Early morning self-sufficiency

(This post got lost in the drafts folder, and since we've had so many interesting episodes of cleaning up lately, it's fun to see one of James' early attempts. :))

This morning, Marco had to leave very early to go to the temple, so James was left to his own devices while Isabel and I slept. I woke to the sound of a low rustle, and padding steps, and to the lid to the garbage in the kitchen opening again and again. I came out, and saw James putting something small in the garbage, closing the lid again, and heading to the living room. On the floor was a new box of Cheerios, the cardboard around the top torn apart, with several small pieces of cardboard on the floor. James came in and got another piece of cardboard, and put it in the kitchen garbage can.
First of all, I'm glad he knew where to find breakfast, and that he tried to open the box even though it must have been difficult. And I LOVE that he was diligently cleaning up after himself! I helped him open the bag inside the box, and he poured his own Cheerios. He's on his third bowl now. :)

A story before bedtime

I’ve learned you can download past episodes of Lake Wobegon monologues from A Prairie Home Companion. It’s the next best thing to having someone read you a bedtime story. I love to listen to one just before I go to bed to read my own book. Now if I had just thought to make myself a cup of tea before I sat down and put on my earphones…

James' Valentine gift to his class

James is in a typical kindergarten class, and loves it. He tries hard to do what his classmates do. Sometimes he can, and sometimes he can't. Last week we got a kindergarten bulletin about valentines for Valentine's Day. James' teacher wanted the kids to make handmade valentines, and to make sure the kids themselves wrote the names.

Now, James has some pretty significant fine motor troubles. He's only very recently learned to open his scissors, though he's been able to close them for a while. One of his goals on his IEP (individual education plan) is to cut within an inch of the line when cutting out shapes by next December. Until kindergarten, where the coolness of and emphasis on writing first came together for James, he wouldn't hold any writing implement more than about a minute at a time, and that was only as long as I was singing "The Wheels on the Bus".

James cut out 22 hearts, within about 1/4" of the line. For each and every one he cut out, he carefully and deliberately opened the heart, sometimes with considerable difficulty. Then he celebrated, jumping up and down and showing us the heart, sometimes shouting "ta da!" He wrote the name of every single one of his classmates. He can write nine of the letters himself with no help, recognizably, and for the others he needs hand-over-hand help. He knows all his classmates' names, and can identify each one on a written list. He kept me very strictly to the list, and made sure we went in order. For one particular friend, he got so excited he skipped to him, and then went right back to the couple he'd jumped. Tonight, while I was grocery shopping, his dad helped him write his own name on most of the hearts with more help before he was too beat to go on. Tomorrow he'll pop stickers on early and take them to school.

I have never seen James work so hard on something that is so, so hard for him to do. For James' classmates--he loves you!

Picture coming. :)

Sidewalk chalk in a plastic tub is good enough for me. However...

Isabel and James have discovered the marvel that is sidewalk chalk. (I saw an article about how to make sidewalk chalk (can't find the original, but here's one) and am afraid I reacted the same way I did when I heard about how to make marshmallows, that is, "Um, ready-made is good enough for me.")

James wears his blue chalk down to the nub making patches of intense short strokes, and huge, whole arm circles. Isabel scribbles and makes different sized circles and asks me write the names of everyone in the family as well as their alternate names (she's been fascinated that Mama and Daddy are also called Rachel and Marco). Then she wants a story. So, I draw a story about two rabbits who have a nice cozy dome-shaped house with a vegetable garden who like to go on boat trips down the river to the ocean, where they put up their sail and visit an island where the bunnies unpack their picnic lunch and then come back. The next episode involved bunnies in space. I kind of like sidewalk chalk too. I am a little tempted to make sidewalk paint, because the chalk makes my fingers feel so dry and shriveled, and because the paint looks pretty wonderful. And I have all the ingredients. Okay. I'm sold.

Knock-knock joke payback

We've got a homemade puppet theatre set up in the living room. We're getting a lot of knock-knock jokes. (Mostly courtesy of the special feature on one of Signing Time's downloads, starring Lucy and Zack. The DVD is here.

Isabel's making up a lot of her own jokes, and laughing hysterically at them, and even James tells them. He does the rhythm and the tone just right, just--no words! I'll have to try to capture this on tape. :)

In case Mom and Dad are keeping track of the Curse of the Parent--"may your kids do to you what you did to me", I'm definitely getting payback for all my knock-knock jokes of yesteryear. (In case you didn't have the lucky experience of listening to these marvels of preschool humor, the punchline was always, inevitably, "a bottle-nose dolphin!")

Yet more evidence that my mind begins to fail every night at about 9pm

I have a lesson from the trenches. Don't start sewing a child's dress at 8:30pm. Because, by 10:30 you're thinking, "I could finish the armholes tonight before I go to bed, just another half hour...", and then at 1:40 in the morning you're still looking up "finish armholes whipstitch" because WOW did that go badly. Maybe sewing better be an "Isabel woke me at five am yelling about a bunny before she drifted off again and now I can't get back to sleep thing" rather than a "kids and Marco are all in bed. I know, I'll start a late night project that involves lots of manual dexterity and a high frustration tolerance!" thing.

I'm not a night owl, can you tell? Or maybe I'm a night owl that tends to smack into trees.

Any advice is welcomed on whipstitching armholes without bias tape for a dress for a three year old . I can handle a couple of inches and then I get a creeping feeling that my head has completely compressed my neck and is fusing directly with my collarbone. Also that I need a chocolate croissant and a large glass of milk.

James Matta, chicken behaviorist

I read Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project a while ago, and she mentioned the idea that what we liked to do when we were nine or ten years old is probably a good indicator of what we truly like to do. This made me laugh, as all I could remember at first was how interested I was in primatology. This is me, as Jane Goodall, in our class wax museum. That's Sarah Henderson behind me, as Cleopatra. You don't mind, do you Sar? :) This may explain why I pause every time I see an opening at the nearby Gorilla Foundation.

So, James has always been extraordinarily interested in animals. His signing, for example, didn't take off until we started teaching him the signs for all the different animals. (Who cares about, "more", "eat", or "drink"?) It was fun to see him today at Hidden Villa. He just squatted next to the chicken coop, and watched. And watched. We watched those chickens for about twenty minutes, almost without moving. Thinking I had finally convinced him to move on to the pigs (the same piglets we saw, I believe, on an earlier visit), I led the way with Isabel only to see James immediately drop behind to squat, yet again, next to the chickens looking for bugs to eat over by the manure pile. So gently he observed them, signing and quietly approaching, fingers outstretched but never touching, cocking his head and looking. Next time we'll have to harvest a miner's lettuce leaf or two to give them--Isabel was so anxious to give them one like all the school groups were doing. I especially love that the kids look so ecstatic and enthralled throughout, but when you ask them whether they like the farm they say "no". Somehow they always interpret that question to mean whether they would like to get out of the car and revisit it immediately.