Significant day

Dale's birthday was yesterday, and when his mom asked him how it felt to be 40, he said, "It feels like I got an iPhone!"  Which he did.  Happy birthday honey!  (We're celebrating with a joint party in January.)

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

I volunteered in Jordan's classroom today.  The lesson was about nouns.  After reciting that a noun is a "person, place, or thing," they were talking about, for example, a book.  Jordan's friend Theo said:  "Is a book a noun, or is the word book a noun?"  Wow.

Also overheard:  "But everything is a thing."  Well, yes, when you put it that way.

Manners

We got a call from the principal of Wedgwood Elementary today because Jordan apparently went on a kissing spree.  A friend said, "That's the best kind of spree," and I agree that it's better than a killing spree, and possibly better than a shopping spree, though the latter probably doesn't motivate the principal to call home.  Dale took the call, and he thinks the principal may have actually said it was a "kissing rampage."  He struggled not to giggle while lecturing Jordan on appropriate behavior.  Jordan claimed that the other kids were encouraging him.

Jordan is very Hanukkah-identified this year.  In a store the other day, Aaron was exclaiming about a rack of chocolate Santas, and Jordan shooed him away saying, "No, Aaron, we don't celebrate Christmas."  This is fine with me, but last night it went a little far:  we pulled into a parking lot that was decorated for the holidays, and Jordan said, "Boo Christmas!"  I explained to Jordan that it was very bad manners to say "boo" to someone else's holiday, and how sad would it be if someone said "Boo Hanukkah"?  (Though "Boo Halloween" might be fine.)  (And I have relatives that might gladly say "Boo Christmas" along with him.)

Hanukkah, part I

We have been having a bang-up Hanukkah so far!  The first night, we celebrated with just the four of us, with the special food being donuts.  You knew donuts were traditional for Hanukkah, right?  Anything fried.  In Israel, they especially go for warm jelly donuts (sufganiyot).  We each had our favorite from Top Pot Donuts right down the street.  Then, we spent entirely too long assembling .... drum roll please .... bunk beds!

The boys are thrilled.   The first time Jordan climbed up to the top bunk, he said, "It's like the view from the Space Needle!"  He had spent a few days in advance selling Aaron on the advantages of the bottom bunk.  This is working out fine; the bottom is more appropriate for Aaron anyway, and down there you can make a blanket fort.  It's such an improvement in their room - neater, more floor space, and less trampoline action.

The second night, we celebrated with a work friend of mine from North Dakota.  There is not a lot of Hanukkah in North Dakota, I gather, nor in Iowa where he used to live, and he really enjoyed hearing Jordan tell the Hanukkah story.  (I noticed with pleasure that our temple has taught Jordan that the eight-days-of-oil bit is the "story miracle," and the real miracle is the survival of the Jewish people and culture in the face of both assimilation pressure and a military threat.)  Our friend had also never had latkes before, and he loved them.  I make a good latke.

The third night we attended a fun Hanukkah party at the home of some Temple friends of ours.  Most everyone else was neighbors and school friends of theirs (and mostly not Jewish... this is Seattle, after all).  I was especially impressed by their caviar dish.  I didn't take a photo of it but it was just like this one.  When I complimented the hosts, they laughed that the caviar dish had been in some sense the whole inspiration for the party - they had to come up with some excuse to use it.

Tonight is the Temple Hanukkah party and it should be a lot of fun, with more latkes, a magician, games, singing, etc.  I spent this morning in the Temple kitchen with a dozen other grownups and another dozen seventh graders, preparing 500 latkes for the big event.  It was a great time!

All this and we still have four nights to go!

Last year, we did both Hanukkah and Christmas, because Christmas was important to Dale growing up.  I was fine with that.  Upon reflection, however, we decided that both holidays was just too much.  So this year, we explained to Jordan that Hanukkah is our holiday and Christmas is other people's holiday.  He showed no signs of trauma.  (We don't think there's much need to prep Aaron; he is more in the moment.)  To distract from the hoopla associated with December 25, we have arranged to fly to San Francisco on that day.  My family is very low on hoopla.  Dad said something like, "We don't even have any hoop here, much less la."

