Aaron's birthday

[I wrote this post a week ago, then went to a busy conference with poor internet access and forgot to actually post it. sorry!]

What a fun birthday party! Dale and I are fans of keeping it simple, and our wonderful house makes it so easy to host. The guests were Aaron’s classmates Adam, Bodhi, and Spencer, and younger friend Lucy; older siblings who joined the fun were Ian, Marley, and Ravenna. Nine adult guests, including Grandma, brought the total to 20 including us. The weather was great so we spent the whole time in the backyard. How cool is that?

Dale picked up a bunch of pool noodles and I personalized them.

These were put to use in various creative ways, including whomping, cheerfully demonstrated here by Ian and Marley.

There was also your basic general mayhem.

The birthday boy was very into his new-to-you jeep (we plucked it from someone’s discard pile a few days ago) and also shared nicely.

Lucy learned this trick from Aaron:

Meanwhile, the adults lounged comfortably on the deck. Eventually there was lunch for everyone.

And finally cupcakes! My visiting colleague Renee Michelle had just taught me to pipe frosting and I had a lot of fun with that. We devised a tiered cupcake platter out of a chip-and-dip and a plate – cute, no? And then another plate because we all need more cupcakes. It was tricky lighting the candles in the breeze, but on the bright side, it made it very easy for Aaron to blow them out.

Thanks everyone for celebrating with us. We love living here, we love our house, we love our family, and we love the community we are increasingly embedded in. Happy birthday Aaron!

Weekly

Here's a sample of what Aaron has been up to at school.

Expertise

This morning, attempting to speak in code to Dale, I said, "Were you aware that tomorrow there will be a high-temperature midday meal?" Aaron, not missing a beat, said, "Oh, is it a hot lunch day?" Um, yes.

Jordan, meanwhile, has begun to self-identify as being Good At Math. I have to agree with him. He continues to enjoy working with negative numbers:

Jordan: Mommy, five minus ten is negative five. Right?
Rachel: Yes, that's totally right. How did you figure that out?
Jordan: Because a ten is two fives, so if you have five and you take away one five, that's zero, and then you take away another five and that's negative five.

Wow. The other day in the car we were about to get onto the freeway, and Jordan was trying to decide whether to close his window:

Jordan: How long will we be on the freeway?
Rachel: Just a few seconds. We're getting on and then right away getting off again.
Jordan: How many seconds?
Rachel: I don't know. Here, we're getting on, you want to count?
Jordan: (counts silently until we get off) Forty seconds, Mama.
Rachel: Forty seconds. That's less than a minute. Do you know how many seconds in a minute?
Jordan: No.
Rachel: Sixty. Sixty seconds in a minute.
Jordan (pausing): So we had twenty more seconds before it would be a minute.
Rachel: Wow, that's right! Tell me how you know that.
Jordan: Because if you had four seconds, you would need two more to make six seconds, and this is the same thing only it's the tens family. So if you have forty seconds you need twenty more seconds to make sixty seconds and that's a minute.
Rachel (aware of the research on praising effort rather than ability): Jordan, you know, that is really something that you know how to figure that out. I can tell that you have put a lot of effort and thoughtfulness into learning math. You must really have been practicing, and thinking about what you are doing while you are practicing, to be able to do stuff like that.
Jordan: Yes and you know what Mommy? It's because I like math. That makes it fun to do it, almost like no work at all, so I just keep doing and doing it without even minding, and that way I get a lot of practice. So I get good at it because I like it and so I practice a lot.

It's a whole theory of expertise, really, sort of a snowball theory. I went on to tell him that I thought pretty soon he would start liking reading, too (it's currently more labor than fun, for him), once he has a little more practice.

Jokes

Everyone's telling jokes around here. The kids are busily memorizing jokes from a Monster Riddles library book.

Aaron: What goes ha ha ha clunk?
Respondent: I don't know, what?
Aaron (shrieking with such hysteria he can hardly deliver the line): A monster laughing his head off!!

