Sick boy!

Poor Connor has had a tough week. He got sick last Tuesday, missed a couple of days, went back Friday and then had a good weekend, but got sent home again Monday with a fever. Inevitably, we took him to the doctor to be told what we could have guessed: it's a virus and we have to wait it out. Thanks for that. So we've been home with him all week. He has a couple of good hours when the Motrin is working but otherwise there's not much he can do. The only plus of this, and I feel guilty calling it that, is that he gets pretty snuggly.

Nights have been long too because the fever wakes him up but when the medicine kicks in he seems to get an energy jolt and has trouble getting back to sleep. Last night he was due to get medicine at about 10:45 so I was waiting up to give it to him. He emerged at 10:30, however, crying and hot with fever. Once I calmed him down enough to understand him, he told me he was scared because there were "bad guys in his room." All my assurances to the contrary were not enough to calm him down. Worse, he told me, was that Asajj Ventress (an evil character from The Clone Wars spinoff series from Star Wars) was trying to get his woobie! Evil indeed. I told him that was just a dream and he angrily said, "No! It was real!"

So he said he wanted to go into mommy's bed, which he's done a couple of times this week. This can be very cozy at times but often doesn't lead to a lot of sleep for mommy, so I offered to pull a mattress into their room and sleep there. This immediately calmed him down. It ended up being a long night, but it is awfully nice to know that one's presence alone is enough to chase away the bad guys and woobie-stealers.

Readers and writers

Things continue to go well with school for both boys. While we do have some concerns over the possibility that there is too much "teaching to the test" going on at Jamie's school, there is no question that he is learning a great deal and excelling. It shouldn't surprise us by now, but Jamie's reading has followed his usual pattern: just like he waited to walk until he could almost run, he took a long time to start reading but is now plowing ahead full steam. He's always been great with numbers but it's wonderful to see him working through some pretty advanced reading. It also makes sense in retrospect that he took a while to do it but now works really quickly, because while he can certainly sound some things out, he doesn't usually work that way. Rather he seems to read by word recognition and contextual interpretation. I think he's been storing this stuff up for the past 5 years and now has enough that he feels able to succeed. He does not like embarking on things with uncertain outcomes.

For his part Connor is proceeding by leaps and bounds this year and is now almost obsessively concerned with writing. He learns to write in cursive at school and can render his name wonderfully in cursive, but just lately almost anytime he is able to he grabs a pen and paper and starts writing block letters. Yesterday he was home sick from school and we spent an hour with him just writing each of our first names and last name (including Annabelle). Eventually I think he got tired and started to struggle a little. It's clearly an emotionally charged exercise because at some point he messed up the "b" in Annabelle, he just wailed "I can't do it!!!!!" and started bawling. In typical Connor fashion, too, sometimes he just decides to write an "E" as an "M". Don't be picky.

Species confusion

Connor continues to go blithely through life calling things by the wrong name. In one sense, we look back and laugh at the way he used to look at a zebra and say "Giraffe!" But in another sense it really hasn't changed. We went for a nature walk the other weekend when it finally got nice in Houston and some passed us on a trail and said they had seen an armadillo. The boys were pleased by this prospect, so we walked on a few yards to go see if we could find one. Connor then points to an ant in the trail and says, very loudly, "OH!! Is that an armadillo??!!!"

It's not that he doesn't get it I think, it's just that he wants to be able to call things what he wants them to be. In the same vein he wants distant events to be tomorrow. So it's been Christmas tomorrow for about a month now.

More Con-neologisms

It's been hard to decide when to actually post this because Connor just keeps busting out brilliant neologisms. But here's the latest batch:

Sarah took the boys to get a icy drink the other day. To be fair, these get called a few different things, from smoothie, to slurpee, to icee, so Connor has produced a couple of names for them, which also capture some important qualities: "Flushee," and "Slicee".

The other day Sarah was confused because he kept asking her about sea eagles. Eventually she figured out he meant "seagulls". Quite clever that one.

Last night he informed us that the dinosaurs "probably died when the earth was hit by a metium."

More Connor-speak

Another good neologism today, referring to a fruit: Africots.

No words

Connor views bedtime sort of like the curtain call to a daylong performance. He likes to make many return appearances. One of his excuses for coming back out is to claim that he has a question to ask, something he's learned from Jamie. As with his older brother, moreover, if he doesn't really have a question he'll just make one up. Thus, for instance, he likes to ask "Do you know that fire can beat lightning?" This then takes on a ritualistic aspect and is repeated on a nightly basis.

In a (futile) effort to forestall this I took for some time to asking him while I was in his room still whether he had anything to ask. I think he sensed this strategy required a new response, so one night he said, "Yes. My question has no words." And then he stared significantly at me for a few seconds and said, "There. That's it." I was taken aback at first but now we do this most nights. I stare back at him and say "That's the answer."

Connor-sick

The last couple of weeks things have gotten pretty good with the boys' relationship. For a long time we have felt that the more the played together, the more they fought. Lately however, that's changed. Perhaps it's because they argue more or less continuously and so couldn't do it any more, but the fighting does seem to have leveled off, even as they have been playing more and better.

Jamie seems to finally see Connor as a potential partner in fun, and, while he is still pretty hard on the little guy, he is capable of great kindness towards him as well. The other day we were at a cross-walk downtown and Jamie just walked up behind Connor and gave him a real hug. Whenever he does this, or asks Connor to play, Connor's face lights up like the sun.

Last weekend we were all planning to go out to a nature preserve on the Katy Prairie, but Jamie got a last-minute invitation from a boy at school he's becoming quite chummy with. Connor was very unhappy he couldn't go to the party, but he and I went off to the Prairie anyway. It's quite a drive out there, so Jamie and Sarah were home for a good while before Connor and I got back. After a couple hours, Jamie announced that he was "Connor-sick," as in "home-sick."