When he was good . . .

. . . he was very very good, but when he was bad he was horrid.

Yesterday Nicholas was amazing!  He was good all day, had his best swim lesson ever, and then won a million bonus points by being angelic at Daddy's choir concert.  Even though the concert started an hour after Nicholas' normal bedtime, we decided to give it a shot because he has been expressing both curiosity about what Daddy does at choir and some annoyance at how often Joe is at choir. 

From 2012 December

And I'm so glad we went because Nicholas was really fascinated and it made Joe happy to have us there.  The part that interested Nicholas the most was watching the conductor, who is quite animated.  He paid quite a bit of attention to every song that was in English and it helped a lot that every fourth song was a whole-congregation sing of a Christmas carol and that he spent the first half of the concert counting down the songs until Silent Night.  I didn't have to bribe him with fruit snacks until 40 minutes in and didn't have to pull out a coloring book until the last 5 songs--about 50 minutes into the concert and 2 hours past bedtime!

Then this morning he was an absolute delight in church and even started really working at figuring out what was going on and working on the appropriate responses to the formulaic parts.

Most of the afternoon he was fine, a couple mini outbursts but overall very good as we played lots and lots of games with Uncle Matt.

But tonight . . . tonight he totally lost his mind.  Bedtime took almost an hour and consisted of fit upon fit upon fit.  I know he was exhausted and didn't want to miss out on the fun we were sure to have with Uncle Matt after he went to bed, but that is no excuse for yelling at us like that.

Ads

Nicholas apparently does not understand the concept of ad breaks.  He is watching a Mickey  Mouse movie Joe DVR'd for him and every time they go to an ad break he asks me if he can watch "another one."  The shows he watches on Sprout and Disney Junior only do ads in between episodes and he only watches them on DVR, one episode at a time.  So apparently to him ads mean a show is over.

It makes sense, but it stunned me, particularly for a kid who watches as much tv as this one does.

Meaning of Christmas

Nicholas is working much more actively this year to really figure out the whole Christmas thing.  While not unexpected, it is very challenging for me.  On the one hand, I can't stand lying to him.  On the other hand, I can't really tell him the truth.  And then there are all the things that straddle those two categories, but he is not yet ready for the nuance.

For one, he is very confused by the whole St. Nick/Santa thing.  Some books and movies use one name and some the other.  We tried to just say they were different names for the same person, but he has a VeggieTales movie that is about (well, more or less) the historical saint.  And St. Nick came last week to deliver presents but Santa doesn't come until Christmas.  But not only is he way too young to explain the historical difference, but popular culture isn't consistent.  Case in point: "jolly old St. Nicholas."

It gets even stickier when it comes to the religious meaning of Christmas.  We have been reading various versions of the Christmas story, I have been talking about who baby Jesus was, and he has a whole shelf devoted to the nativity scene my mom made him last Christmas (fabric figures he can play with). 

When he was bored earlier today I suggested that he go play with the nativity scene (which he calls "activity scene") and see if he could set them up and have them talk to each other.  When I came back the shepherds were stuffed on a different shelf, while all the other figures huddled around baby Jesus.  Nicholas' explanation?  The shepherds are in a dark cave because they were trying to kill baby Jesus.  His quote: "They were trying to kill baby Jesus.  They were trying to kill God!"

So I did what any good parent would do.  I changed the subject and left the shepherds in the "cave."  If the parents of either of my godsons are reading this they are probably regretting their choice.  But I just didn't know what to do with it. 

I wanted to lecture him on the violence because it is part of a recent trend of pretending to shoot and talking about people dying or being killed.  (That is a whole different post.  The influence seems to be mostly school but a little the recent transition from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse to Disney movies.)

But, on the other hand, he is shockingly close to the biblical stories.  No, the shepherds didn't try to kill baby Jesus, but Herod sent others to try to accomplish this.  And as far as Jesus being killed, well we all know how that went.  I can't think of anywhere he would have heard the story of Herod, so I assume it was just a lucky guess, but still.  The real problem is that I may say I want to teach him the religious meaning of Christmas but there are parts of the story that are just not appropriate (or comprehensible) for a 3 year old.

On which note, we may have to just boycott Easter entirely this year because I am not ready to talk about crucifixion with my preschooler.

Letter to Santa part 2

Mailed.

From 2012 December

Getting Ready for Christmas

As this first week of Advent begins to draw to a close, Nicholas has just about perfected the Advent Song.

From 2012 December

(The video function is being a pain, so if clicking on the above image does not work, click on the December album to access the video.)

He asks every day how much longer until we get to light the pink candle.

And then after dinner Nicholas wrote a letter to Santa!  He sounded out all the words he wrote, although I corrected a couple vowels that he guessed incorrectly and just told him about the silent letters.  He wouldn't believe me about the "a" in ornament, though, and I decided not to pick a fight.

From 2012 December

From 2012 December

From 2012 December

Fun with Verb Tenses

We've been correcting Nicholas's speech patterns for a long time now, but he seems to be fine with it, so we end up doing a lot of grammar and usage work at the dinner table.

Recently I've been practicing the past tense with him, especially for irregular verbs (why do children only use irregular verbs?!). In particular, I've tried to help him figure it out through an algorithm: "today I x; yesterday I x-ed." Like most three-year-olds, he simply adds "-ed" to make the past tense (he's figured that out, at least), but has trouble with "go," "do," "make," and so on.

In any case, we were doing that the other night at dinner while he was telling us a story about playing with a shovel at school during the day. "I digged with the shovel," he proclaimed. "I dug with the shovel," I mildly corrected, hoping he'd get the past tense.

He sat pensively for a moment, then added: "Today I digged with the shovel. Yesterday I dugged with the shovel."

Getting closer, but not quite there.

St. Nick

St. Nick almost forgot to come to our house last night, but apparently remembered at the last minute.  And Nicholas' feet are so small that apparently he needed to use his boots to fit the Elmo Christmas pajamas he brought in.

From 2012 December

Class Performance

Nicholas' school had a family event the other night and the kids sang a song they had been working on.  And since class performances are basically obligatory for posting, here it is:

From 2012 November

And here is Nicholas' repeat performance at home:

From 2012 December

What cracks me up is how angry he looks at the end.  The kid is really getting into the role!