Hello hello

{Just one of the eighty-million posts I’ve begun here and finished waaaaaay over here.  Nevertheless, the sentiments/updates remain the same.}

I’m just back from an emergency dental appt (cracked tooth) and feeling sorry for myself about a myriad of things: spending coveted moolah on said cracked tooth, the blazing pain of said tooth, the nature of my job being the one that gets pushed aside for other family necessities like last-minute Spanish snack buying and teacher conferences, and on and on and on.

So instead of attempting to work in the pesky twenty-minute window now available to me, I decided instead to hop in here and post some pictures/updates that will inevitably make me feel happy (and remind me that I am indeed doing something worthwhile).

I’ve let this blog slide in the way of thoughtful or reflective insights and relied more and more heavily on photos to tell the stories of our days.  Which is all fine and good (and conducive to my decided lack of time to form coherent thoughts), but there is so much I don’t (or can’t) take photos of…

Our littlest is now not-so little.  His speech has exploded and he delights us with the thoughts and ideas he can now express.  He recently scribbled on a piece of paper, then brought it to me and told me, matter-of-factly: “This says, ‘Dear Chip and Dale, see you tonight!’”  While showering today, he brought in a plastic cup from his little kitchen and offered me “lemon tea” – assuring me “there’s no bombs or explosives in it.”  Good to know…

The “I do everything by myself” fight has been replaced by “I will contradict everything you say.”   The jury is still out on which is worse.  I think I’d take the contradiction, as I can generally ignore or roll my eyes, but his older brothers find him absolutely infuriating right now.  He’ll hold up a Playmobil guy and ask Morgan “Is this a knight or a ninja?” and when Mo replies, “Knight” he’ll look him right in the eye and say, matter-of-factly, “Noooo, it’s a NINJA!”  Much as I try to convince them to respond with a sarcastic “Ooookay, Max,” they can’t help but get exasperated, trying futilely to prove their point.

Thankfully, that type of orneriness is sporadic, and he is generally a pretty smiley, self-entertained little dude.  He is currently obsessed with dressing up in all manner of costume (knight helmet + spiderman mask + generic cape + cowboy boots + socks on hands as “missile shooters” is a recent example).  He also thinks he is about two years older than he is, and now refuses to wear his Thomas the Train or “baby” underwear, preferring instead to steal from his brothers’ stash of superheros varieties.  I vacillate between wanting to keep him this magical age forever, and wanting to cross the threshold where there are no butts to be wiped and we can all watch the same movies.  But secretly I know that I will someday (likely soon) long for these days.  The poignancy of his fleeting toddler-hood hits me hard, often.

Henry, too, is growing up faster than I’d like.  The pants I bought at the start of the school year now skim his ankles, and I’m astounded by the gains he’s made in just about every other area, too.  He is loving Kindergarten, making great friends, and moving at warp speed through all things academic.  I find myself hesitant to talk much about his reading level or math skill or what have you, both because I fear it comes across as bragging and because we’re trying to emphasize that while reading, say, might come easily to him, other kids are gifted musicians, or can draw really well, or speak in front of a big crowd, and that all of those things are worthwhile and valuable and yadda yadda yadda.  Basically, we want to avoid his being an intolerable brainiac that can’t relate to the other 95% of the population and who rolls his eyes at their ineptitude to boot.  We can do our best at all of that, of course, but his wonderful Kindergarten teacher (whose Masters degree is specialized towards gifted education) is helping us understand that we’re not just dealing with a kid who learned to read early and will eventually level out with the rest of his classmates.  In her words, this is a matter of IQ, and we need to appreciate the reality that entails – keeping him engaged and challenged and focusing his talents.  Which, as his parents, is both daunting and exciting.

When he’s not enveloped in a book, he’s likely involved in some type of craft (although Mark prefers we call them “projects”). It started with a paper airplane obsession and once he found the right section at the library it has expanded to origami, paper mache, pop-up cards, comics…  I’m terrible at orchestrating such projects, so I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this began right about the time he could tackle them on his own – at least in some modified way.  I might never be able to find my stapler/a rubber band/tape, but I try to appreciate the resourcefulness and determination (not to mention the fact that his improvisations generally mean I didn’t intervene).

One of the other noticeable changes I’ve seen in H. over the last few months is an emotional maturity, the beginnings of thinking beyond the immediate moment, and beyond his own needs/wants.  When Max ripped a cherished Valentine yesterday Henry became hysterical, and I could see that he was barely controlling the rage.  I walked him in to his room and sat with him for a few seconds before he blurted out, still sobbing, “I just don’t know how to control my temper!  I want to step on his face!”  Yes, I’m saying that his NOT stepping on Max’s face is a sign of growth… sigh.  But it’s a start.  And I have to laugh when he pulls the I’m a sophisticated Kindergartener card, saying in exasperation about his brothers: “I hope when they’re six they have more manners.”  Me too, Henry, me too.

Mo begged and begged and begged some more to sign up for gymnastics, and I felt like a rock star when I came through

Morgan has blossomed in the most wonderful way over the past six months.  Early four + the Big Move did not do the child well, and it has been such an immense relief to watch the pain-in-the-ass-ness of those months fade.  In a family of three closely-spaced boys there is an unfortunate amount of type-casting that occurs.  It’s easy to think of one kid as the intellectual, one the clown, one the athlete or whatever.  Of course we know such thinking fails the labeled kid, but we’re realizing, too, that the roles are not nearly as clear-cut as it’d be convenient to believe.  Morgan still thinks outside of the box (often as though the box itself doesn’t exist), and is wildly creative, but he is not those things at the expense of  being smart.  The kid is brilliant, actually.  In a completely different way than Henry is.  When counting a randomly arranged group of objects, he’ll move all around the page, in no apparent order, yet arrive at the right answer every time.  He is eerily good at puzzles, but again, takes none of my type-A “start with the edges” advice.  Often he’ll do a good half a puzzle before even flipping all the pieces over.  He has made it over the hump of learning to read and is thrilled with the new skill, asking daily to “practice.”

Morgan is the king of random questions and hilarious quotables around the house.  He wants to know how light bulbs make light and what’s the biggest city in the world and how old is the oldest person (mental note: buy a Guinness Book of World Records) and “how high can you go up from Earth?”  He is almost completely UN-self conscious, making funny faces and talking to strangers and loving all things silly.  Knowing the rule of no “bathroom talk” at the dinner table, he stopped mid-sentence to ask, “can we talk about explosives at the table?”  He recently came in to the kitchen from the playroom to ask: “Could you please do a favor for me?  Could you talk Max into being in charge of the hedgehog exhibit at my zoo?  And if you do talk him in to it, could you also give him one of your twenty-five cent coins?”

He still strips down to underwear or pajamas as soon as we enter the house, and takes more prodding than his brothers to get back outside (or go anywhere, really), and he still loves to curl up on the heat vent and all other manner of “cozy,” but his spark is most assuredly restored.  Though difficult to articulate the subtle changes that occur over time, the best way I can describe then versus now is confidence.  He knows he is good at things, trusts he can do things, feels liked and appreciated and all that good stuff.  I walked into a room recently and discovered some kind of mess or something (I can’t even remember, as all messes/damages blend seamlessly together in an endless loop that is my life…).  I asked, exasperated, what had happened, and Mo cheerfully replied: “What?  I didn’t do anything.  Besides, I’m the best kid in this family.”

In short, I love these damn kids!

 

~ by onedandelion on February 18, 2011.