Awards days

At the end of the year each grade has a little ceremony to reward the kids' accomplishments over the year so we've been enjoying that this week with the boys. When I say "we" I mean Sarah and I, because the boys are displeased. Not so much at the ceremony itself. Connor's, in fact, included a little song and dance routine, which he was quite diligent in preparing for and enthusiastic about performing. Jamie would never have been so willing.

No, it was the clothes that upset them. See, kids dress up for this, and our boys do not much like dressing up. Their reasons for being upset are indicative I think though. Connor, who, for the record,  looked unbelievably adorable (and one of the parents in the classed named him "best-dressed" of the group, so it's not just us), the concern was that he looked silly. All our attempts to reassure him that everybody else would be dressed up did no good and he threw a real fit Tuesday morning that only abated, but by no means finished, when I finally got them out of the car at school. Jamie, to his credit, really tried to be helpful and encourage Connor that morning.

Well, today it was Jamie's turn and one might have hoped that knowing it was coming he might have dealt a little better. But no. For him, it was a discomfort thing. He found the sleeves of his long-sleeve shirt to be distracting uncomfortable and he lamented being in jeans when it is so hot (I confess I'm sympathetic there). So he just scowled and grumbled the whole morning. About the only thing I could hear well was "Next time, I'm not going to encourage Connor!" 

For the record I would point out that a) Jamie also looked really good and b) there were plenty of kids there wearing SUITS so they ought to be grateful. Maybe next year we'll send them in white-tie since they're going to be unhappy anyway!

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 bunny 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.

It's morning!

And it stinks. That's pretty much the feeling around the Costello house these days. The boys are definitely ready for school to be done. Even Jamie routinely sleeps past 7 these days and is generally in a real grump before school. Mondays and Tuesdays are the worst. Connor will just keep sleeping until the point when we have to absolutely get him to get ready for school. Even when he's tired if you gently pat Jamie on teh shoulder he'll wake up and get out of bed. Connor will just sigh and roll over. So you've got to get more assertive and that just annoys him, so eventually he'll get up, but usually with a few choice comments to register his displeasure.

A couple of weeks ago, things kind of came to a head with this. I did the honors for two or three days in a row and got rewarded with a very angry bunny. He wouldn't even talk to me, just giving me this scowl (a version of his old angry dinosar look) as he trudged off for breakfast. Later as he complained about having to put shoes on (cruelty!), Sarah asked him to please try and be a helper and not be so upset. At which point he burst out, "WELL, DADDY KEEPS WAKING ME UP WHEN I'M STILL TIRED!!!"

Fashion ideas

Jamie has a wonderfully quirky way of looking at the world and finds interesting material everywhere. Yesterday after school I took the boys to Chik-Fil-A. Now, for some time CFA has been a bit of a dirty word for the boys because they understand it as the alternative to McDonald's that their annoying parents try to push on them. But lately, both of the boys have had to admit that they don't really like McDonald's very much and there hasn't been a Happy Meal theme that's excited them much in a while. Then suddenly last week Jamie said that he was desperate to have a Chik-Fil-A "hamburger,"by which he means chicken sandwich. Seems they sell them in the school store after school and on his way to magnet he smells them.

So we went and Jamie indeed scarfed down his "hamburger" enthusiastically. Connor also got one and did reasonably well after inspecting it closely for any signs of residue from the pickles that had so cruelly been placed on it.

As we're sitting there eating a toddler went by in a white tank-top. Jamie giggled and said, "That's a good idea. People should always put babies in those basketball shirts because they have chubby arms and it makes them look tough." What a good parent he will be someday.

Cheetah speed!

Connor's favorite show these days is called "Wild Kratts." It's an animal show, which features different kinds of animals every week with different skills. Connor takes it very seriously. He likes to have us listen to him sing along with the opening song. He's not very good at it, and basically just speaks along with it about a half-second behind, but he gets really into the line "Cheetah speed and lizard glide!" He repeats this a lot these days and it gets on Jamie's nerves inevitably. But he also really learns a lot about the animals and likes to bust out his knowledge, speaking of different "habitats" (this is sort of his new favorite word) and also adopting the persona. Thus, when he hops far he is a kangaroo and when he jumps high in the air he is a caracal. Just when you think he's really got it all down though, he begins talking about the red kangeroos of Africa. Sarah tried to correct him about this once. Once.

What is wrong with our children?

Well, the Costellos really had a banner week recently. First there was the Rock incident, about which most have probably heard. To recap, one day some time ago Connor informed us that he had a rock in his ear. He did seem concerned at all about it, and I'm embarrassed to say that because Connor has something of a reputation for, let's say creativity with respect to facts, we just didn't pay much attention. So 2 weeks ago he was feeling under the weather. He complained of headaches, and knowing that he has been prone to ear infections we took him to the doc who informed us that there was no infection, but something big in one of his ears. I wasn't even thinking about him mentioning the rock. So while the doc is poking around in there he jokingly asked Connor if he had been putting rocks in his ears. Connor suddenly got a very guilty look on his face and stammered, "uhhh....I...don't remember." The doctor's eyebrows raised and then I remembered. Once the doctor left the room, Connor told me "I don't put them in far." This was as close to a confession as he's come. He has still never admitted to putting this particular rock in his ear.

Efforts failed in getting it out and Connor was pretty distressed about them. So we took him to an ENT who after a pretty brief go of it when three of us tried to restrain Connor said he's have to be put under at the hospital. Connor wasn't concerned about this, mainly because I could promise him it wouldn't hurt. I told him it would be so easy that he might even take a nap while they did it and he grasped on to that.

So Sarah took him off to the hospital early Thursday morning, a lot more nervous than he was. After the inevitable wait they got him and started prepping everything. Sarah let him play Angry Birds, so he wasn't the slightest bit concerned with what was going on around him. They gave a little "cocktail" which made him loopy quickly and took him off. After 10 minutes he was in recovery, with his moose pillow pet, which was much admired by the nurses. They warned Sarah that he might come out of it pretty quickly. The nurse left for a minute with him asleep, and almost immediately up he was and ANGRY about the hospital gown. So Sarah dressed him and by the time the nurse came back he was up, dressed and ready to roll. A little drama ensued when it turned out woobie had been left in the room where the procedure had been done, but that recovered they left in good order and Connor was very much himself within an hour so.

We had a series of talks about not putting any more rocks in his ears. I thought I was getting through but when I asked him if he was going to do it again, he said, "No. But I might forget." However, because of the procedure he couldn't get any water on it, which meant he couldn't go in the pool when it opened this weekend. He handled this pretty well until the actual day of the pool. Sarah had to walk Jamie over because I was at Little League. As soon as he saw the pool, which was already in full chaos/fun mode he just started bawling and kept going for about 20 minutes. So I think the message about putting things in your ears has finally gotten through.

Lost in all of this was a detail from Jamie's school. Now Jamie seriously toes the line at school. Since starting there his weekly conduct report has been a boring series of "Excellents", week in week out. Thus, the "Satisfactory" for the week caught our attention. Then this explanation from his teacher: "Jamie ate an ant at recess. He said he's done it before. I gave him some water." Jamie was cagy on this and refused to explain or say much of anything, but he looked slightly pleased with himself. Seemingly he's done with that too.