Unlike me, Borealis has always tended towards being physically active and communicatively inactive. Given the option between learning how to climb onto the kitchen table without assistance or learning how to verbally tell us about his thoughts and feelings, he would basically always choose the former.
That’s not to say that our son doesn’t *have* thoughts and feelings; he just doesn’t feel the need to *talk* about them. As far as I can tell, Borealis wants us to simply intuit his desires — as expressed through a complex assortment of grunts and scowls. (Sound familiar? Yeah. My firstborn is definitely taking after my husband.)
There’s only one obstacle to Bo’s [otherwise very reasonable] plan, and that is this: Taylor and I are pretty bad at interpreting our son’s grunts and scowls. Accordingly, our typical parenting conversation goes something like this:
Me: “Bo, do you want a snackie?”
Bo: <grunts and scowls>
Me: “Do you think that means ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”
Taylor: <grunts ambivalently>
Me: “Wait, was that a ‘yes’ or ‘no’?”
Bo and Taylor: <grunt and scowl>
Long story short, Bo’s current mode of communication is frequently an inadequate method for conveying his thoughts and feelings. [Note: In contrast, Borealis understands most things we tell him… although, he does not yet *obey* most things we tell him.]
To his credit, our son effectively uses the ASL signs for “more” and “again”. He less effectively uses the signs for “all done”, “help”, and “please”. (Not surprisingly, that last concept is especially challenging for my favorite little narcissist.)
Unfortunately, this extremely limited set of signs is inadequate for communicating more than a handful of requests. Accordingly, Bo is finally beginning to recognize the benefits of spoken language, and recently, his communicative developments have reflected this realization.
Well, they’ve reflected this realization… kinda. He still barely uses actual words, but he does a lot more vocalization. I am extremely confident that his ever-diversifying array of grunts, squawks, and yells will one day resolve itself into English. But, that day… is not today. Currently, the only words that Borealis reliably employs are as follows:
- “Da-da” — “Daddy” (Taylor); sometimes, any other adult male
- “Mum” — “Mommy”; sometimes, “I’m mad”
- “Ma” — “milk”
- “Dee” — “birdie” or “bunny”
This last word is Bo’s most recent addition, as well as his most confusing. I mean, I understand “dee” for “birdie”. What I don’t understand is “dee” for “bunny”. After all, the letter “d” is distinctly absent from both “bunny” and “rabbit”. So, what brought about this poor nomenclature?
Honestly, my guess is that Bo is not intentionally using the same sound to describe both birds and rabbits — since, even to a toddler, these creatures are clearly not the same. Given time, I think his word for “bunny” will probably morph into “nee”, then finally “buh-nee”.
Personally, I hope that this transformation occurs sooner rather than later, since it appears that, for the foreseeable future, my beautiful life will also be bunny-full.
Last week, Borealis and I were walking around the Mines campus. (This is a semi-regular occurrence for us, and will be better described in an upcoming post.) Since it was early evening on a Monday in the summertime, we were virtually the only people on campus. Accordingly, I gave my son a longer [metaphorical] leash and let him run a bit ahead of me.
As I rounded a corner, I saw that Borealis had frozen in place and had fixated on something. Slowly, he lifted his arm and pointed at the world’s most terrified rabbit. Then, as if to clear up any confusion about the object of his interest, Bo shrieked, “DEE!”
Any rabbit in our neighborhood would have bolted under this scrutiny. That’s because the rabbits in our neighborhood are survivors, which means that they must be constantly vigilant against cats, dogs, foxes, hawks, SUVs, etc.
But, we weren’t in our neighborhood. We were down on the Mines campus, which is not generally home to natural predators of leporidae. As a result, it is likely that my son’s interest was the most attention — and the most aggression — that this rabbit had ever experienced in its short and furry life.
And so, instead of sprinting for the hills, this bundle of fur quivered in place as my son broke out of his stupor and started rushing towards it.
It appeared that the rabbit believed its position to be both secure and covert. However, this belief was not based in reality. Soft taupe fur contrasted nicely against the lush verdant lawn, while beautifully erect ears essentially served as beacons for the creature’s whereabouts. Neither my son nor I was fooled. Bo continued to barrel toward the rabbit, all while squealing, “DEE! DEE!”