Good fences

The fence on the east side of our backyard was in serious need of repair.  There's no clarity about whose fence it is.  We were more than willing to fix it, but hadn't gotten around to it yet.  Then we found that our neighbor had fixed it.  How very nice!  Jordan wrote him a thank-you card.

True enough

Driving home from somewhere the other day, Aaron was nattering away in the back seat as he often does.

A: Daddy don't drive on the sidewalk.  That would be very bad.  Just drive on the road.  Stay on the straight road.  Because if you drive on the sidewalk you might bump into somebody or break our car.  So just stay on the road.  The road is for cars.  The sidewalk is not for cars.  So don't drive up on the sidewalk.  You could hit a tree or a person or something like that.  Just stay on the road.  [..... ad infinitum.  After a while, I admit I tuned him out and restarted a conversation with Dale:]
R: Did you hear Jessica saying how their school doesn't have much of a playground?  [or something]
A: And now I am saying things that are boring to you guys.

We have fun wherever we go

Explaining to Jordan how we will spend the day today:

R: This morning you have religious school, and then this evening there is a Hanukkah party at Temple.
J: That means I get to go to Temple twice today.
R: True!  Good thing it's fun.  Good thing it's not ... Hm.
J: What?
R: I was trying to think of somewhere that we go that is no fun at all, so that I could say, "Good thing it's not (blank)."  But I can't think of anywhere that we go that is no fun at all.
J: I know!
R: What?
J: A coffee shop that had only coffee.  That would be no fun at all for me.

Since we've never been forced to go to such a terrible coffee shop, it seems like we must have a pretty good life.

Three Thanksgivings

Three is a lot of Thanksgivings but we enjoyed all of them, especially since we had a six-and-a-half day weekend in which to entertain ourselves.  The first Thanskgiving, on Thursday, was at Danny's sister Jill's house.  I brought mashed potatoes and acorn squash vinaigrette, and made the gravy when the time came.  There were a a couple people there I didn't know, and in introducing ourselves, we found we were relatives:  one that I spoke to was my husband's sister's husband's sister's husband's daughter from his first marriage.  It reminded me of Spaceballs.  Dinner was lovely and so was the after-dinner music, provided by the houseful of accomplished folk musicians in attendance, including Danny on recorder, Kari on mountain dulcimer, and Aaron on drums.  Jill's husband Tony is a fine singer and songwriter; among other things, he adapted (and copyrighted) "Michael Row The Boat Ashore," and taught it to Pete Seeger.

Second Thanksgiving was at my friend Sam's house, with her family and several other colleagues, along with some of her relatives and a collection of friends of hers with young kids.  I contributed three kinds of cranberry sauce.  Jordan was the oldest child there by a couple of years and thus the ringleader, a role he enjoys.  We enjoyed our children's independence... all these other parents were there with their toddlers and infants, juggling plates and spilled drinks, and there we were lounging around, carrying on sustained conversations and occasionally offering to help.

Third Thanksgiving was with friends from Aaron's school, a pair of families we enjoy a lot.  We all have kids who are very well matched in age and temperament, and the adults like each other too, so it's always fun to get together.  I brought three kinds of pies:  a pumpkin, an apple galette, and a cranberry-almond-caramel tart.  Dinner was delicious and even more relaxed than at Sam's; we have graduated to actually having a kid table, as you can see, and at some point the kids run off on their own, leaving us to linger over our wine.  Wow!

I am amazed, and so grateful, that we have such a wealth of family and friends here.  What a great place to live.

