Connor is absurdly cute

That's really all I have to say here. These pictures are incontrovertible proof. These are all from kindergarten this year. It's really hard to believe that our little boys is going to first grade. There's something so perfect about the fit between Connor and kindergarten. He is feeling this too, and he recently proclaimed that he wanted to stay in kindergarten for another year. We kind of wish he could.

No thanks to Daddy

So the boys are doing the swim team at our neighborhood pool. We had wanted them to do it last year but they were apprehensive so we let it go, with the understanding that it was a definite this time around. Jamie was again hesitant though. Last summer on the 4th of July we participated in the various family races they held and Jamie, swimming against 8-year-olds, fared poorly in his opinion in the father/son race (I was phenomenal of course). Jamie, as we know, does not like to do things he's not already very good at. I can understand it though, he's spent more than a year working up to a high level in baseball and I think the thought of being back at the bottom of the totem pole was off-putting. Even the fact that his particular friend from school, the one who is the reason he plays cello, is on the team wasn't enough. What finally got him, however, was when we mentioned that they could swim during the week after school when the pool is closed and at other times when nobody else could. He heard that and was basically sold.

So we had our first practices this week and both boys have done great. They will just be on the practice squad since we're going away for a month, but they get lots of individual instruction. Jamie was great and motored across the length of the pool in very creditable fashion. As he was watching the two other kids in his little group go, he became aware he would be expected to do a racing dive, which he's never done. He's never really dived before. Fearless as ever though, when his turn came he pitched himself headfirst towards the water, entering with arms, legs, elbows and knees going in about 7 different directions. It was really not pretty, but it worked, give him credit. For his part Connor has been unusually enthusiastic. He was the first one in the water yesterday and every time they ask who wants to go first he raises his and and says "Meeee!!!"

It rained over the weekend so the water has been very cold and yesterday was unusually overcast and cool, and windy so everybody was struggling a little. Connor was brave and made it through the practice but was distressed by the cold afterwards and clearly felt I wasn't doing enough about it, even though I changed him into dry clothes and wrapped him up in a cozy, big towel. On the way home he said he felt warmer, but not because of the clothes or the towel. "Not because of anything I've done then?" I confirmed. "Right," he said, "because of my bunny fur. I'm a bunny."

Wow, that worked

OK, so if anybody wants to make Connor happy, mention the Wild Kratts. As noted below, this is his favorite show and it's about animals. It has the power to overcome all obstacles to happiness, as we have just seen in the past 3 hours.

At about 5:30 this morning Connor woke up screaming in terror from a nightmare. I never quite got what it was, but he was really inconsolable. Said he couldn't stop thinking about and was just crying and crying. Sarah finally managed to get him out of his bed so Jamie could go back to sleep and brought him into our bed. I took him to the bathroom but he was still freaking out, so searching I said, "Connor, what's your favorite Wild Kratts episode? Mine is the one about cheetahs." He instantly, and I mean instantly, stopped crying and said his favorite one was the one about the baby cheetah that disguises itself as a skunk (never mind that it's the badger that does that!). He then proceeded to launch into long narrative about animal "mimicry," citing all kinds of examples. When I left to sleep on the couch, he was still jabbering away. Finally, Sarah suggested perhaps it was time to be quiet and go back to sleep and he said, "But can I whisper the song?" Soon enough he was snoring away and Sarah kind of wished he was back to whispering.

So this morning, perhaps fearing the mood of Connor on short sleep she put a Wild Kratts on while they ate breakfast and the bunny was positively ebullient. It can even overcome the morning grumpies! For his part, Jamie always plays the older brother role of seeming to disdain Wild Kratts, but when it's on he's completely into it.

TNT!

So when I was driving the boys to get them Chik-Fil-A that day when Jamie spotted the tough-looking toddler in the tank-top, the AC/DC song "TNT" came on the radio. It caught the boys' attention for very different reasons, which are at some level indicative of their personalities I think to say nothing of their response to music. As soon as the chorus started ("I'm TNT, I'm dynamite") Connor got very pleased and by the time it repeated he was happily singing along (interesting about AC/DC, incidentally, that there's something nursery rhyme-like in aspects of what they do). Jamie on the other hand, analyzed the lyrics and after hearing the second part of the chorus ("TNT/I'm a powerload, TNT/Watch me explode") asked in his serious way, "Is this song about someone in the air force?"

Reading/morning update

Harry Potter done. He's already on to the next Rick Riordan book. Interestingly, as much as I thought the reading was tied to a desire to see the movie, and I'm sure it was, this morning he did the same thing. Got up, got dressed for school, and came out and started reading on the couch. This appears to be a new era.

Connor meanwhile was a mess this morning, poor little guy. He seems to have a habit of falling on the blacktop at school and he really went down hard yesterday. Scraped both knees and his chin and his lip, which is all purple and puffy still. Plus he's got allergies raging so his stuffy and was coughing all night. Poor bunny. Given that mornings are pretty tough for him anyway, he really didn't deal too well today. As much as anything he seemed upset that everybody would be looking at his mouth and asking him what had happened. When I dropped them at school, he scowled and me and clapped a hand over his mouth and chin. That meant of course that I couldn't hear what he said, but I think it was something to the effect of "I'm keeping my hand here all day and there's nothing you can do about it Daddy!"

Race to the finish

So Jamie is on the last Harry Potter book now, which is some huge number of pages, 850 or something. It's been impressive watching him tear through it. We've been reading it to him at night but frankly that's 10-12 pages at a clip, the rest he;s doing by himself. It's this wonderful moment where he takes every spare minute he can to read. They're doing testing at school this week and he's been taking the book in with him and reading when he's finished with the sections of the test and has a few minutes. Then he gets home and plops down on the floor to read. Why the floor is preferable I don't know. He also favors reading with the lights off using a flashlight.

I think he's really into the story, in fact I'm sure of it, but there is something of a sense of doing it for the sake of doing it involved. Yesterday he plopped down in the driveway to read when we got home, because he said he was on page 598 and he had promised himself to get to 600 before he came home, so he wouldn't come in the door until he'd read two more pages. The other fact here is that he wants to see the movies. We've said that he can't see the movie of something until he's read the book, so that's been a big part of the motivation, there's no denying it.

Rock update

Well, you'll all be glad to know that we went to the ENT doctor yesterday for a follow-up and all is well with Connor's ear. The important thing for the happiness of the bunny, and all of us really, is that he was cleared for the pool on Saturday.

A funny little anecdote from school. Connor, like most 5-year-olds of course, has really selective hearing, which is to say it often doesn't work when he's being spoken to by anybody above the age of 12. So I was talking to his teacher yesterday who was saying at recess that she was saying his name over and over and couldn't get his attention. One of the other teachers said, "Oh it must be the rock in his ear" (the story is well-known now). No, his teacher said, they took that out 3 days ago. Ah, Connor.