Attack bunny

As you may know Jamie recently earned his orange belt in tae kwan do. We have been so pleased by Jamie's enthusiasm for this. He really seems to enjoy it, loves the notions of rewards and ranks with the various belts and stripes and seems genuinely empowered by it, at least to judge by the variety of stern kicks that are delivered to the recycling bin on his way in and out of the house.

These are some pictures from the orange belt testing, which we attended. Really, it was quite impressive. Jamie has clearly learned a variety of fairly complex combinations of moves. We are also really pleased with the gentle version of tough love being practiced there and the focus on respect and attention. For his part, Connor is ready to start tae kwan do himself when he gets to Parker next year. While we were watching all the kids do their moves Connor was over on the side kicking and punching away. It was actually fairly tight in there so the spectators had to be pretty close to some of the participants, especially as the latter sat and waited their turn. Connor, being small, had gone to sit at the very front so he could see, but it also meant that he was partially out of our vision as we were in back. There was a very large teenage boy with a green belt testing and sitting right next to Connor while he waited. Well, someone else we knew there later told us that while the boy was sitting there next to him Connor had been practicing his kicks and punches on this kid who was probably literally four times larger. Apparently, the boy may have thought it was part of the test for the red belt because he just sat there stoically absorbing the blows. Perhaps it helped motivate him to break the wooden plank with a rear kick later.

Anyway, on the way home we asked Connor about it, and he happily proclaimed, "Yeah!! I totally crushed him!!" You have been warned.

Life as Connor

In one sense it can be pretty tough. Pretty much whatever he does, he's got Jamie there to deal with and Jamie is hard on Connor, there's no way around it. Really doesn't give him a break about anything. Jamie got to make his 4-year-old the world is the way I say it is because I say it is proclamations free and clear, we just nodded obediently. But when Connor says anything, "17 + 15 =12" for instance, or some metaphysical equivalent of it, he has Jamie to say, "Noooo, Connoooo, it's 32." Connor tends to stick to his guns and a fight ensues.

On the other hand, Connor sometimes leads a charmed existence. We think he's irresistibly cute, of course, but we have concrete evidence that other people do as well. He just gets things. A couple of weeks ago we were at the pool and we went over to the sort of little kids area, where off at one side there was a party. Connor had barely uttered the inevitable "I'm hungry" when a darling little 3-year-old girl, the birthday girl it turns out, sidled up and said in her squeaky voice to him, "Do you want some chocolate cake?" Off they went together. Winning.

Meanwhile the other parents at baseball, and even the older sisters of the players, have discovered that you can make Connor happy by giving him things. This happens most often when he's sad about something, so I will look over from the field and see that he has scored cookies or donuts or drinks or all of the above. He has made great buddies with the younger sibling of one of the kids on Jamie's teams and before we even realized it the other day he had gone off with the parents to the snack shack and been given all manner of things.

So Jamie may give him a hard time but life as Connor can be pretty sweet.

Fighting bunny

Connor is a very sweet gentle little boy. This is of course part of why we call him bunny. These days when we talk about bunnies he asks whether we mean him or the animal. Sarah said "I love you bunny" the other day and he asked this. When she said she meant him, he asked if she loved the animal bunnies as much as him. When she said no, he suggested that she should. Perhaps, she said, but I don't. He seemed partially pleased by this, while not conceding the fundamental principle.

On the other hand, he can be quite fierce and feisty for a bunny. Sarah was also toalking with him recently about what people do when they grow up. She said that people often do something they're very good at, but that they also need to practice. To Sarah's surprise Connor proclaimed, "When I grow up I want to be a soldier, because I'm very good at fighting!"

Size of the fight in the dog

I'm pasting below a quote from an email Jamie's baseball coach sent to me. I think it's pretty spot-on about his performance this Spring and his personality generally:

"Jimmy is a case study in heart and in intelligence...He has no experience, he knows no one, he is on the smallish side...Yet has improved by leaps and bounds...why? Because he cares. The batting machine is scary as hell, other stronger kids throwing the ball to him at 100 mph...etc. and what does he do he grinds for every little bit of territory he can get, builds on it, never really complains...he has gotten stronger and every one has noticed..great kid"

This came in the wake of an absolutely heart-stopping game last night. Your hometown Aggies, through a bewildering combination of bad luck, loss of attention and general bumbling found themselves entering the bottom of the 6th (last inning) down 9-5. Now the rule here is that you can only score 5 runs in an inning so we knew we could just do it. The first two kids got on and the third hit a ground-ball that began one of those incredible sequences by which a series of over-throws led to him coming all the way around to score, so suddenly it's 9-8 and no outs. The next kid gets on, thanks to a bobble, and gets moved to second on a ground out. So here comes Jamie. Very quickly gets to two strikes. You can tell he knew exactly what was going on and it was very very quiet, which with 24 7-8 year-old boys and their enthusiastic parents is highly unusual. On the third pitch the kid on second stole third. Jamie digs in...and cracks the next pitch to third, bringing home the tying run and putting himself on first. He then stole second and third and I would love to bring this story home (as it were) by saying Jamie got driven in for the winning run but the next two struck out so we ended with a hard-fought tie. But Jamie was grinning from ear to ear at first base after his big hit so that's good enough!

The Dead Chicken

(guest post by mommy)
Connor is, to quote his dear grandmother, a compulsive liar. I was driving him home from school today and asking questions about his day. Which apparently wasn't good; everyone was mad at him all day long. I asked him if he had a chance to feed the chickens. He had described this activity to me earlier in the week, telling me how he feeds them mud and it's disgusting. And he never never wanted to do it again. But now he's used to it so he'll do it again.

But today, he says, he did not feed the chickens, because a meteorite hit a plane then hit a chicken. And the chicken is dead. I burst out laughing, at which he reprimanded me, telling me that it's serious, the chicken is really dead. But don't worry, because the other class has chickens too, and in a couple of days, the chickens that were with the dead chicken will forget about it, and they'll put in a chicken from the other class. So the chickens won't be sad.

I didn't ask anymore questions about his day. I figured that was probably the big event.