The other day when we were in the playground at Joaquin Miller Park, Claire saw a girl turning around a bar while her father was helping her. She quickly ran up behind the girl and did it on her own, before I had a chance to even offer a hand. Then she did it about 20 more times.
News from Justin–he got a new car, a Subaru WRX, and he is in love. He is having it relay messages to him on his phone about all of its parameters. He hooked up this computer to my car and it chided me for accelerating too fast when my engine was too cold, but it was a short merge and nobody was letting me in, so I had to put my foot down. This is the first time since I moved out to California that car payments have been something I’ve had to think about, but the old car was getting to be not safe for the amount and type of driving that Justin was having to do.
Justin's new car
My news is that I am feeling healthy for the first time since September, which is great. Soren seems to be over his series of colds, too, and is finally back to eating solid food again. A few days in the sun must have been what we needed.
At the computer
Soren is talking more and more. He is using more sentences, and putting more words together. Today at lunch he looked at his mandarin orange, asked “What is this?” and when I told him, he replied, “I like it. I like the orange.” He is naming colors and shapes but not always getting them right. He says most of the numbers up to 10 but doesn’t count objects. Many of his sentences reflect the recent clinginess he’s been exhibiting. He says, “Where Daddy go?” and “Where are you, Mommy?” quite frequently. He has been imitating Claire and Ronin more and more, and when they were singing their Christmas songs, he tried to join in, although he didn’t get it right all the time. He loudly sang “Tingle Balls” over and over again for a while. He has added “Please” and “Excuse me” to his repertoire.
Soren in the back yard
Soren has also been using more adjectives that rely on a subjective appreciation of quality. He looked at the Christmas lights on the palm trees on the boulevard near our hotel in Mexico and said “Ah, pretty.” He notices when things are messy, also, and although he’s the youngest one in his gymnastics class, he’s also the best one at cleaning up the colored scarves when they play with them.
Claire on a stump
I put my hair in a ponytail the other day and Claire came running up to me, put her arms around me, and said, “Oh Mommy, you look adorable!” I was just trying to do something with messy hair, and Claire considers it the epitome of style when she has her hair up like that. I loved her perspective, and how enthusiastic she was. I gave her a huge hug back.
Claire mentioned off-handedly the other day while we were driving that when she was 5 years old, Soren would be 2 years old, and when she was 6 years old, Soren would be 3 years old. I asked her how she knew that, and she said because they were three years apart. I have been letting her play some math games on the computer, but I still thought that was impressive. At this point, she and Ronin can add 2+3 and 3+3 and get the right answer, but it’s a little different coming up with your own word problem and applying it to your own life, especially when the concept of aging simultaneously is still a little fuzzy. Then Justin asked her at dinner how old she would be when Soren was 10, and she didn’t get the right answer.
At Joaquin Miller, "fishing"
Ronin has been talking about wanting to go to grad school, although he keeps getting confused and calling it grade school.
Claire has been asking me again about when she can move out. She asked if she would live with us in college, or if she could move out then. I told her that a lot of people move out when they go to college, and she would probably like to do that, too. It’s easier to make close friends if you live at the college with other people your age. I added that she would be a grown-up then, anyway, so she could move out and live on her own. She said, “What the–!” (a new expression she and Ronin have been repeating ad nauseum that Justin says he’s very proud of, because they learned it from him and it was due to a certain amount of restraint on his part).
Ronin in the back yard
We were playing 20 questions at dinner the other night, and Claire said that Soren wanted to take a turn. I asked her if she was sure, because he might have a hard time answering our questions and remembering his object. She said she would help him.
So she turned to him and said, “Is it an animal?”
Soren, who is so good at certain things, chanted “No no no no no!”
She turned to me and said, “He says it’s something you draw with.”
I leaned over and asked, “Is it a pen?” (He had just shown a predilection for pens before dinner by chewing some nibs when he was supposed to be drawing.)
Claire and Soren both shouted “Yeah!” and high-fived me.
