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| From 2011 April |
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| From 2011 April |
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| From 2011 April |
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| From 2011 April |
Monday, March 30, 2015
Flashback
A little flashback to Easter the year Nicholas was not-quite-two.
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Snapshots
I don't blog enough, which is a problem since this is basically the only record I have of these years. So, mostly for my own sake, here is a snapshot of where each kid is these days:
Nicholas still loves school and adores his teacher. He takes great pride in the things they have learned and revels in the school routines. His favorite part of the day, though, is playing at the aftercare program with his friends. He has one really close friend in particular, who is like his twin. Seriously, it is uncanny how in sync they are. And they are obsessed with all things Wild Kratts. They make creature pods (basically walkie talkies) with paper at the Y and when Marco came over to play one Saturday they played Wild Kratts for most of the time. They got the idea (I'm not clear quite where) that if you find a four-leaf clover and make a wish a leprechaun will bring you what you wished for, as long as it is made of gold. And so they picked weeds of some sort one afternoon and Nicholas has been making wishes for gold creature power suits each night before bed. Nicholas still wants a real magic wand that actually does magic, but so that he can take a fake creature power suit and make it real. And if this paragraph is in Greek to you, google Wild Kratts to translate the jargon.
Nicholas has learned a lot so far this year, most noticeably in writing and maturity. I'm sure his reading has improved but he was at a stage already where it isn't that noticeable. He is learning more math but that doesn't come up regularly in our daily conversations. When he was home for all those snow days he got to the point of being able to do double-digit math problems with carrying, but I know they are nowhere close to that at school. He is getting better at telling time. But writing is where the difference is really noticeable. At the beginning of the schoolyear he could write all of his letters but it was a very slow and painful process and he needed help spelling just about everything. He now can sit down and write sentences lickety split. The spelling is very phonetic but he isn't particularly worried about it. For example, he wrote this letter to Santa last week:
That took him probably less than 5 minutes. And when he takes his time his printing has gotten very neat. (As to why he was writing Santa in March: he decided that the reason Santa hasn't brought him a real magic wand the last couple years is that he sent his letters in too late for the elves to have time to make it, so this year he is on the ball.)
Elizabeth is 16 months old and full of energy. She knows what she wants and is insistent on it. (You should see what happens when she sneaks into her room to get a paci out of her crib only to have it taken away.) And she manages to make her meanings pretty clear, usually with pointing, gestures, and insistent noises. Although, just in the last couple weeks her vocabulary has exploded. Most of her words aren't particularly clear, but the number has increased noticeably. Mama, Dada, Ni-Ni (Nicholas), Dithie (Lizzie), E-mo (Elmo), au done (all done), wubba (from the Sesame Street song), hush (from Goodnight Moon), na-na (banana), appa (apple), more, go, hi, bye, up, down, nur (nurse) and then individual sounds I can't begin to type from that she uses for the following words: boots, shoes, book, milk, ring-around-the-rosie, and car. I'm sure there are some more I am forgetting but those are the common ones. And then there are the animal noises.
She wants to do everything her big brother does and idolizes him. Some of her favorite activities right now are dance parties, playing doctor, playing car with an old diaper box, and reading books. She also likes just about anything that involves taking things out of a container and putting them back in. Her eyes have been crossing a lot more recently so we have an appointment with a pediatric ophthalmologist in a couple weeks. I'll be a little on edge until then, but hopefully it will be something that can be relatively easily dealt with. And I'm hoping that being proactive now will prevent problems later. I'll try to remember to update once we have that appointment.
And for a few actual snapshots:
Hmm, and I guess I need to cut her bangs soon, don't I?
Nicholas still loves school and adores his teacher. He takes great pride in the things they have learned and revels in the school routines. His favorite part of the day, though, is playing at the aftercare program with his friends. He has one really close friend in particular, who is like his twin. Seriously, it is uncanny how in sync they are. And they are obsessed with all things Wild Kratts. They make creature pods (basically walkie talkies) with paper at the Y and when Marco came over to play one Saturday they played Wild Kratts for most of the time. They got the idea (I'm not clear quite where) that if you find a four-leaf clover and make a wish a leprechaun will bring you what you wished for, as long as it is made of gold. And so they picked weeds of some sort one afternoon and Nicholas has been making wishes for gold creature power suits each night before bed. Nicholas still wants a real magic wand that actually does magic, but so that he can take a fake creature power suit and make it real. And if this paragraph is in Greek to you, google Wild Kratts to translate the jargon.
Nicholas has learned a lot so far this year, most noticeably in writing and maturity. I'm sure his reading has improved but he was at a stage already where it isn't that noticeable. He is learning more math but that doesn't come up regularly in our daily conversations. When he was home for all those snow days he got to the point of being able to do double-digit math problems with carrying, but I know they are nowhere close to that at school. He is getting better at telling time. But writing is where the difference is really noticeable. At the beginning of the schoolyear he could write all of his letters but it was a very slow and painful process and he needed help spelling just about everything. He now can sit down and write sentences lickety split. The spelling is very phonetic but he isn't particularly worried about it. For example, he wrote this letter to Santa last week:
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| From 2015 March |
That took him probably less than 5 minutes. And when he takes his time his printing has gotten very neat. (As to why he was writing Santa in March: he decided that the reason Santa hasn't brought him a real magic wand the last couple years is that he sent his letters in too late for the elves to have time to make it, so this year he is on the ball.)