Very cold and snowy

We got 6.5 inches of snow on Monday.  I measured it very directly by putting a ruler into the deep snow on our patio table. Startling! That's a lot more than they had downtown, and even Kari and Danny, over in Sammamish, only got half what we got.  We are quite socked in, not only because there's just a lot of snow and ice on the ground, but also because we live at the top of a steep hill.  Here are some folks in the Capitol Hill neighborhood last night:




I used this video to show the boys why we weren't driving to the zoo today.  They are home, of course; school closed at lunchtime Monday and will not reopen until after Thanksgiving weekend.  It's awesome to have a big backyard at a time like this, so that you can play in the snow and then go inside as soon as you get cold.

However, if you are willing to take a walk to Dahl Field, you get to some awesome sledding spots.  Did I say walk?

On the way, you pass groups of hardy teenagers sledding straight down the steep streets.  One guy was actually snowboarding and had built himself a little jump out of snow; we saw him jump it and them blam, on his belly on the sidewalk.  Ouch.  He seemed fine.  Another guy was riding what appeared to be a skateboard, but with a single short ski instead of wheels.  Others piled onto garbage can lids or what have you and went down the icy hill in piles, crashing into the bushes at the bottom.

The family-friendly zone is the big, not-too-steep sledding hill that curves out into a giant flat snowfield.  Dale took the boys there yesterday and they looooved it.  Today, it was pretty darned cold and they didn't last long.  It's supposed to get into the single digits tonight.

Finally, here's a picture of the boys on the way to school on Monday morning, when there was still school.  The trike did fine in the minimal snow we had then.

Parent-teacher conference

We managed to actually attend our parent-teacher conference for Jordan today, before all school-related activities closed down from the snow.  It was great!  Miss Wodrich was a keen observer of Jordan's strengths and was optimistic and constructive about the areas in which he has more room for improvement.  She said she really enjoys having Jordan in class, that he's funny, and that in particular, he asks fantastic questions during science discussions.  She can always count on him to take it to the next level, apparently.  Is that not a terrific skill to have?  We love that.

He is also strong in math, which we knew.  (Yesterday he figured out what 20 + 11 is; he said, "Mommy I know that 20 plus 10 is 30, and then eleven is one more than ten so I figured it must be 31 because that's one more than 30.")  And he is well integrated socially.  The areas where he has more work to do are reading and writing.  These are both fine, above the state average for his grade, but somewhat behind the targets for the advanced class he's in.  Miss Wodrich said that he is very good at sounding out unfamiliar words, and he has a good attitude.  (I say Miss Wodrich has a good attitude, too!  I appreciate that she knows what he is good at and is building on that.)  We can help by setting up a more structured routine for him to read to us regularly at home (right now, this just happens if we're all in the mood).  Supposedly the reading will help with his writing, too.  He's enthusiastic about writing (I have yet to post the pictures of the book he authored and illustrated last week!).  Now we want to help him step it up in terms of consistently putting spaces between words, using spelling that we can understand better, writing letters forwards, and so on.

Three cheers for first grade!

Snow

There was snow in the forecast, but I wasn't expecting this much!  Schools are closing at 12:35.  I am working at home this morning, and I'll get the kids; Dale will arrive soon after that, and I'll spend the afternoon at a coffee shop.  Within walking distance.

Looking back at our adventures two years ago makes me grateful to be in our snug home.  I wish I had more groceries, but we'll make do.

We love Robert!

We have a new kid-sitter, and he's quite a score:  our rabbis' thirteen-year-old son.  (We have a husband-and-wife team of rabbis, in case you thought the apostrophe was misplaced.)  His name is Robert, he looks like Harry Potter, he has lovely manners, and he is a huge hit with the kids.  He is not an experienced babysitter, but I spotted him doing a nice job looking after the kids at a temple event, and his parents gave us the go-ahead to get him started.  The first time he played with Jordan and Aaron he brought his gigantic cartridge-loaded nerf guns.  This time, he brought this amazing remote-controlled toy helicopter.  They are inclined to idolize a friendly teenage boy under any circumstances, but with these props, he's a superhero.  His mother was a little anxious as to whether we would be okay with the guns, but for pete's sake what's the point of having a boy babysitter if you don't let it rip with the cartoon violence?  And Robert is really great with the kids.  Tonight we left them alone for the first time and went out to coffee while he put them to bed.  Okay, they duped him into reading the longest book we own and leaving the aquarium light on and the door wide open...  he's a rookie.  But no harm done.  And we get a date night every other Sunday.  Whoopee!