Jordan: What do you say to a two-headed monster?
Respondent: I don't know, what?
Jordan: Hi hi!
(Imagine the many variations - number of heads, occasions for greeting, etc)

Dale, meanwhile, was entertained by a coworker who was being followed around by a duck while on a walk at lunchtime. There was a long silly riff from various lab members about how she might bring the duck to work, on the bus home, etc. Dale said it was too bad she wouldn't get the chance to bring him to the lab party and introduce him with, "This is my duck, Bill."

I don't have much to contribute myself - I seem to be more of the straight man. The other night I was lying down in such a way that the corner of a nearby pillow was sticking into my eye. I said, "That is a really 3-D effect I'm getting there," and Dale said, "It's not an effect." Something about the whole Avatar world we live in made this really funny at the time.

Mortality

While we were playing in the backyard, Aaron pointed to the giant pruning shears, about which warnings have been issued.

Aaron: That could cut my finger.
Rachel: Or your toe.
Aaron: Yeah. And then I would die.
Rachel: Or get an owie.
Aaron: We’re going to die.
Rachel: We are?
Aaron: We all are. Aaron and Mommy and Daddy and Jordan.
Rachel: But not today.
Aaron: Not today. On Thursday.

Twenty questions

Jordan and Aaron are both very into "Twenty Questions" lately. Jordan is downright sneaky: his recent selections have included a water skater, a chimaera, and air.

Aaron is less sneaky but entirely charming. This morning he said, "I have a trunk, big tusks, and stompy feet. What am I?" He was delighted when we guessed correctly.

Weekly

Big boy bed

The days of Aaron's playpen have been numbered for a while now. Aaron was happy enough, and could get in and out by himself, but the thing was turning into a jungle gym. I'd peek in to their room and there would be Jordan balanced on all fours on the top rails. Here are the two of them "resting" in there together (not):


We tried a crib mattress on the floor. The boys again immediately climbed in together.


At bedtime, Aaron was willing to give his new bed a go, but it was really too small for him. The first night, I found him half-asleep in the middle of the floor, grunting unhappily, trying to get comfortable. The second night, he just sat on the edge of the mattress and cried.

So we got him a twin bed. The day it arrived, the boys christened it with much jumping. When it was time to go to bed, Aaron was willing to sleep in it... and Jordan wanted to sleep in it too! We let them try it, and oh my goodness, it was so impossibly cute, I cannot tell you. Here they are posing.

We were afraid this would be way too exciting for actual sleep, but what do you know, they nodded off. They have always been great sleepers. In the middle of the night Jordan got up and went in his own bed; "Aaron was bonking me with his head," he explained. I think that means he was snuggling too close. But the next night they went to bed together again, and every night since. They love it. We love it. Maybe we didn't even need that other bed.

They are also very capable of being cute on the couch.

Weekly

Aaron's turn

We took Aaron to the ophthalmologist yesterday, just to check whether he might need glasses like his brother. The exam for two-year-olds is even more astonishing than for five-year-olds: they showed him letters on a computer screen, and asked him to "find the match" on a card he was holding. It seemed like a complicated game for a toddler to play, but he hit it every time. And they were letters - T, V, O, H. Did you know two-year-olds could match letters?

After establishing that he understood the game, they patched one eye for the real exam. (That was the only part he didn't like.) The result: Aaron has excellent vision. Yay!

Halloween

I like to learn about holidays. This year I learned that Halloween probably originated in a Celtic festival marking the start of the dark half of the year, and that the pumpkin carving is an American reinterpretation of turnip carving, imported by the Irish. Have you ever seen a carved turnip head? Totally eerie.

Our own Halloween began with a carving party at Jordan's school. Jordan, as you can see, is The King. (We know not of what.) Aaron, unlike last year, was excited to wear a costume but only if it was composed of familiar elements: add a fireman hat to your usual raincoat, and ta-da! No masks: Aaron has a horror of masks. We can't even watch the diver at the Seattle Aquarium because Aaron comes unhinged at his snorkeling mask.

