Friday, June 29, 2012

Thank you They Might Be Giants

My child is obsessed with the "backwards alphabet."

Thursday, June 21, 2012

In the water!!!

Every now and then I think I may have figured out a dime's worth of wisdom about this parenting gig. Doesn't happen everyday, but when it does it sure feels good! So I'm patting myself on the back right now as I watch Avi smiling and enjoying swim lessons. No one would believe this was the same child from two days ago. Tuesday: crying, shaking, panicking, and refusing to get in the water. Today: bouncing, jabbering, grinning. We were a minute or two late Tuesday and that meant that the class started without him and I think, knowing him as I do, he then felt out of place and uncomfortable, which just compounded his apprehension of the swimming situation. He felt in the wrong. So today, I vowed to get there super early, which we never manage to do. But we did! We were 10 minutes early and that meant we were the first ones there. Even before the teacher, whom we were then able to say hello to before she even got into her suit. Avi waited for her ten and she came out again and he helped her get the props out and he was first in the pool before any other kids were even there. Success!!!

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

When Avi takes swim lessons...

Note: he is not actually in the pool. That's as close as we got him in the 30 minutes. Let's hope Thursday goes better, otherwise we're in for a repeat of last year.

When Avi plays with Legos...

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

"Up"

Oh, and Ezra seemed to learn the word "up" tonight. Add that to mamma and the all purpose "da" and an occasional "daddy." and maybe we've finally officially entered the verbal stage. He seems to be following in Avi's footsteps with the talking thing.

Monsters under the bed? No.

Avi is asleep on the couch downstairs (where Cary is doing sone work on his ipad) because he was genuinely too terrified to go to sleep in his room when we were not on the same floor. He lost story time due to poor behavior at dinner. He got ready for bed ok but then when left alone got more and more worked up about his latest bedtime fear. Ready for this... Electricity. He's been pretty freaked out about electricity every since seeing the transformer explode in the spring snow storm.
He has also become terrified of cars. To the point of being paralyzed at the thought of one near him. Not the presence of a running car, but just the possibility of one. This has transformed his new bike riding pleasure into a thing of the last (hopefully temporarily), and makes it impossible for him to get out of the car in a parking lot without a grown up right beside him. Where did my fearless toddler go?
Also in this note about how Avi's mind works... He worked much of Sunday with Cary on the project in the basement. He was curious about the barometer and then the dehumidifier and wouldn't stop asking questions until he understood exactly how the whole thing worked. Cary asked him the next morning if he remembered how it worked and he was able to describe it back to him in specific step by step details.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Done with highchair?

Are we done with it? That's a risky decision, but he does sure like sitting at the table with his brothers, and I would enjoy having it out of the room.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Playtime

These two have been playing together (parallel fashion) more and more. This morning Ezra played nicely with zoob and then train tracks while I did the breakfast dishes (instead of doing things like dumping out the dog food and water and getting into the water dispenser and pulling the bags out of the cupboard). Yeah. There is hope.

Monday, June 4, 2012

The 6 cent shopping trip

Drove to grocery store twice this evening. Had to go back with the MC so he could apologize for taking the piece of taffy (and pay for it -and another for his brother - out of his allowance). He was pretty somber. We talked a lot about getting caught and how that can actually be a good thing, because when people don't get caught, they sometimes keep making bigger and bigger mistakes until they get into trouble they can't get out of with apologies.  Hopefully making a big deal out of this 3 cent act of snitching will prevent bigger events in the future. I think we spent close to 60 cents in gas for 6 cents worth of candy!    But it wasn't the candy we were buying obviously, it was an investment in a child with an honest future.  Hopefully it will reap dividends. I was proud though because I stayed calm the whole time and I framed the situation in terms of helping him fix a mistake instead of punishing him. "We can solve this," etc.  He would have completely melted down with any other approach, but I was able to get him out from under his hiding place under the kitchen table to admit what he had done and then deal with it.  So I must have done something right. 
I didn't tell him until the ride home that he wouldn't be getting stories tonight.  It was already past 8:00 when we got home so the logical consequence was that he used up story time in a return trip to the grocery store.