Elizabeth is 16 months old and full of energy. She knows what she wants and is insistent on it. (You should see what happens when she sneaks into her room to get a paci out of her crib only to have it taken away.) And she manages to make her meanings pretty clear, usually with pointing, gestures, and insistent noises. Although, just in the last couple weeks her vocabulary has exploded. Most of her words aren't particularly clear, but the number has increased noticeably. Mama, Dada, Ni-Ni (Nicholas), Dithie (Lizzie), E-mo (Elmo), au done (all done), wubba (from the Sesame Street song), hush (from Goodnight Moon), na-na (banana), appa (apple), more, go, hi, bye, up, down, nur (nurse) and then individual sounds I can't begin to type from that she uses for the following words: boots, shoes, book, milk, ring-around-the-rosie, and car. I'm sure there are some more I am forgetting but those are the common ones. And then there are the animal noises.
She wants to do everything her big brother does and idolizes him. Some of her favorite activities right now are dance parties, playing doctor, playing car with an old diaper box, and reading books. She also likes just about anything that involves taking things out of a container and putting them back in. Her eyes have been crossing a lot more recently so we have an appointment with a pediatric ophthalmologist in a couple weeks. I'll be a little on edge until then, but hopefully it will be something that can be relatively easily dealt with. And I'm hoping that being proactive now will prevent problems later. I'll try to remember to update once we have that appointment.
And for a few actual snapshots:
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| From 2015 March |
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| From 2015 March |
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| From 2015 March |
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| From 2015 March |
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Moments
I am very lucky. Part of how I know this is that I've had a lot of "best year of my life" years. I feel a little bit like Nicholas, who declares things the "best ever" quite freely. But I am struck quite often by the fact that as crazy as life is right now, this is a year/phase that I am going to look back at in old age as one of those best ever ones.
This is the realization behind the sudden increase in the number of videos I'm taking. When Nicholas was a baby and toddler I naively thought I'd remember it all. I mean, how could I forget the sound of his voice saying those early words?! And yet I now know how fuzzy that has all gotten. And I just don't want to forget them at this moment. And since goodness knows I am not good at posting anymore, I won't have a written record.
So what is it that I'm trying to capture? What is it about this phase? It is each of them individually but even more it is the two of them together. They are at a sweet spot in their sibling relationship, where Elizabeth is old enough that they can interact and yet Nicholas isn't so old as to not want her following him around.
Elizabeth wants to do everything Nicholas does. Today he got a temporary tattoo and so she wanted one. So I drew on her arm with marker. And she is 1 so she considered the green circle I drew on her arm completely equal to his minion tattoo and spent half the day blowing on her arm because she had seen Nicholas blow on his tattoo when we first put it on. And the grin on her face when she did it! She was like her big brother! She calls him "Ni-Ni" pretty reliably right now, which is basically the equivalent to Mama or Dada when you think about it, repeating the first sound of the name twice. ("Lizzie" by the way is something like Di-dee.)
And when Nicholas decides to click into big brother role he is truly amazing. There are times when I catch him reading to her or playing with her or helping her put her shoes on that my heart almost bursts. I love that they love each other so much and I also love that he has such a good and caring heart.
Not that it is always perfect. Nicholas sometimes just wants to do his own thing and doesn't want to play with her, which is completely fine except for when we're outside in the snow because it makes my life much easier if he'll go down in the sled with her. And occasionally he is too rough with her, although that really isn't often and he is very rarely actually mean. Most of the times he hurts or upsets her are actually because he forgets he isn't an adult and tries to carry her somewhere (today resulting in having his arm wrapped around her neck) or tries to stop her from doing something she isn't supposed to.
This is the realization behind the sudden increase in the number of videos I'm taking. When Nicholas was a baby and toddler I naively thought I'd remember it all. I mean, how could I forget the sound of his voice saying those early words?! And yet I now know how fuzzy that has all gotten. And I just don't want to forget them at this moment. And since goodness knows I am not good at posting anymore, I won't have a written record.
So what is it that I'm trying to capture? What is it about this phase? It is each of them individually but even more it is the two of them together. They are at a sweet spot in their sibling relationship, where Elizabeth is old enough that they can interact and yet Nicholas isn't so old as to not want her following him around.
Elizabeth wants to do everything Nicholas does. Today he got a temporary tattoo and so she wanted one. So I drew on her arm with marker. And she is 1 so she considered the green circle I drew on her arm completely equal to his minion tattoo and spent half the day blowing on her arm because she had seen Nicholas blow on his tattoo when we first put it on. And the grin on her face when she did it! She was like her big brother! She calls him "Ni-Ni" pretty reliably right now, which is basically the equivalent to Mama or Dada when you think about it, repeating the first sound of the name twice. ("Lizzie" by the way is something like Di-dee.)
And when Nicholas decides to click into big brother role he is truly amazing. There are times when I catch him reading to her or playing with her or helping her put her shoes on that my heart almost bursts. I love that they love each other so much and I also love that he has such a good and caring heart.
Not that it is always perfect. Nicholas sometimes just wants to do his own thing and doesn't want to play with her, which is completely fine except for when we're outside in the snow because it makes my life much easier if he'll go down in the sled with her. And occasionally he is too rough with her, although that really isn't often and he is very rarely actually mean. Most of the times he hurts or upsets her are actually because he forgets he isn't an adult and tries to carry her somewhere (today resulting in having his arm wrapped around her neck) or tries to stop her from doing something she isn't supposed to.
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| From 2015 March |
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| From 2015 March |
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| From 2015 February |
Sunday, March 8, 2015
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