Totoro, Training, Building, Other Utterances..

Mago loves My Neighbor Totoro. I watched it with him. This film is one of my favorites. It cracks me up when Totoro roars, and I’m wowed by the magic he uses to grow forests. The music is also fantastic – listening to it again, I realize it’s actually New Age – but, forgive me, New Age with soul, even the most infamous music styles can have that! – and I don’t mean as in “soul music”, just.. not rambling fluff.. however it can get a bit weird. Mago mistakes the little girl in the film for a boy (I think for wanting to identify).

Mago: “He followed him into the forest. Now the hole where he went is gone. There’s no Totoro now.” .. (whispers, when Totoro and the children are sitting on top of the giant tree playing flutes at night) “I saw Totoro!” .. “Totoro is a bear, and he has a littler bear and a littler, and he has big eyes, and a little tiny mouth.” (puckers his lips small).

These are some other things he said recently –

After I ran up a ladder and down a slide with him many times at his cousins’ house in Arizona:

Me: “I’m pooped.”
Mago: “Are you trained?”

At bed time as Mago built a fort out of pillows and Tia sat on his bed reading to Nem-nem:

Mago: (to Tia) “Say: look, big brother is building a house!”
Tia: “Look, big brother is building a house!”
Mago: “Is that brilliant?”

He talks to Tia’s feet like little friends when she relaxes with them raised. She named one of them footy-foot. Recently when she was relaxing he came to one of her feet.

Mago: (to her left foot, hugging it) “I love you, footy-foot.”
(then to her right foot, hugging it) “I love you, friend.”
(takes both feet and hugs them) “I love you, friends.”
(lets go of both feet) “Did you see that, mama? It was a team hug.”

Yesterday, with me:

Mago: “Say, ‘what is it?'”
Me: “What is it?”
Mago: (flaps his lips)
Me (I laugh)
Mago: “Say, ‘what is it?'”
Me: “What is it?”
Mago: (flaps his lips..)

We decided Nem-nem looks like a little marsupial or possum. A few days after we did her aunt decided the same thing – dubbing her “Meinschen” (sp? Correct word?), little mouse.

Seven days ago Nem-nem rolled over from her tummy onto her back. Now she does this at tummy-time: she doesn’t enjoy being on her tummy, and grunts, lifts her head up high, pushes and wrestles with her arms until she flops over onto her back.