Friday, April 30, 2010

Of girls and magma

Perhaps one of our biggest regrets in removing Jamie from his current school is that there is a group of adorable little girls who seem totally smitten with him. We were at a birthday party at one of these bouncy-castle places a couple of weeks ago and one of the girls was there and spent the entire 2 hours chasing him and, when she caught him, tackling him. At first, he was happy to see her and they had a good time. Eventually though I think he began developing some personal space issues and started to run away. Whenever he gave her the slip, amidst the din and rancor of 30 bouncing kids you could hear "Jaaaaamiiiieeeee?!!!!" ringing out and the chase would be on.

Of course we always want him to be nicer to the girls too. Recently Sarah took the boys to a playground not too far from school and yet another adorable, slightly older girl from school was there. She is, in fact, the best friend of Jamie's best friend's older sister. We had always had the sense the they treated the boys with disdain, and probably much of the time they do, but in this case her face absolutely lit up when she saw Jamie. They circled each other for a bit, but when Jamie sat down to do some digging she came over with a big smile and said "Hi Jamie!!!!!" Sarah was fascinated, but Jamie only gruffly responded. She asked what he was doing and he said, without looking up, "Digging for magma." No offer of letting her help was made. Sarah wanted to tell him to stop digging and be nice, but at this point, Connor, perhaps sensing an opportunity, happily marched up and introduced himself. "Are you Jamie's brother?" she asked with another big smile and got a much more enthusiastic response from little C.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

A sad state of affairs

Jamie, as many of you know, is very into playing with Star Wars legos. He sets up elaborate battles in which, happily, good seems to triumph inevitably over evil. They are fairly fragile, however, as can be his psyche, so when they break it is a bit traumatic. Some of these are fairly elaborate constructions that are beyond Jamie's ability to put together at this stage. (Honestly, they're almost beyond our ability.) Over time we have built and rebuilt several ships only to see them disintegrate over time. There then ensues a period in which Jamie asks us to rebuild them and we stall. It's a little hard to gear up for this because it's a real undertaking and ultimately a futile one.

Jamie recently had a friend over who is also a big Star Wars legos fan (surprise!). The last time he was over he and Jamie had lamented the breakdown of the Republic Attack Shuttle, and as soon as he arrived he asked where it was. Jamie replied, a little wearily, "It's in my bed room. And I'm sorry to say it's in the same condition as before." They both sighed.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Sick boys!

Once again I must apologize, dear readers, for the delay between posts. Between Easter, allergies and various (minor) sicknesses the expected calm period has yet to be realized. Nonetheless I am in the last week of classes at Rice so I hope to be able to catch up on some of the various happenings.

After a very long healthy period the boys have both been under the weather of late. Poor Connor had a double ear infection a couple of weeks ago and then Jamie got a virus last week. It has been ages since he got sick so I think he was a little taken aback by the experience of feeling poorly and it made us realize how lucky we've been with him. The worst symptom was a very high fever for a couple of nights. I slept next to him on the futon and it was nice to be able to care for him though also made for a long couple of nights. The fever and the semi-sleepy state meant that he produced some rather strange comments as he was clearly hallucinating a little bit. He kept talking about being upside down, which then seemed to disconcert him. Happily, it took one day at home from school with Sarah, some TV and some video games to restore him to health. He refers to this day now as "the best day ever!".

Now Connor seems to have the virus. It's different with him because the main result is that he wakes up and wants to get out of bed and play. Wants us out of bed too. So we had a bit of a time getting him back to sleep at about 4 last night. It gets hard to comfort him too because if he doesn't get what he wants he gets mad at us and turns away when we come near. Finally, we turned a desk light on in their room. Sarah had positioned it on the floor pointed down so it wouldn't be too bright. Apparently that's not a problem because when he finally fell asleep he was lying with his face on the edge of the bed looking directly at the light, about a foot away. Whatever works!