Be My Valentine
After having children at preschool for more than a year, I am better prepared this time. I am not going to be taken by surprise and suddenly need to produce valentines for a whole school full of kids at the last minute. We were browsing for supplies at a craft store last week and Claire picked up a stamp in the stamp section and said, “Let’s buy this one! It says Be My Valentine, so it would be perfect for Valentine’s Day cards, right? I stopped in my tracks and asked, “Did you just read that?” and she nodded yes. I am fairly certain she recognized all of the words, because the twins still aren’t that great at sounding them out, but I was still impressed. I bought the stamp as a treat for being a good reader. I also bought these fancy stickers and Ronin used them all up on just a few cards, so we started over and did the shaving-cream food-coloring project instead.
Claire and Ronin both know a lot of words. When I read them books at night, they generally follow along with me, or try to. They stop me before I get to a paragraph sometimes and pick out words they know. “There’s water! And street!” They notice sometimes if I leave out a word. Again, I think these are mostly “sight” words, or full word recognition. We try to do step-by-step sounding out and they can do it when I help them, but they are not so good at it on their own. Often they will start with the first letter of an unfamiliar word and then fill in a word they think it would be that starts with the same letter. Claire is particularly good at just guessing what a word will be based on context.
I finally found a chapter book series that Ronin enjoys, too. We have been reading the A to Z Mysteries. We are on The Empty Envelope. I think I will keep these around for a while, because I imagine they will like to read them on their own, later. The books have a map of the town in the front, so we can refer back to it and see where the action is taking place, and Claire and Ronin are both good at spotting where things are on the map and reading simple things like “Pet Shop.”
Ronin's spectacular helicopter
I’ve been a little delinquent on my updating lately. Justin went out of town this past week, for a whirlwind trip down to San Diego, flying down and working all day and then driving back with his results on dry ice the next day. I have been having to spend more time on my volunteer work. Last weekend I was gone all day with the twins, first to gymnastics, and then over to a birthday party in Pacifica where there were ponies! Ronin drew this picture of a helicopter for the birthday boy, and I thought it was such a great picture. Initially, Ronin refused to make him a birthday card and Claire made two, signing one with her name and one with Ronin’s. I sighed and thought again about how this didn’t bode well for schoolwork, but a short while later Ronin produced this spectacular work of art.
Claire on Bonnet the Pony
The party was wonderful, and it was great having a couple of ponies ready to go whenever they felt like it. Claire and Ronin spent most of their time riding, although Ronin roamed around the party at will and aside from eating the cake with his fingers, was well-mannered the whole time. At one point I gathered both of them up to make a bathroom trip and Ronin said, “Oh, I already went.”
Really? I have trouble getting him to go before we leave school, and then we sometimes have to stop emergently 10 minutes down the road because he can’t wait until we get home. I asked him how he found the bathroom. He said, “I just asked a grown-up where the bathroom was, and then I went.” THAT seemed like a milestone to me.
We have been letting him go into the men’s room by himself from time to time, too, lately. At gymnastics, I send him in one side while Claire and I go in the other, and then we meet in the middle sink area afterward. Claire won’t even use her own stall, so it takes us longer, and I’m always a little worried he’ll wander off (because he does that sometimes), but he’s been very good about waiting so far. At a fast-food restaurant on the way back from Monterey, we sent him in by himself while we were eating, but we could see the door and Justin was there to go in after him if he took too long.
I mentioned this to a co-worker whose sons are a few years older, and she said, “Don’t you check to make sure the bathroom is empty before you let him go in by himself?” I hadn’t really thought about it. I’m usually close enough that I could hear him if he needed help, and like I said, I’m more concerned about him wandering off.
Claire about to get soaked
We stopped at Treasure Island on the way home from the party, because we don’t often get over the bridge and I don’t have many occasions when I can be out with the twins without Soren. It is so much easier to make stops and take in sights. We checked out the Bay Bridge construction, took a little tour of the island, and splashed in some puddles. That Saturday was a tiny break in between a lot of rain.
The Bay Bridge
I ended up giving Soren a hair cut the other day. I’d been thinking about it for a while, and when I told Justin about it on the phone, I was met with a moment of silence. You all may remember how badly Ronin’s first hair cut turned out. I was very conservative with Soren’s, though, and I had a plan and stuck to it. I think it turned out pretty well. I mostly just trimmed up the wispy bits that were curling up over his ears.
Soren's first hair cut
I keep wanting to talk about how conversational Soren is. One morning last week he woke up and conversed with me non-stop for the first five minutes. He wasn’t grammatically correct, but it was still a conversation with a real little person. He first woke up and greeted me with a “Hi, Mommy, cuddle me.” Then we went out to the living room and he said “Roomba! Hold it. I want to hold it. Pick it up. Hold it.” So we took it to the back room to put it on the charger. Then he stumbled into me and he said, “Excuse me, Mommy.” Then he saw the cat toy and he shouted (too loudly), “Mouse! Emily! Here, Kitty! Emily! Come here! Here, kitty kitty kitty. Come here. Get your mouse!” A whole five minutes, non-stop, he was talking and making complete sense at 20 months.
The night before he told me right after dinner that his tummy hurt. I told him he should take a break and stop drinking his milk and maybe he would feel better in a few minutes. I felt badly for him, but I loved that he could express it. A short while later I asked him if he felt better, and he smiled and he said “All better.” This is the best part of his talking–the actual communication.
The worst part, of course, is that it never stops. Last night Soren didn’t sleep much. He had this wonderful two-week period of sleeping really well, right after we got back from Mexico, but now he’s teething or sniffly or something, and he woke up eight times between 11 PM and 12:30 AM, yelling or just babbling, mostly “What’s that called?” or “Look at this booger, here on my finger!” Eventually I took him out of the crib into another room (because it was Justin’s birthday today and he deserved a good night’s sleep) and held him all night, but he still was up most of the time, talking about any random thing that crossed his mind. He may not have any problem in particular except that his brain just doesn’t slow down sometimes.
Glow sticks in a dark bath
One of the most fun things we did recently with a relatively small amount of money (you can buy 100 of them from Amazon for around $6) is have an evening bath with a handful of glow sticks and the light turned off. Ronin could have stayed in there all night.
One of the side effects of Justin’s new car enthusiasm is Ronin’s new car enthusiasm. He has become very knowledgeable and also very opinionated. He notices a lot of different models of cars, comments on spoilers and other accessories, and makes statements like, “You know, Mommy, no car is slower than a Prius” that make me wonder how he’ll get along if I take him back to the playgrounds in Berkeley.
