Sunday, May 16, 2004

The kids have a new game. “Meeting”. Seems to involve all possible “friends” (stuffed animals and the like – sometimes trains & tow trucks are invited). So far I think it has always occurred in Mom & Dad’s bed (involving covers being completely disheveled and often leaves behind little sand granules under the covers). I don’t think too much more than that happens although it is a popular game that is played at least once a day for at least a half hour. I haven’t been invited to a Meeting you see… Mommy heads off to Meetings at school at least twice a month (and tonite I am about to head to my 2nd of 4 meetings this month not including “graduation” next week). Daddy also heads off to work and we hear about his meetings. Interesting to see the interpretation – I think the kids have more fun than Mom & Dad have!

“Give me a hug ladybug!” is a popular phrase right now. I think Pete coined it and the boys embraced it. Quincy is pretty adorable when he runs up and with arms up asks for his hug ladybug! I remember a year or so ago Pete was always a bit disgruntled at the lack of attention his comings and goings received. He has to be happier now. The kids almost always wave bye out the window after a big hug.

They had 4 or 5 weeks of “Kindergarten Club” at school recently. They have the graduating kids once a week play Kindergarten. They have to sit quietly and respond to their name being called and then are given a short project to do. The first week was a self portrait using a mirror to see themselves. They then had to color and cut out some shapes and then paste them down on top of same shapes on different page. Aidan was so so on that one. He has one of the clearer written names. His person was middle of the pack or slightly better. One project was to do Dot To Dot around a bird and then color it in. I personally liked his the best. The last was to listen to the story Swimmy and then draw a picture about it and do a little dictation about picture to the teacher. He did a nifty job there too. Just lately he has really started using multiple colors (previously pictures were very action oriented – he narrated whole thing – and all in one color). Now pictures seem to be more conceived and carefully executed – although still quickly done usually. Now they are practicing a couple of songs for Graduation which will be May 23rd at 11. I am helping out with making some pantyhose and wire coat hanger butterfly wings for kids who don’t already own a pair (like us). They have turned out quite nice and are very pretty once painted with the sparkly paint by the kids. Aidan is really proud of his. I am also making Antennae out of elasic headbands and pipe cleaners for the kids (I got about 8 or 10 kids to do their own on Friday). But I think the upshot of all this has been a bit unsettling to Aidan. He just wants to go to the same kindergarten as his best buddy Theo. He knows he will be going to Eureka Learning Center and Sashi and twins Henry & Zoe will also be going. They are all fall birthday kids – this will be a year of Kindergarten but in a very small setting – class of 16 with 2 teachers. And almost all the kids then go on to repeat Kindergarten at the elementary they get into. Aidan has started telling me he doesn’t want to go to school. And he doesn’t see why he needs to go to several schools for the next 20 some years.

The best quote was last week “I wish Quincy was my twin. Then we could go to school together, and come home together…”. They really are such good buddies these days and when they have both had enough sleep (and food) they play really well. Quincy is quite advanced (IMO) for his age in certain things as he gets lots of practice with Aidan – building train tracks (linking the wood tracks), building towers / buildings / vehicles from various block sets we have, imaginary play – it is quite involved with little figures speaking various things and seems much more creative than Aidan at that age – probably because it is often led by Aidan at this age. He is great at puzzles. He comfortably does 12 piece true jigsaws and can and often does them by himself although he does like an audience. Sometimes he likes to say “Does it go here? No! Does it go here? No! Silly ME!” Aidan was always better than many of his peers but true jigsaws came a bit later I think – he was very good spatially but sometimes didn’t look at what was on the picture that clearly so when the pieces all looked pretty similar… I just got him a little “mini” puzzle with 50 pieces – I think it is 5”x7” – the pieces are the size adult puzzles come in. He did it with a couple of suggestions from me the 1st time, completely independently the second time. The next morning he did it for Daddy. We were timing him and it was exactly 20 min which happened to be what I set the timer for. It was pretty impressive watching him – he did it pretty much just like a big kid would and completely by using the visual clues obviously.

This morning I heard Aidan leading a game. “I’m pregnant! I’ll have a baby come out of my tummy. Got to go to the hospital. Here come the legs! Now the tail! Now the whole body is out!” And just like that a stuffed zebra was brought forth from under his shirt.