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.

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.

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!

When an expanded vocabulary is not a good thing

Like many parents, we fret over the television and its possible effects on the boys. As a result I was pleased a couple of days ago when Jamie asked me what "nullify" meant. I asked him where he'd heard it and he said on the Bakugan TV show. So I asked him how it had been used and we kind of reasoned out the meaning together. Well, there, I thought, he's picked up a good vocab word from the show, can't be all bad. A few minutes later, however, he asked, "Dad, can Connor ever be nullified?" Good feelings gone.

Goal of the year!

We continue to have Jamie in the low-impact, easy-going soccer group at school and he is more and more enthusiastic all the time. While no official score is kept Jamie is one of a number of kids who keeps a very careful tally of the goals. Interestingly, he seems equally happy when any member of his team scores a goal as when he does it himself. Sarah and I, and Connor for that matter, like to see Jamie do it though and the other week he had an amazing one. He has moved up an age group lately so in any given week, depending on the make-up of the sides, he may be playing with some older, bigger, faster kids. He doesn't complain though and really goes in and mixes it up. He has learned also to move out ahead of the pack and wait for the ball to come out. He was doing precisely this the other day and sure enough the ball popped out of the scrum and came directly to him. There was no one in front of him as he took off with the ball, but he was a good 50-60 feet away and so it wasn't long before a much older kid, at least 6 inches taller than him, had caught up and placed himself between Jamie and the goal. Jamie plowed bravely forward and the kid got tangled in his own feet and fell by the wayside. At this point the rest of his team, and the parents, were all yelling "Go! Go! Go!" (I may have been yelling a little too). But now yet another bigger kid had caught up and placed himself in Jamie's path. Jamie didn't pause however and kicked it directly through the kid's legs. The ball dribbled and dribbled and dribbled and edged over the goal line, just before another kid tried to sweep it away. There was much rejoicing.

It was was truly epic. The whole thing seemed to have transpired in slow motion. I really had to work hard to contain my enthusiasm. For his part Jamie was pleased but not overly exultant. I guess he's heard the phrase "Act like you've been there before." He was, however, very gratified when I decided the goal had earned him a trip to the donut store on the way home.

Talking to Connor

Though reticent at times Connor can be quite an engaging conversationalist. One has to be prepared however for some surprising turns, some creative logic and sometimes downright lying. Here's an example, taken from a recent conversation with Sarah:

Mommy: OK, kids, let's go, we're going to a fun place with animals.
Connor: (claps hands) Oh, thank you!! Is it the zoo?
Mommy: No, it's a feed store--they have seeds, plants, and bunnies, kittens, and puppies.
Connor: Oh, yay! I love kittens. Are there tigers?
Mommy: No.
Connor: Lions?
Mommy: No.
Connor: Oh. Daddy said there would be.
Connor: Are the kitties black and white?
Mommy: Yes.
Connor: Well if we're going, let's go!

Lollipop, lollipop!

We are a little obsessed with lollipops in the Costello house these days. This is in large part because of swimming. They are each rewarded at the end of their lesson with a Dum-dum lollipop and also bring some along as it can help to smooth any tiredness and crankiness after the lesson or in the car ride home. Things have escalated a bit, however, because Connor, as he often does, has charmed his teacher so he's now authorized to take 3 lollipops after the lesson. Jamie, of course, will not be shortchanged so inevitably he gets an extra one too.

Last week, however, Sarah noticed something odd. We keep the swim bag, which has a bunch of lollipops at all times, in the hall closet, near the boys room. When she opened the bag one day there were some empty wrappers and she hadn't remembered leaving any in there. She didn't think too much of it though and certainly wasn't thinking about it at all that night when, since I was at basketball, she was fighting the get-Connor-to-sleep battle on her own. For about an hour Connor had been talking, getting up to ask questions, go to the potty, do about anything but stay in bed. Jamie had long since fallen asleep, of course. Finally at about 9 it got quiet and Sarah went to look in on him. She was not completely surprised to find, however, that Connor was not in bed. She looked around the room and didn't see him. She next checked our room, which is logical because one night not too long ago, she came into find him there relaxed on the bed quietly watching TV. But this time no Connor. Now she started to get nervous and searched all over the house. She was about to really panic when she walked by the closet and saw a pair of blue eyes peeking out from between the coats. There was our little angel happily sucking away on a lollipop. This was almost exactly the point at which I got home, finding Sarah trying hard not to laugh but also having to get over having been really relieved to find him, and not a little bit exasperated. So I told Connor to go to bed which he dutifully did plopping the half-eaten Dum-dum directly into the swim bag, which now contained several more empty wrappers. Two mysteries solved.

It's all just a sign of how different from each other the boys are. Jamie could never be that sneaky. In the first place, he wouldn't be interested in getting out of bed if it didn't involve us. Secondly, he could just never sustain it for that long. He's such a good citizen, he'd come clean after a minute. Connor, on the other hand, would have kept this going precisely as long as he'd wanted to, then come out only to ask us to put his blanket over him.