Blog changes on the way

After a scare in which we suddenly wondered where all those old Kodak Gallery photo albums were that we used to send out, and couldn't find them online (but then we did), we decided that as fun as cloud computing is, we need to be committing our family archives to paper.  The blog too.  This is easy and is apparently achieved by "slurping."  Once that's done, some long-overdue changes are going to be implemented... for example, we're not going to be "changing Washingtons" anymore, and thank goodness for that.  So heads up.

In experimenting with updates to the title, styles, etc, I accidentally made changes I didn't mean to make yet, so if something looks a little off that's why.

Movies we'll never see

"Batman Reads."

"The Penguin Goes To The Zoo."

I have too much to remember

Another creative use for Wikki Stix:

P is for Prescription
T is for Tires
R is for Registration.

Halloween

We had an awesome Halloween!  Jordan was a very committed Batman, and zoomed ahead at every opportunity, perhaps in order to properly show off his cape.

Aaron, who if you remember last year was terrified of all masks and costumes, declared this year that he is a Big Kid Now and the costumes are only people inside and he would not be scared.  And indeed he had a blast.  The only scary things were the occasional fog machines, which had the same effect on him as geysers.

Sam was a penguin.  One person said "Hey, Batman and the Penguin," and I had to admit that would have been a great idea but in this case it was coincidence.  Sam was not a scary-villain kind of penguin; he flapped his little wings and said "Glub Glub" in a very unintimidating way.

We tried to make Phil into an armadillo.  (Armaphillo.)

The shield was more properly borne by Harry, a gladiator.

Here's the crew in various states of action.

And here's the post-trick-or-treating action.  We let them gorge, and then now that they're in bed I will hide the rest.  Last year they never asked about the remainder, and we put it in a box, and what do you know, it was what we gave away this year.  Dale tested for freshness and there was no discernible difference.

Nightmare at Beaver Lake

Danny got me to go with him to Nightmare at Beaver Lake, the most extravagantly extensive haunted house type of thing I've ever experienced or frankly heard of.  Some of it was in fact too scary for me.  How about that?  A lot of it is just outside in the woods around the lake, with scary things coming out of the shadows; cemetery ghosts, horses, undead children.  In addition they have built multiple and various frightening little shacks that contain serious scariness, like, one is a torture chamber thing with six awful little cells containing real people apparently in various states of dismemberment, and a psycho guy wandering through with an ax moaning, "They do not know the gift I give!  Without pain there is no love!" -- That was very scary.  Another had this really disturbing kitchen scene where a psycho housewife had chopped everyone up to cook them and was horrified by what she had done.


The whole thing is a major event, with hundreds of actors.  Everything is done by volunteers, mostly local teenagers - it started as a project to creatively engage young people in a charitable project. It's run by the Rotary Club, which funnels the proceeds to (other) community service projects.  The fact that it's just down the hill from Kari and Danny's house is a major stroke of luck for Danny; he loves campy horror of all kinds.  The night before last night, he went by himself.

Table mensches

At 5:30, I was shoring up the kids with a substantial snack of peanut butter, apples, raisins, and milk, because although we were hurrying off to a dinner event, the dinner itself was not going to be until after 7pm.  Danny called to ask if one of us adults wanted to go with him to the very scary "Nightmare at Beaver Lake" event (maybe tomorrow), and while I was in the other room chatting with him, Aaron scooped up his gob of peanut butter and smeared it all over his hands like a lotion.  I got back to the dining room to find him throwing handfuls of milk at Jordan with his peanut-butter-covered paws.  Both were laughing their heads off.  