Finally, even this dumb bunny could see its impending doom. With death-by-squawking-toddler mere feet from its location, the rabbit finally bolted… about two meters away.
Unfortunately for the rabbit, this evasive tactic was less than effective. Bo merely paused, adjusted the direction of his toddler-sprint, and redoubled his efforts. His chirpy exclamations echoed off the neighboring academic building.
Eyes now glazed with terror, the bunny made another break for it, hopping… about two meters away. Clearly, “escape” was not this animal’s strong suit.
Bo giggled maniacally and continued his pursuit, while I followed dutifully behind the pair of small creatures. Amazingly, this pattern lasted for the next ten-ish minutes. Sometimes, the bunny bolted a little farther. Other times, Bo seemed on the verge of catching it. (Seriously. It was extremely apparent that this bunny had rarely — or perhaps, never — encountered such persistent pursuit.)
Still other times, I capitalized on the opportunity to be a snowplow parent by helping my son locate and reach his quarry. (The rabbit occasionally hopped into/onto terrain that Bo could not traverse.) Lugging around both Borealis and his unborn sister soon had me breathing like a scared rabbit.
And then, finally, our prey disappeared. I was ecstatic, but probably not as ecstatic as that poor rabbit. I can only hope, for the creature’s sake, that it will never again be chased so doggedly (yet so ineffectually!).
In contrast, my poor son was visibly heartbroken. “Dee?” he queried mournfully.
“Oh, baby,” I consoled, squatting down to his level. Uncharacteristically, Borealis immediately rushed over for an embrace. Scooping him up, I soothed, “Let’s go home. I’ll have a surprise when we get there.”
My “surprise” came in the form of the most-neglected member of our family: Forscher, a rather adorable Holland Lop rabbit with a recalcitrant attitude problem. If Forscher were a human, I think he would be a suicidal neo-Marxist. Seriously. His glowers are second only to those of my son.
Granted, Forscher’s perpetual belligerence is not entirely his fault. Like I said, he’s pretty neglected. As is the case for many small and furry creatures, Forscher was adopted as a semi-desirable placeholder for a truly desirable pet — in our case, a dog. Once we brought home Mache (sounds like “McKee”), Forscher became serially neglected. (And once we brought home Borealis, Mache became serially neglected. And once we bring home Australis… well, there’s a first time for everything!)
But, lest you judge both Taylor and me to be terrible pet owners, please let me assure you that only my husband deserves that judgment. I am forced to neglect Forscher because I am [very] allergic to rabbits — a discovery I made only after we adopted one.
Initially, my symptoms were relatively mild: itchy eyes, watery nose, scratchy skin, etc. I cycled through a variety of allergy medications in an attempt to push past the reactions, but as time went on, my symptoms only increased in severity. Eventually, cuddling with the bunny resulted in a half hour of profusely streaming eyes and painfully labored breathing. So, I stopped cuddling with my allergy and started neglecting him. In contrast, Taylor neglects the bunny simply because there is no room in his heart for small, furry creatures. (Good thing our son was bald at birth.)
[Note: A logical question here is, “Why haven’t you gotten rid of Forscher, if you don’t enjoy owning him?” The simplified answer is this: for years, we’ve been basically waiting until we could transfer ownership of Forscher to our bunny-loving friends Dennis and Pollyanna. When the married couple’s lease was set to expire this past May, I thought the time had finally come for Forscher to leave the nest. But then… Dennis and Pollyanna moved in with us. So, instead of divesting ourselves of one rabbit, we actually ended up with two more as part of the bargain. The other rabbits, thankfully, currently live in the garage.]
Anyway — back to the story at hand. When we got home, I immediately ushered our dog outside because, not surprisingly, she and Forscher don’t get along super well. (Sadly, that is the extent of Mache’s cameo in this story. If you’d like to read more about my dog — and less about my bunny — you can check out When Fur Babies Get Supplanted or If You Give a Kid a [Quinoa-Spinach-Apple] Meatball….)
Back in the living room, I plucked Forscher from his hutch and set him on the ground. Then, I sprinted to the kitchen to thoroughly wash my hands and [ideally] curb my allergic reaction.
