Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Dinosaur Matching

Andy does not like to nap. Recently, we have decided to just feed him at 5 and put him in bed instead of trying to get a screaming mass into his room for a nap after lunch. He needs this because if he gets grumpy, he tends to hit first and ask questions later. I would work on a 2pm nap, which would work very well, except that I am rarely in the house at 2 o'clock because of Joey's therapies, and will not be in the house at 2 o'clock all summer long.

Taking him up at 5 includes his bath, where he misses his brother, then stories. IF he is still awake at 7 when we bring up Joey, he gets another story. They usually involve dinosaurs or Karma Wilson. I also have some fabric books I've sewn up, which he often uses as pillows.

As part of the dinosaur fascination (infatuation?) I have pinned up some pictures of dinosaurs on Andy's room. A good friend sent them to us a while ago. Andy was absolutely thrilled when he saw them. He likes to point at them and tell me what they all are- and since I have learned what they are, I can decipher his attempts at articulation. Practice makes perfect, right?

Yesterday I put Andy upstairs with some stories, but all was not well. Andy started to really lose it, so back up the stairs I went. What was wrong? All I could decipher was "Edmontonia!"

For those of you who may be dinosaur=challenged, and edmontonia is a type of ankylosaur- a tankish, armoured thing with shoulder spikes and a clubby tail. It happens to be one of Andy's favorites. He held out the fabric book I made, based on postage stamps of dinosaurs, open to the edmontonia page. He was inconsolable.

I went into the room and sat with him as he tried to explain the problem, in sentences that were completely unintelligible despite beautiful and meaningful inflection. Edmontonia... t-rex... allosaurus... diplodocus...

Then I realize he's pointing, not just waving his arm. I look down at the book. Then I look up at the wall, where he is pointing at the pictures. Though the backgrounds are different, the actual dinosaur is the same- the pictures are probably the stamps, and the book takes the dinosaur, and photoshops it into a brighter jungle backdrop. However, not all of the dinosaurs on the wall are in teh book- and vice versa. Edmontonia is in the book, so he is looking for it on the wall- and it isn't there.

Good news: Andy is matching!
Bad news: I have no idea where to get a picture of an edmontonia, much less the exact one in his book, to put on the wall.

5 comments:

Club 166 said...

Not the best pics in the world, but some of these might soothe the anxiety if cropped in photoshop (or virtually any photo program) and printed out from your computer-

http://www.tolweb.org/Nodosauridae

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Edmontonia_dinosaur.png

http://prehistoricsillustrated.com/pg_bobm_01.html

http://www.dinosaur.org/dinodel/dinodelcooley03.htm#edmontia

Or, you could flatten the book out as much as possible (books around the edges of the page), put a digital camera on a tripod and take a picture of it.

Sometimes cheap and fast works.

Niksmom said...

Wow, that's AWESOME! (I mean, it stinks that he got so upset, but it's wonderful that he's matching and he's communicating the need.)

Leave it to a dad (club166) to have knowledge of and suggestion for solutions. I love it! Just like Niksdad would be! :-)

Your posts today really made me smile.

Maddy said...

The dinosaurs and the matching and the pointing and the talking phases all at once - slam dunk lady!
Cheers

Maddy said...

p.s. I had to buy the books with the phonetic spelling underneath [he was sooo much better than me]
Cheers

Joeymom said...

We've TiVO-ed a bunch of dinosaur shows. I suck at visual learning- I have to hear it. And Andy gets to watch dinosaurs anytime he likes. We like Prehistoric Park the best. :)