2003-10-29
I have this thing I do with Clay where I say "Hello!" It's kind of my all-purpose animation phrase. If I pick up a little stuffed toy or puppet, I will make it look at Clay and say "Hello!" If I put on my head something that is not a hat--a plastic cup, the lid to the blender--I will say "Hello!" Don't ask me why I do this.
Well, last week for dinner we were having potstickers--those little crescent-shaped Chinese dumplings. I'd cut Clay's in half so the filling would cool. As dinner was winding down, he had half a potsticker left. He'd eaten the filling so only the dough remained. He slipped it onto his finger, held the finger up to my face, and said, "Hello!" I about died laughing.
His vocabulary is exploding. Last night he said three words I'd never heard him say before: bean (we were eating minestrone), bib, and wet. It's not always immediately apparent what he's saying. One day he kept uttering "bah nee" over and over. "Bah nee"? What the hell was that? Finally we noticed that there was a stuffed rabbit on the table, just out of his reach. Bunny!
Perhaps related to this accelerated language acquisition is the fact that he's suddenly unbelievably clingy and needy. And I am the one to whom he clings. The past two Monday nights when I went to my class, B reports that Clay was inconsolable. Threw himself on the floor sobbing, needed to be held constantly, cheered up only when B introduced him to a little bit of Sanford and Son (we generally have a no-TV policy for Clay). I hope this is a phase he moves through quickly. In the meantime, I'm uncertain what to do.
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I'm getting into some interesting territory with my therapist, examining the transference (what I project onto him) and counter transference (what he projects onto me). The idea is to use the therepeutic relationship as a model for understanding patterns that play out in all my relationships. This is something my old therapist did a lot, and I find it really interesting and valuable, and makes me feel closer to him.
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