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 |
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