Time and space

As with many four-year-olds, Connor's sense of these things in very much still in development. About a month ago, Pops was coming through Houston on business and stopped by. Now, we had already told them some time ago that Nana and Pops were coming for Christmas. At this point, about September, Connor had said, eagerly, "Is Christmas TOMORROW???" This is about the conception of things he has, today and tomorrow. Anyway, when Pops walked through the door a couple of weeks later, Connor turned to us, his face bright with glee, and said "Is it Christmas???!!!"

Similarly, for all of his ongoing fascination with the continents his sense of place is a little vague too. There is constant confusion between the categories of North America, the United States, Texas, Houston and our neighborhood. Because he knows that we are in North America, for instance, he assumes that other things similarly favored by geography must be quite close. Thus, he other day he and Sarah were at a doctor's appointment. The office was up on the fifth floor so they had quite a good view of the tall buildings in the Medical Center, about a mile away. Connor became quite excited and proclaimed loudly, "Look!!! New York City!!!" If only it were true...

Sick again!

Well, as I write this I am home again with a sick Connor. Poor little guy has had a rough Fall so far. He got sick Saturday night, was out of school Monday, seemed better Tuesday but is back under the weather again today. Hopefully, he's getting it out of his system before the holidays.

We've had a nice day together, if somewhat disjointed. First, we spent some time sitting on the couch this morning watching a movie. He was on a Motrin high for a while and seemed almost like normal. He spent a good 20-30 minutes playing with Jamie's Star Wars legos. Suffice it to say Jamie keeps a very close eye on Connor while he's around so unimpeded access to the Legos is rare and Connor was clearly enjoying it. I played with him for a while and then went to do some other stuff. When I came back I remembered why Jamie is so watchful. Connor does rather like to destroy the Legos. This creates two related emotions for me: one is fear, because I know if I don't get them fixed we will all feel Jamie's wrath. Two is the dread of fixing them. Just getting them built is one thing but having to re-do the process is almost worse. So I quickly dealt with the carnage and encouraged Connor to be a little more gentle.

It was a nice morning so I thought we'd head to the zoo. Connor fell asleep within moments of getting in the car so I spent a good bit of time sitting in the parking lot listening to him snore. Then he woke up, looked around and asked imperiously "Why are we sitting here??!!!" He refused to believe that he had been asleep, so I let it drop and in we went. It was soon apparent however that the Motrin was wearing off because he was walking around hunched over and shivering a little. So I gave him some more medicine and he sat on my lap and snuggled up to me. This was lovely and lasted for about 10 minutes at which point the Motrin clearly kicked in because his head popped up suddenly and he said "I feel better. Can you stop snuggling me now?!" So we went to see birds, lions, and tigers. Connor's favorite part is seeing where they all live. Still likes to talk about the continents, our little fellow.

So we came home, had some lunch and played some games. Connor beat me in two out of three games in Sorry! He is really pretty good at it, but of course gets mad when he doesn't win or when something bad happens. Eventually it all came to a head when we were well into a game of Candyland. He got sent back to the beginning and almost the next turn I got the much-coveted ice cream float card, which puts you very near the end. This was too much to bear. He stomped off into the other room and it got quiet. I went to see him and he was lying on the couch with his woobie. It was expressed fairly clearly that my company was not desired so I went into the other room to do a little work. After I didn't hear anything for a few minutes I went to check and he was sound asleep, as he remains now an hour later. It's hard to be a sick bunny!!

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.