I was furious and rushed and I could have killed them both, but I have been practicing my skills of describing the problem lately, so I said:

"There is peanut butter ALL OVER AARON'S HANDS!  And there is milk on the TABLE, the FLOOR, and maybe even the WALL!  ALL of that needs to be CLEANED UP!  And if any peanut butter gets on the furniture I am going to SCREAM!"

(My favorite parent gurus do not recommend that you pretend to be calm when you're not; on the contrary, better to express your anger than bottle it up, as long as you can do it without insult.  And I was pretty angry.)

I walked out of the room.  And what do you know:  Jordan and Aaron both instantly hopped up and started cleaning like crazy.  Jordan cleaned up every bit of mess in the dining room (the thrown milk, the smeared peanut butter); Aaron washed his hands, which was a big job, but one that he mostly succeeded at.  Okay, in getting himself up to the sink he got peanut butter on the floor, the stool, the faucet, and the soap bottle, but his effort was serious and genuine.  I was impressed.

The dinner event was a Shabbat dinner for new Temple members.  As the membership chair (don't even ask me how I got into this) I was a "table captain," aka "table mensch," responsible for helping new families enjoy themselves and get their questions answered if they had any.  Dale and I had a great time chatting with the other family at our table, but the biggest mensch was Jordan:  On being introduced to the only other kid at the table, an 8-year-old girl, he instantly changed seats to be next to her and engaged her in animated conversation about topics of mutual interest.  (Magic Treehouse and Silly Bandz, from what I gathered.)  His ease in making new friends is a real gift.

"Tests mean you lose."

Jordan does his homework in the morning and he's usually enthusiastic about it.  This morning, though:

Rachel: Hey, this would be a good time to practice your spelling words one last time before your test today.

Jordan:  I already had the spelling test a few days ago.

Rachel:  Right, that was last week.  You have another one this week, on these other words.  

Jordan (anxiety rising):  I don't want another test.  I already had one.

Rachel: I think you're going to have one every week, on different words every time.

Jordan: I don't want to have a test every week!  That's too much!

Rachel: You don't want to take a test?

Jordan: No!  (crying now, having to take off his glasses to wipe his eyes:) On a test you have to get everything right.  I want to just learn to read and stuff and not have to get everything right.

Rachel: You wish you didn't have to take so many tests and could just learn stuff.

Jordan:  Yes.  (still crying)  Tests mean you lose.  

Rachel: What do you mean?

Jordan: The principal reads the names of the people who got them all right, because they win.  

I think that last thing might be Jordan recalling last year's spelling bee.  I assured him that this was different, but I don't blame him if he doesn't believe me.  There are a staggering number of assessments that kids have to do starting in first grade, they are scored numerically, and six-year-olds are obsessed with winning and losing.  I, too, wish he could just "learn stuff" and not be tested on a daily basis, even as I understand the importance of accountability.  Jordan said he would not take the test today, would not do his math homework either, would not go to school, and if I took him to school anyway he would "get out."  Yowza!  Time to calm down.  I gave him some space.  

After a while he consented to get dressed if I would bring him his clothes, which I did, and he did.  He went back and picked out a different shirt.  I told him it is a lot of tests, this year, and that tests can make you worry.  And then he decided he did want to do his math homework, after all.  He was barely calm enough to do it.  I was struck by how true it is for all of us, that if we are overwhelmed, we can't think, and that it can help a lot when someone shows that they understand.  

On the way to school I suggested that in the kind of test Jordan takes, "winning" means beating your own score (there is typically a pretest).  But Jordan said, "For the Huskies it doesn't matter if you do better than last time, you have to beat the other team," and I certainly see where he's coming from.  I didn't try to make it a non-issue; competitiveness is something that adults struggle with all their lives.  Jordan said, "Mommy if I get 12 right and there are 15 questions, another way to say it is that I got 12 out of 15.  I like that way of saying it better."  I said I could see how that would help.

