Mr. Nice guy

Jamie had a playdate yesterday at a friend from school's house. As soon as he got wind of this Connor asked if he was going too, and was quite disconsolate on hearing no. He doesn't seem to quite understand that he needs to make his own friends. Even when he does he would usually ditch them in a second for Jamie and his buddies.

So we dropped Jamie off and I asked Connor if he would like to do something special to make up for it. I would have gone pretty far with this, but he said excitedly "Go home and play war!" This is is favorite game lately and it made me realize how big a deal it is for Connor to have our undivided attention. I said sure but asked him to think a little bigger still and he came up with an Orange Icee.

On the way to the playdate I had been reminding Jamie to use good manners. When I pulled into the parking spot with Connor later, he said, pretty much out of nowhere, "I'm sure Jamie will use good manners." Yes, I said, because he's such a nice person. "He's nice to everybody except me," Connor said, matter-of-factly. I couldn't really deny the truth of it, but I said sometimes he's nice to you. Connor said, "Yeah. When he teaches me how to draw machine guns." That had been the morning activity. Awww!

Swish

Jamie had another basketball game today and things went considerably better. They still lost but it was a good game, I think 26-14 in the end. Jamie was a tireless defender and worked really hard. Yet again, his determination to pass and to adhere to the rules resulted in some turnovers, when he got stuck holding the ball and try to throw it over 10 kids to a teammate, but he also made a couple of really good passes AND knocked down his first basket. I was pretty excited and I think he was too, but, like Connect Four, he seems to know to act like you've been there before. So there was no celebration, he just put his head down and ran back on D. It was actually a pretty nice play, he ran down to the middle of the lane and a teammate hit him with a nice bounce pass and he picked it up and shot it straightaway. First of many no doubt...

(Dis)connect four

To be honest, Jamie has never been particularly effective at games of strategy. He tends to focus on the goal and go straight for it, without reacting what the other player may be doing, or thinking about playing defense. It would seem, however, that he has just decided to focus all his skills on Connect Four. After the main part of the camp day is over they get the kids together and give them some time to sit and play games together, and in this time Jamie has established a reputation as a master of Connect Four.

This skill seems to have both positive and negative results. On the one had he's clearly earned some cred around camp. Sarah came to pick up them up once and discovered Jamie playing with a crowd around watching. Just as she got there, he dropped a checker in to make not only a connect-four, but a connect five. As the crowd oooh-ed, Jamie saw Sarah and just walked away, completely casually, like he'd done it a million times.

On the other hand I think this skill can create tension. He has a particular friend who he's been going to camp with the past three weeks. The give them awards every week and last week the two of them got the "Thunder and Lightning" award for being such good buddies. Jamie was pleased with this because he remembers getting the "Best buddies" award with Will 2 summers ago (see earlier post). However, one day this week I came in to pick him up and found his friend sitting alone in front of an empty Connect Four game, looking rather put out. Jamie was playing outside. Didn't get details but it seems Connect Four got in between Thunder and Lightning, if only briefly.

I think we can all agree

With all the talk of presidential candidacy going around, I thought this was a timely journal entry from Jamie (February 23, 2011):

"If I were the president I would not let robbery hapen. I would fix the street. I would be a good president."

Easter reflections

Here's Jamie's journal entry from April 25, the day after the Easter holiday. I like this because it displays both Jamie's desire to obey rules and to negotiate their boundaries. In the interests of maintaining fairness and general happiness at the Easter egg hunt we had instituted an egg-limit for each child:

"My weekend was good. On Saterday I went hunting for eggs. I got 23 eggs. But I had to throw 8 away. Becaus you could only have 15. But the then it went to 18." Then erased was this: "and then you could get as much as you could."

Jamie's journal

Jamie had to keep a journal for school and it came home at the end of the year. There is some real genius in there so I'll be posting some examples here, spelling and grammar in tact (you will that both improved markedly over the year). Today's comes from November 10, 2010:
This will be a great day I. will hav fun at reses. I will not be coten by grels lunch will be yimy.

(He likes to run from the girls at recess.)

New sport

Well, Jamie had his first basketball game on Saturday. He went to a Y sports camp last summer and did some basketball, and we've played some dribbling around in the yard, but this was his first "organized" game of any sort. It was pretty chaotic and the rest of his team is pretty young, but Jamie actually did great and was one of the better players on the team. He almost had his first shot go in and made several good defensive plays including one where he knocked a pass away, then dove on the ground to get it and passed it to a teammate from the floor.

The problem was that we were playing against a team with Shaq and Kobe. Really, they were the Lakers and they had these two just absurdly good kids who were hitting pull-up jumpers off the dribble from 10 feet and everything else they tried too. Jamie was also hampered by two tendencies that we usually like a lot. One, from soccer he is a really good passer and almost always looks to pass to an open teammate. The problem here was that either his teammate could catch the ball or Shaq stepped in and took it away. He understands the traveling and double-dribble rules very well. These were not being enforced at all in the game, however. But Jamie, rules-follower that he is," sort of self-enforced them and this put him at a disadvantage. Still great start and he had a lot of fun. Pictures in uniform to follow.

Connor enjoyed the game by the way, he got snacks afterward.

A couple more

Two more Connorisms:
Wheat things (wheat thins)
And one of our faves, repeated often at the pool: "Can you unfrog my goggles?" That is to say "unfog."

More malapropisms

The boys speak beautifully. Connor has already picked up on Jamie's rapidly developing vocabulary. So it's fun to hear them get things wrong in pleasing ways. Most of them are Connor's. Jamie has actually cottoned on to this and likes to catch our eye as Connor does his thing and share a subtle laugh. Here are a few:

"Dark Vader" (makes a lot of sense).
"Out of balance," instead of out of bounds, in basketball (this is Jamie's).
"Babing suits"
"Diarrhea" for Diary, as in the books "Diarrhea of a Wimpy Kid" (really changes the meaning.

And our fave, by far, just coined by Connor last night:
For couscous: "goose-goose."