The climax of the festivities was lining up all the pumpkins on bleachers on the stage, lighting over 150 tealights (which took a while), and turning out the lights to admire the spectacle.


On the holiday itself, family and friends converged on our house for an orange-themed dinner: carrot soup, kabocha squash galette, and mac-and-cheese. Crazy how you invite two families and it's twelve people! Kari and Sam made candy apples while Holstein Man scanned the horizon.


It was not possible to round us all up for the group shot.


Trick-or-treating was a gas. There were six kids, ages 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, and 8, and they were explosively enthusiastic. They got so much candy they literally filled up their buckets and could collect no more. Sam's handle actually broke from the weight. Then they came back to the house and methodically chewed and crunched and licked and poured.

They have not asked for any of it since.

Accurate report

A few photos

The blur is Ava. She always moves that fast.

Aaron is very content in the garden. Maybe when he's older we'll tell him we found him in the cabbage patch.

Jordan is more at home on the couch with Grandpa.

Language and sensemaking

Jordan is figuring out spelling. School encourages him to do a mixture of carefully sounding out words and just guessing, which I think is great. Apparently we all read by letting our brains fill in the blanks anyway, so why not put that human skill to good use from the start? It's worth sacrificing some accuracy for speed, is my feeling, since if you forget the beginning of the word by the time you get to the end, you've kind of missed the point.

Sounding things out is not necessarily a reliable way to spell correctly, either. Of course there's the old line about "photi" - "ph" as in pharmacy, "o" as in women, "ti" as in nation. But Jordan has decided that dragon starts with a J. Go ahead, say it aloud: it DOES start with a "j" sound, at least the way I say it. Jragon. Am I wrong? And truck, according to Jordan, starts with "ch." This blows me away. I didn't hear a "ch" until he pointed it out to me, but once he did, it honestly seemed more reasonable to me than the alternative. I told him I was impressed with his accurate hearing (and for that matter, spelling), and pretty much left it at that. At some point he'll learn that truck starts with T and eight starts with E and all that.

Aaron, meanwhile, was talking on the phone with Grandma the other day, and she asked him what he was doing, and he said, "Talking on the phone with Grandma." Right. I was reminded of when Rosencrantz and Gildenstern asked Hamlet what he was reading and he said "Words, words, words." Or when Holden Caulfield, to the same question, answered "Goddamn book." Aaron wasn't being flippant, though. His answer made me realize how often we help him attend to and name what he's doing by saying things like "Aaron, are you drawing a fish?" when we already know the answer. Maybe it's time to back off on that.

Weekly

Pride

It is possible that only fellow parents (and maybe toddlers?) can appreciate the joy of the moment pictured below.

Even more excitingly, there was further activity after this! You may be grateful I did not photograph that.

Weekly

Aaron's weekly

Only Aaron gets these cute weekly reports now. I'll post them from time to time.

It's potty time

Aaron has begin potty training, or "toilet learning" as some prefer to call it. Aaron doesn't care what we call it, he's just excited. He clearly knows a lot about it, probably from watching his peers at school; he already asks to take off his diaper, sits patiently, and talks while he sits about what might happen. "Maybe some pee come out," he says, "Maybe some poop. Maybe just wait." So far we just wait. But his understanding of the process is what creates the opportunity, yes?

Jordan, meanwhile, has a bathroom development as well, which is that he is no longer comfortable using a public women's room with me. If I'm the one that needs to go, he will wait by the front door (just inside is minimally acceptable for both of us). If it's his turn, he chooses to use the men's room, and I'm the one that waits... outside. Last time I was in that situation, I got occasional reports from nice guys leaving the bathroom: "He's just washing his hands now," that kind of thing. That was helpful, but it's still tricky for me, because public men's rooms have a less than stellar reputation. On the other hand, I want to respect Jordan's preference. Hopefully most of the time, Dale will be available.

Weeklies

I know these come out being more like bimonthlies, but oh well.