Pages saves the day

I did a double dropoff on Thursday, which is not the norm, and I guess there were just too many things to remember because I left Aaron's tricycle at Jordan's school.  Over the long weekend.  Outside.  And didn't realize it until today.  This morning I looked all over the school grounds and found nada.  So very sad!  We use that trike every day to get Aaron to school!

After kicking myself, I put together an eye-catching flyer and posted it at the spot I had left the trike.  Pages has such nifty templates that I made this flyer in the time it took to type the text and drag the photo:

A couple hours later, I got a call from a staff member who had found the trike tucked behind one of the portable classrooms.  Yahoo!

Props also to our sweet neighborhood, where a kid's tricycle can sit outside for a weekend and not get stolen.  Whew.

Plant food for thought

I spent two hours with Jordan's class this afternoon.  The first half-hour was taping a pocket into each of the 18 science notebooks, which, to me, is a pleasant thing to do while just observing what goes on in there.  Then it's school picture day, so there was half an hour of lining up and waiting around during which I helped monitor things, combed kids' hair, and learned everyone's name.  Then recess.  In the last 45 minutes I helped with the day's science activity, which was seed planting.  One table of four at a time came over to the planting station and:  

1. filled plastic cups with damp potting soil

2. poked two holes in the soil with a designated poking pencil, on opposite sides of the cup, at the side so that you would see the seed as it grew

3. put a seed in each hole

4. covered up each seed with dirt

5. circled the seed's location on the outside of the cup with a grease pencil

6. taped a seed to the outside of the cup, as a label

7. stuck a sticker on the cup corresponding to that table's color

8. watered the seeds with 15 sprays from a sprayer bottle.

I don't actually like doing this sort of thing with kids -- it's so hectic, with all the simultaneousness and motor coordination and sharing and the potential for spills and so on.  But it went fine -- first graders are pretty polite and coordinated -- and it was a fun way to get to know them all a little bit.  I am musing on what science is, or what science is perceived as being by teachers and kids.... is it mainly the "bench work" (the hands-on procedures)?  Because to me, the best part was the five-minute discussion they had beforehand, on the carpet, in which they said what they think seeds need to grow.  They said all the basic things (dirt, water, air, light), and then they started on the more interesting stuff.  One kid said "fertilizer," for example, and other kids wanted to talk about chicken poop and cow poop, which is in fertilizer.  Ms. Wodrich responded to all that in a friendly way (gently steering the talk away from poop), but it didn't get written on the board, so ... do seeds need fertilizer, or not?  What is fertilizer?  She did say something about the soil we would use being "potting soil, which has some fertilizer in it." I don't know what potting soil contains and I'm not so interested in that, but I'm super interested in how kids think plants work.  For example, I wonder if the kids are thinking about plant food.  Living things have to get their energy from somewhere; animals get it by eating; do plants "eat"?  (Aside from carnivorous plants, I mean.)  And if so what do they eat?  Now this is a marvelous, important question; this is a question of what makes a plant a plant.  After all, I could eat dirt (or fertilizer) and get something out of it.  But I can't eat sunshine.

Another thing I wonder about is whether kids might think you need fertilizer to "wake up" a seed into growing.  I didn't hear them talking about that, I just wondered about it later.  And what about poop - why does poop make good fertilizer?  That would be a fascinating topic, if you ask me, though possibly uncontrollable among first graders.

