we shared, a oowange lollipop. These are lollipops.”* And so on, ad infinitum. A little like the Jack Nickolson character in The Shining with the “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” sheets.

On the upside Picasso also had a “Rose Period,” and then he moved to African influences, then Cubism (Analytical and then Synthetic). On the downside, the only thing I can see developing out of this Lollipop Period is a Sperm Period. And I can’t begin to convey how not ready I am for that. Bless him.

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* And now you see why I generally try to avoid quoting him directly right now.  Treacle factor: 10.

I have been noticing that I haven’t written about the boy much of late. I now know, poor neglected second child that I am, what is afoot with all that. The older one, at least at these ages, simply interacts more thoroughly, is easier to speak with. And what with adults being all partial to speech as a means of communication, well. You can see how that would put a developing speaker at a disadvantage, comparatively.

And yet. He is a breathtakingly articulate person, even now at just over two. Determinedly works his way through very long sentences. Especially when they have to do with making requests about things that should wind up “in my mouth.”  (Did I mention he’s oral?)  It’s just that while he’s there, uttering the Gettysburg Address, the other one is reciting The Iliad and the Odyssey, in the original Greek.  What are you going to do?

The other older child advantages is, their “firsts” are ones that are fist for the whole family.  First everything.  First words, first walking, first peeing on their own, first writing, you name it.  I totally am understanding its effect, because I am watching it unfold in our very own household.  And both of us, the beloved and I, are not older kids in our families’ birth orders, so we’re sensitive to it all.

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