What is the matter.

I am enjoying the process of watching Oliver learn emotions and how to express them.  Here are a couple of his current "expressions" of emotion:

My favorite, of course, is his ever growing number of ways to show me he loves me or misses me.  We have had the book "Little Owl Lost" by Chris Haughton for a while and read it from time to time.  But, for the past couple of weeks Oliver has found a kindred spirit in the title character.  The story is about a little owl who falls out of his nest and is looking for his mommy, he describes her to various forest animals after asking "have you seen my mommy?"  This is a kid's book so in the end they find her (she has been looking everywhere for him).  Lately, when I come home from work or I am in a different room and he does not see me for 5 minutes, he comes running looking for me saying, "little owl, little owl.  Have you seen my mommy?"  This is usually followed with "pick me up!" and a big hug coupled with "love" or "love you."

As you can imagine, since becoming parents, we have used the phrase "what's the matter?" a time or two.  Oliver has come to use this phrase as a synonym to "sad".  Whether it is a sad moment in a book (the lonely puppy in the Golden Book), mommy leaving for work, or he does not get something he wants, he has had no trouble letting us know when he is a little sad.  It is coupled with a very dramatic pouting of the lips, batting of the eyes, and a whisper of the phrase. 

Here are two examples from this morning.  

We were reading a book that had a person riding a bike in it.  As often happens, this reminded him of a song (or book, person, memory, etc.).  The song was the Goldfish song where the fish take showers, ride bikes, or brush their teeth, but ultimately realize that "wait a minute we're fish, we don't [ride bicycles]…let's go swimming…."  So we started singing bits of the song and he suddenly realized that it meant the fish could not ride bikes. 

Oliver: "fish no bikes?" 

Mommy: "true, people ride bikes, not fish."

Oliver: "why fish not ride bikes?" 

Mommy: "fish don't have legs and you need legs, like grown-ups and kids, to ride a bike." 

Oliver: "fish, fins." 

Mommy: "True."

Oliver:  "kitties not ride bike?"

Mommy:  "That's true, kitties do not ride bikes."

Oliver:  "Gerald not ride bike?" (aka, Gerald from the "Giraffes Can't Dance" book)

Mommy: " That's true, giraffes do not ride bikes."

Oliver:  (sad face) "What is the matter." 

Later in the morning, Oliver asked to "sit in the rocker and read a book" (this is usually code for I am getting very tired).  So we were sitting in the rocker and he suddenly asked for a bottle (which he calls both bottle and ba-ba).  We have not quite broke him of the one bottle before bed routine, but he has never really asked for it during the day.  So I explained that no, he only gets the bottle before bed at night, not during the day.  I said he could have a cup of milk instead and asked do you want your sippy cup?  His response: imagine the pouty face appear before he says, "not same as ba-ba...what is the matter."  He did not get the bottle, but it was a good try.