Life Goes On

Oops, time got away from me, and it has been a week since I posted. So, what happened in the meantime?


1. My summer class is over. I think it was a cathartic expereince for some of the students - about 1/3 are first or second generation immigrants, and the book choice (Mama Lola, thanks to those who voted for it) spoke to their expereince, I think. Several people talked about their own expereince with immigration, and one about spirit possession in his family. (Benevolent spirits, I should add. I tend to forget that Christian Americans probably think of possession as something evil or unwanted.) The final exam was Saturday morning. JT and his papa went to the school to add castors to some tables. This is where JT spends M-Th mornings (now till 3 pm, unless he keeps napping at 4 pm, which is NOT good):

2. I got tired of the bang-growing-out-exercise, and finally trimmed JT's bangs. Yes, his. I wanted him to have nice one length boy-hair, but it was taking too long. So now he has some little bangs and the rest is kind of curly and crazy. When I dropped him at school yesterday, I noticed that another little boy had gotten a haircut. Or rather, his head shaved completely! I was a bit nervous that this was a sign that there may be a lice problem, but I guess his parents were just ??? Maybe that is what they think when they see JT....
3. JT and I went to the zoo on Friday. That was nice.

4. And today, we skipped school and went to Sea World to celebrate the end of my class! It was a bit hot, so we sat in the "soak zone" for the dolphin show. JT just sat there and let the splash hit him in the face twice. Not even a flinch. He thoroughly enjoyed the entire day - the dolphin show, the shamu show (with four shamus at once, that was interesting), the pet show, the baby (rescued) otter, the sting-rays (he declined to pet them) and eels, and the sharks, and for some reason, he was convinced that we should buy cotton candy. I asked him if he knew what it was called: nope. So how did he know it was something good?? I kept him away, but was talked in to buying a piece of carrot cake, of which he only ate the frosting. :)

The sea lions were in a frenzy when the keeper threw a bucket of fish to them:

5. And JT grew up some more. One of his favorite activities now is rhyming. He doesn't call it rhyming, and usually he just rhymes and calls it a "story" (meaning a song) and asks us to clap afterwards. He improvises microphones out of bits of string or pieces of wood. Two of his favorite word-sounds to ryhme are witch and duck. Don't ask me why. I am just waiting for the day when he does his ryhming in public and puts together an unmentionable combination.

Is this rhyming thing common at this age? Our friend, O's mom, mentioned that it is a preliteracy skill that is valued among the preschool set.

Another favorite activity is cutting. His current favorite knife is the "baby knife" - a tiny cheese spreader that hardly cuts, but it does the job for strawberries and pancakes and it even cut cheese. That came in handy for our cheese, baguette, olives, and wine dinner the other night. (He had apple juice, by the way, and also some macaroni as an appetizer.)

And he is at the cusp of the tadpole-drawing stage. His cousin, LT, already has that down pat, but this week is the first I've seen him draw a circle, add dots for eyes and lines for hair (going up), lines for legs (going down), and additional lines for "the body" and arms. I really haven't coached him much on drawing, mostly because I was curious when he would reach this stage on his own. So I don't typically draw things for him, but just let him "draw" on his own. He also never went through a period of asking me to draw for him (his other friends interestingly often asked their parents to draw certain things for them), but sometimes he asks JK, especially for trains. His train track drawings have also gotten more complicated, but that is another story, and since the police helicopter that was circling our house (or rather, a house or something down the street) for 30 minutes is finally gone, I will end here. Have a great week!