Later, I asked Jordan why he thought the teacher had written "light" and "air" and "soil" and "water" on the board but not "fertilizer," and Jordan said:  "Because it was already up there, Mommy.  The dirt is the fertilizer.  Or the fertilizer makes the dirt a little bit better, it gives it more nutrients, but pretty much the fertilizer is the dirt because in the forest the leaves fall down and decompose and they give their nutrients to the soil and that is the fertilizer and the dirt both."  This is a terrific answer as far as I'm concerned.  We also talked about what is "food" for a plant, and he said that both soil and sun are food, and maybe air too.  I am curious what other kids think.

Update from Aaron's class

Math strategies

The instructions on Jordan's math homework today were simply, "Number Stories.  Show your work."  The first problem read:  "Tucker had 12 silly bands.  His mom bought him a pack of 5.  Now how many silly bands does Tucker have?"  (Silly bands, in case you don't know, are rubber bands in the shapes of things, and they are the hot thing in elementary schools right now.)  Jordan thought, and did some silent counting on his fingers, and said, "Seventeen!"  I said, "Okay, now it says to show your work, so draw how you got that answer?"  He drew this:

and explained that he had counted up from 12, and had kept track of how many he counted up on his hand, until he was holding up 5 fingers on his hand and that was 17 in his counting.

This knocked me out.  I was expecting your basic picture of 12 silly bands, then 5 more silly bands, and counting the whole group to get 17.  This was much more interesting.  The next one read, "Hannah brought 20 cupcakes to school and 12 people ate one.  How many cupcakes did she have left over?"  For this, Jordan made a more typical 20 tally marks and then erased 12 of them, then counted the remaining 8.  But, more fun: he also drew himself holding the paper that he used to solve the problem.

Last but by no means least, we had this problem:  "Shannon has 8 gummy bears.  Her friend gave her 8 more.  Now how many gummy bears does Shannon have?"  Jordan instantly said "Sixteen!"  I said, "Wow, you knew that right away!" and he said, "Because of the inchworm song, Mommy.  Eight and eight are sixteen."  Then he drew the inchworm.

I was loving this, for sure, but I was a little worried that Jordan's unconventional representations would go unappreciated by his teacher.  So at the dropoff this morning, I chatted Miss Wodrich up about what a good time Jordan and I were having with his different ways of showing his work.  To my delight, she said, "Yes, that's what we do in class with our mini white boards; everyone has their own board, they show their own way of doing a math problem, and then they share their way and we talk about all the different approaches."  How great!

Speaking of the inchworm song:  I'm not sure I had ever seen the Danny Kaye movie or heard the song in that context - I think I only ever heard it on Sesame Street.  I am startled to learn that in context, the song is not extolling the fun of arithmetic at all; if anything the Danny Kaye category is pitying the children learning rote lessons in school, while the truant appreciates the wonders of nature (the inchworm on the marigolds).  YouTube, how did we ever live without you?

Aaron the big kid

We have got some major milestones in our household, folks.  First and foremost:  No more diapers, at all.  Not all day, not on outings, not at naptime and not at night.  No pullups, nothing.  Just great stuff like octopus underpants.

Second major milestone:  The big kid car seat! 

Aaron is thrilled to be in a seat like his big brother's, and we love how easy these seats are to get in and out of, move from one car to another, etc.  

Third major milestone:  The emergence of representational drawing.  This is an anglerfish.  

Coloring inside the lines, not so much. 

Jordan, as is often the case, was compelled to show us how it's done.

Next major milestone:  The dentist.  I'm cheating a little on this one because the milestone is not that Aaron had a dental exam... he only observed his brother having one.  But he did so without screaming and panicking, which is all he did the last time he was in this office.  So I felt it was a success.

Jordan was very cooperative except that he could not, would not, lie down.  Once the hygienist decided to roll with it and let him be upright, things went quite smoothly.  In these photos he's having a fluoride treatment.  As you can see, Aaron watched with interest.

Though Aaron is quite grown up now, he still takes a long, deep nap pretty much every day.  At school, he is usually the last one to wake up; the hubbub of the classroom is all around him, and he is still out cold.  That's his teacher Courtney and his classmate Diego in the foreground.