Our little outlaw

As much as Jamie likes to test the limits of our rules, as far as society as a whole goes, he is a very good little citizen. Last year I took him to a Rice football game. Knowing that he would be thirsty, and knowing that all you can get are $4 lemonades there, I decided we would bring in a full sippy cup. Technically this is verboten, but nobody was going to really give us a hard time. Knowing that Jamie likes secrets and games, I figured it would be fun to hide the cup so I told him I would put it in my coat and sneak it in. He got very quiet and then said, "Dad, I really don't want to bring it in. Can we leave in the car?" I felt a little sheepish but didn't think about it much again until...

This weekend we went to the zoo. As we got back to the car, Jamie played a joke by saying "Hey, this isn't our car, why are you getting in it?" Again, thinking to get in on the funny joke I said, "You're RIGHT, Jamie. But let's get in anyway." He asked what I meant and as I opened the doors to our car said, thinking again that this was a joke he had started, "Just get in, we'll steal this car." Jamie became alarmed. "I don't like this," he said. "It makes my tummy hurt." Turns out he was talking about the car next to us. He's been bringing it up all week too. Tonight at dinner he asked my why I had done that and said that just thinking about it made his tummy hurt again. Bad Daddy. Bad Daddy.

Halloween

This is, for Jamie in particular, a glorious time of the year. First Halloween, then his birthday, then Christmas. He has said multiple times lately that he loves his birthday date because Christmas comes so soon after. Even if it is unspoken there is some suggestion in there that Connor is unlucky to have his birthday almost as far away from Christmas as possible.

But both boys clearly enjoyed Halloween, as you can see. Jamie's costume is that of a clone trooper. He had settled on this over the summer and stuck with it admirably over the intervening months. There was some concern on his part because of his awareness of the relation of clone troopers (good) and storm troopers (bad). He is deeply invested in being on the good side of the Star Wars good/evil dichotomy and this seemed something of a grey area, but he worked it out.

I would hasten to point out that the picture of Connor sleeping was actually on the way home from a Halloween party well before trick-or-treating even began. We were very excited to experience Halloween in our new neighborhood and it was a nice scene, though not nearly as crazy as Carolyn and Chris's street. We went around a couple of blocks near the house with a boy from down the street and one of Jamie's other friends. The big boys got into the act very quickly dashing from door-to-door, giving a good trick-or-treat, grabbing as much as they were allowed, then offering a perfunctory thank-you over their shoulders as they dashed off for the next score. Connor, of course, trailed along behind, monkey ears and tail bouncing along with his short, quick steps. At one point he was far enough behind that as he was going up the walk to the door, the owner, not seeing him began closing the door and it shut more or less in his face. He began sobbing of course, and the woman quickly opened the door and put things right. They all also learned that some places allowed them to take 2 or even 3 things from the bowl and would happily proclaim this. This led to a dejected Connor shuffling down the walk from a house of greater moderation saying, "I only got one!"

I think that some of Jamie's rush, aside from the sheer desire for more stuff, stemmed from the fact that he sensed that somehow the normal rules had been lifted. These would normally disallow a) knocking on random people's doors b) taking candy from said random people and c) eating more than one piece of said candy in any 24-hour period. When we got back to the house, he and his friend seemed to want to eat as much as possible before we regained our senses and the normal, draconian, rules were put back in place. This hasn't quite fully happened yet, I'm afraid.

The Reader

While we have loved St. Catherine's, I have to confess that there have been times over the past year when we have wondered whether Jamie might not benefit from a more structured environment. Our biggest concern was his reading, or lack thereof. Fortunately, we kept the faith, and suddenly in the last 2-3 weeks the penny has dropped and he is reading like a maniac. It's funny, we are often saying that Jamie's behavior as a 5, almost 6, year-old is exactly consistent with his behavior as a 6 day, 6 week-old and sure enough he has followed his usual pattern here. He did not get teeth, for instance, for ages and then got them all at once. He did not walk until he was 18 months, but then he was running a day later (Thus proving the old adage wrong. To wit, you almost can run before you can walk!).

It used to be a little hard to tell when he was reading or not because he has such an incredible memory that he could recite books that we hadn't read in months word for word. But he proved his new skill the other day on a totally unfamiliar subject. We had been talking somehow or other about Tasmanian Devils and he was asking us what they looked. We had to admit that we didn't know either. Well, the next week he comes home with a book about them. We asked how he had found it, since he wouldn't have recognized a picture and he said, with a bit of a teenage exasperation, "I READ the title, of course!" In one sense, he is clearly enjoying this new skill, and is voraciously devouring text whereever he finds. In another sense, though, he is surprisingly casual about it.

He does like to lord this ability over Connor, as with his math skills. But for his part Connor is moving forward too. He was drawing the other day and then proclaimed, "Come look! I wrote my name!" Sarah and I proceeded over ready to see only scribbles and say "Oh that's so nice sweetie," but we were a little speechless to see, in jumbled form albeit, the rather well-formed letters C-O-N-N-O-R.

