Isaac Updates.
For those of you who don't get regular Isaac updates, here's the scoop.
1. At his Babysitter's the other day, he turned to her, looked up, and said, and I quote: "Hubba Hubba."
She was in tears laughing when she told us, and it took us some time to figure out that Hubba Hubba is the unlikely name of a character on the british Children's Show 'The Hoobs." (It's done by Jim Henson's workshop, and is really quite...well...surrealistic. But that's Frank Oz these days, isn't it) The wierd part was, that he hadn't seen an episode for about 4 weeks.

So he was just standing there, probably glueing glitter onto a piece of paper, and his brain was processing a Hoobs episode from four weeks ago, and out came "Hubba Hubba." Honestly, I don't know where he gets it.

2. Isaac is now into several phases simultaneously.
a) The "read it again?" phase, where we get the joy of slowly memorizing Isaac's entire library.
b) The "Not yet" phase. Somewhere he picked up "not yet" instead of no. So he isn't really being defiant and saying No when we ask him to do something, he is just procrastinating. So he says "Not yet!". Again, I don't know where he gets it.
c) The "want to help" phase. For instance the other night Isaac insisted on helping mommy season the pasta sauce. She handed him the garlic shaker, probably expecting a few judicious shakes, and he promptly extended his arm over the pot, turned the shaker upside down, and held it there. By the time Noelle was able to react, we had a REALLY authentic Italian dish. If by authentic you mean it really puts hair on your chest. Which is ok for me, but awkward for Noelle, and just plain wierd for Isaac.
d) The "It's not tasty" phase, where he won't eat anything we put in front of him. He just pushes it away and says "It's not tasty." Again, I don't know where he gets it. We have tried everything, from bribing him with dessert (anything involving raspberries, I don't know WHAT we're going to do in the winter), to sending him into the living room to sit quietly until we're done (which produces a louder, more piercing whining noise than if a West Jet 737 were spooling up in the living room). Nothing works. We just have to wait for him to come to the conclusion that his whining and complaining will not work, and that if he wants the Raspberry and Marscapone cream cheese filled crepes (don't ask), he will have to suffer the indignity of eating some Chicken and Mashed Potatoes in mushroom sauce.

I mean, it's not like we're poisoning the kid.

3. One of his favorite games at night before he takes his bath, is to lie on Mommy and Daddy's bed, and play with the Polished Stones that I picked up for Noelle over the course of several visits to Las Vegas.

Now before you accuse me of being a total lump, Noelle happens to have an interest in Geology, and used to have quite the rock collection when she was young. And besides, what the hell else was I going to get her from Las Vegas? One of those clocks with dice for each hour of time? Not a chance. :)

So, he plays with the rocks, and is slowly learning all of their names. His favorite one, however, is "Amethyst", which he can say quite clearly. It's embarrassing, he's going to be in Kindergarten, and the teacher will hold up a pretty stone, and say "What' this?", and all the kids will say, "It's a pretty rock.", and Isaac will stomp his foot and say in a high pitched tone, "No it's NOT. It's a Lapis Lazuli!!!!"

And then he'll get beaten up at Recess.

But there's really nothing I can do at this point to protect him, other than have Auntie Jo teach him Karate as soon as he has enough coordination to stand on one foot. At this point, that's my only hope.

So that's the news at this point. More as things (such as Isaac's disturbingly large brain) develop.