The scene to which I returned was a nightmare. Dog hair matted the rug. Crumbs dotted the hardwood. Toys lay crumpled like so many victims of a tiny minefield. So, in short, it was the same vignette I had left: the shocking sight of a living room that hadn’t been cleaned since the previous afternoon. And, in the middle of it all, my son was bullying our bunny.
To be fair, Borealis wasn’t *trying* to bully Forscher. My son was simply trying to pat the rabbit, but he was doing so in a remarkably aggressive way — i.e. the same way he pats Mache. However, a slap from Bo typically causes Mache to simply squint her eyes and sidle away from the “affection”. In contrast, the same pat sends Forscher sliding involuntarily across the hardwood floor. Poor bunny.
“Gentle!” I admonished through my giggles.
Bo looked up and acknowledged my command. Then, with exaggerated slowness, he continued to smack the rabbit with the same level of force. (I guess “gentle” is a hard concept to learn.)
I approached the duo and tried to nudge aside Bo’s assault. Forscher, sensing an opportunity for escape, hopped to the ground-floor entrance of his multilevel bunny condo. Unfortunately [for him], I had intentionally left the ground-floor entrance closed — you know, so that the bunny couldn’t escape too easily from his “playmate”.
Faced with this obstacle, Forscher completely gave up… and his surrender was quite pitiful to behold. Whereas the collegiate rabbit had at least remained [just] out of Bo’s reach through a series of two-meter sprints, Forscher remained well within Bo’s reach through a series of two-foot moseys. For his part, Borealis had only to navigate around the profusion of toys in order to remain within patting distance of the bunny.
Deciding finally to physically intervene, I approached the pair and grasped my son’s wrist to demonstrate how he should meter the intensity of his blows. Bo grunted and scowled in response, but he did appear to [slightly] dial back the power of his pats once I released his arm.
With the situation [seemingly] under control, I decided to use the “free time” to chip away at my most persistent foe: my text inbox.
[Note: Back in high school and college, rarely would a full hour elapse between my receiving and responding to a text. These days, however, all of my writing effort is shunted toward these blog posts, while my personal messages have become sporadic and anemic. So, if I’m currently ignoring your texts… I’m sorry. It’s not you. It’s me.]
After scanning through a dozen unread messages and realizing that I did not possess the mental stamina to answer even one of them, I looked up to check on Bo and Forscher — and not a moment too soon.
Bo had apparently cornered Forscher against the couch, and I had glanced up in time to watch my son back up toward the bunny, then slowly, slowly… *sit* on the bunny.
I’d like to say that I immediately yelled my son’s name and saved the rabbit from his predicament. But, that’s not true. I actually took this grainy picture first.
I would like to highlight the virtual absence of bunny in the picture above. If I hadn’t told you what lay beneath my child’s bum, you would likely have never suspected that it was, in fact, a living, breathing animal. (Well, he probably wasn’t breathing at the time. Bo is about five times heavier than Forscher.)
Rest assured that after capturing this photo, I yelled my son’s name and saved the rabbit from his predicament. Once free, the bunny looked both terrified and confused. Bo, for his part, just looked confused.
Finally relenting, I opened the hutch door and allowed Forscher to hop back into the safety of his cage. He did so with obvious relief, quickly scaling the levels until he was nestled safely back in his litter box — which, I am sure, he immediately soiled.
My son, in contrast, was visibly disheartened to watch the bunny go. Squatting down, I explained, “I’m sorry, baby, but you can’t sit on the bunny. That’s why he had to go home.”
Bo scowled and shook his head violently. It almost convinced me that he knew what I was saying. [Note: He didn’t.]
As I straightened back up, Bo laced his fingers into the chicken wire of the hutch and peeped, “Dee?”
I ruffled my son’s hair, which is finally starting to grow in. “Not today, Bo,” I sighed. “I think the bunny wants to be alone for a little while.”
Understanding that our fun was officially over, Borealis gazed at up at me with his big, ocean-gray eyes, and conceded, “Dee.”
“Oh, buddy,” I chuckled. “You are so cute. Maybe tomorrow you can play with your dee.”
<pause>
“I mean, with your bunny.”