Good times

Jamie continues to thrive in soccer. He scored, I think, two goals this week, but I was especially pleased that he and another boy, Christopher, actually passed the ball to each other, twice no less. In 4-5 year-old soccer this is something akin to a miracle, and I especially like that when I congratulated Jamie after the game, he mentioned the passes very proudly.

Connor, on the other hand, seems to view the soccer field as a kind of stage on which he can play out a series of pouts and tantrums. He took part in the practice section of the day on a limited basis, as usual, only holding Sarah's hand. He then refused to play in the game of course. But we tried the old "Well, you're too young to play anyway," trick on him, which actually worked. Until we had to put a scrimmage jersey on him. This was clearly unacceptable and he went to the mattresses. So we all went to watch Jamie's game. This also angered Connor, who had decided that he wanted to stand IN the goal while his friends played and wanted Mommy in there with him too (Goal is about 3 feet high). Eventually he walked off towards the bleachers by himself, so Sarah went after him. A little sweet talk and some playing on the bleachers and he was ready to come back to the reservation. As they were walking by the fields, now empty as everyone headed for snacks, Connor sighed contentedly and said, "Good times."

A numbers game

Guest entry from Sarah:

Leo has gone to London for a week, so I’ve hijacked the blog from him. I lack his humorous style, so bear with me. As a little background to the story that follows, a couple of nights ago I went to the kids’ school for “parent education night,” when the teachers teach us about how they teach our kids. It’s a Montessori school, and most of us aren’t too familiar with the methods, so these nights help us decode what we hear about their day at school. Math was the subject of the night. Jamie has been very into math lately, so I was quite interested.

So, our first activity this weekend was soccer. Jamie was a little sad afterwards because he hadn’t scored any goals, although he had played well. Jamie asked Connor how many goals he had scored in his little game, of which he had played all of five minutes, and Connor thought for a minute (clearly assessing how far he could push the exaggeration), and said, “ummm…. five hundred.”

Later, we were in the car between birthday parties, and Jamie started a game with Connor involving math. He would quiz Connor with questions like, “what comes after three?” On the easy ones, Connor was getting maybe 50%. But then Jamie made things a little tougher, and starting asking addition and subtraction questions, and it was all over for poor little Connor, who had no clue. Example:

Jamie: What’s 2 + 2?

Connor: Ummm, 100?

Yeah, good guess. It was pretty funny to listen to, and passed the time in the car. Connor is fascinated enough by numbers that he didn’t care how often he was wrong, which helped maintain the good moods.

So they do get tired...

As many of you know the old "that'll really tire them out" thing doesn't seem to work as often as one thinks it will. However, we have evidence in the first picture that occasionally it does happen. This was taken at about 8:15 PM, Sunday night after a busy, fun weekend. It began with soccer on Saturday morning. Jamie is doing great. He played in a game where he was one of the older students but he was sort of a star, breaking away from the mob around the ball and dribbling for several goals. Connor is playing too, though on his own terms to be sure. This involves mainly holding Mommy's hand through all practice activities. For the game that followed, he kicked the ball once and then left the field immediately, to be held by Daddy while I "reffed" another game.

We have been cutting out Connor's afternoon nap lately in an attempt to get him out of the habit of being awake until 9:00 every night, so we had lunch and pretty much went right out, first to the garden store for some plants and then off to the Fire Festival, where there were bouncy castles and fire trucks to be climbed on and cotton candy to be eaten.

Sunday consisted of some good play time in the morning, followed by a play date at a friend's down the street. Then we went to the pumpkin patch where the boys did more bouncy castles, looked at snakes and turles, picked pumpkins and won prizes. Then another trip to the garden store. Finally we got home and everybody cozied up in our bed for popcorn and a movie. Dinner and bath followed and then books.

Connor made it through the first 2 books and then fell sound asleep. The picture is actually about 2 minutes after Sarah tried to take him to bed. He woke up and said, angrily, "NOOO!!! I want to 'nuggle on the couch!!" So she put him back and he fell asleep again. When books were done I picked him up to take him to bed and this time he gestured grumpily towards the light sabre next to him on the couch. Having gotten that firmly in hand he went willingly to bed, where he fell deeply asleep with the light sabre still grasped firmly. Jamie was fascinated by this and still quite alert, but he he fell asleep about 2 minutes after getting in bed.

Iron clad alibi

Jamie is actually turning into quite a helpful family member. He is very fond of yard work and especially loves doing what he calls the "outside vacuum", in which we suck up leaves and grass clippings for the compost. He also likes to clean and can be turned loose with a Swiffer, small (inside) vacuum or a damp rag and genuinely contribute to household maintenance. He and Connor also like to fight for who goes out and gets the paper from the lawn in the morning. We went to the garden store today and he impressed us by carrying bags of rocks and two rather large plants to the cart.

He is a bit selective of course and some things just don't interest him, very often the kinds of things we'd like him to do, such as carrying his trash out of the car or helping to carry all his school things into the house when we get home. Tonight we had a bit of a mystery in that the laundry machine had stopped running and the top was open. Now this is a little fraught because with Connor still potty-training, suffice it to say, the laundry is serious business and needs to get done, and the right way. So Sarah asked me if I had opened it, and then naturally turned to Jamie. He answered very quickly, while running through the room, "No...I don't care about that stuff."