Two Punches Duck

Although Wes is not yet old enough to be part of the Little Ninja's program, he's learning on the side with Julia. They take turns holding the pillow for each other and no one gets hurt :)

Karate Princess

Julia's grandpa called her that when she got home from her first karate lesson and she liked it. She pointed out that it's different than Mulan, who is a warrior princess. We've been thinking about enrolling Julia at our town's karate center for awhile, but perhaps just a little reluctant to be "over schedulers." Several friends have strongly recommended the place and it just seems to offer so much of what we hope for Julia. Focus, confidence, strength, the ability to protect herself. And of top of that, they seem to try and teach them to be good citizens of the earth.

They have an ad in their window with a picture of a child and the statement, "I don't always listen to my parents, but I always listen to the DoJo." Luckily, they say the same thing. (Or something like that). Well, before Julia had her first lesson, they gave us a log and she was supposed to record 10 acts of respect performed. The log had an explanation of respect and where it said, "Showing someone respect is to treat them as you would want to be treated," her eyes widened and she said, "That's what you always say." And I closed my eyes and wished very hard that the ad will be true for us.

Here is some video of her first lesson. I believe this will be part of a great movie made later down the line that shows how much Julia improves :) Listen for Wes, thoroughly entertained, counting with Julia.

Wes at 2

A two-year old is so much fun. If for no other reason, but how they talk and pronounce words. Soup is boop, scarf is barf. (You have to picture Wes so pleased to be wearing a scarf, that he's laughing in a knee slapping way, saying over and over again, "Barf . . . ha ha ha Barf ha ah." He laughs a lot like this - often it seems to his own inside joke. Our neighbor says he seems a little drunk.) For some reason, open is pudding. On top of that, all the new connections they are so excited to make - nothing is boring yet. Wes enjoys pointing out trash and trash cans. I don't remember ever feeling glee when seeing a trash can but Wes does. He also just started noticing cars and is so pleased to tell me, "Mama's car" for any Honda Odyssey he sees and "Valky's car" for any CRV he sees. It's funny, Julia still doesn't really pay any attention to cars. Although, after trying to make a game of identifying different brands of cars on the road, Julia does now note now and again that there are a lot of Toyotas in this world.

It is also fun to see a personality revealed. Wes is already a little man taking care of us. When saying good-byes in the morning, he makes us all give one another a kiss. It's not enough that he gets one, he directs who should kiss whom. When I borrowed Wayne's wallet to pay for dinner at Moe's Southwest Grill, I came back and set the wallet down in the middle of the table. Wes pointed to the wallet, telling me Dada several times until I returned it to Wayne's hands. When leaving him at daycare, he told me to zip up my jacket before heading out. When leaving a Music Together class, he reminded me to take my purse. He has also reminded Julia to bring her lunchbox to school. Part of me thinks this is so sweet. But I know that in time, although he may take care of us, it will probably be with a lot of eye rolling, sighing and impatience. How many of us our with our own parents I guess. Yikes!

Wes didn't use many words until the last few months. Now he's a regular parrot, albeit one that often only Wayne, Julia and I understand. In this video (shaky because I was trying to hold the camera off to the side so that he wouldn't want to try and grab it) you see if you can understand him.



Wes turned 2 a few weeks ago and for once, we had a very, very low key birthday party for one of our kids. As parents with no goody bags to prepare and invites or evites to make, it was delightful. We did make the effort to decorate his cake with characters from his favorite TV show, Boots and Dodo (known to the rest of the world as Dora the Explorer). And Wes was more than happy to just have a few presents to open and for everyone to sing Happy Birthday to him.

Snowballs

We have had an incredible amount of snow these last few weeks. It has also been very cold and I am very sad to report that our latest gas and electric bill is in the amount of $631. Yes, we must insulate. And yes, the kids should wear gloves or mittens outside. Julia is very good about it. Wes refuses. He loves putting on his jacket, boots, hat and "barf" (scarf), but will not wear any of the 6 different pairs of mittens he owns. Luckily, there were a couple of warm snow days around the new year, so he did get to play with the snow with his hands. Here he is throwing snowballs and asking for me to make more at the end.

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Reading!

It has been incredibly interesting and fun for us to watch Julia learn to read. All of the sudden, she's seeing words everywhere. Billboards, the signage on trucks, our kitchen spice rack. She blurts out, "Old Bay," and I'm like what? Oh, you're just reading random things because you can now.

Pre-school did a good job teaching her the different sounds that letters make. In kindergarten, they have reinforced that while introducing "high frequency words" to memorize. In some ways, it's a bit tedious. They practice these high frequency words in little "books" made up of four sentences. "We like to play. He likes to play. The dog likes the ball. We like the dog." It was probably a tedious process when I learned to read to, but it's not how I remember it. I remember the very book, "Farm ABCs," which I still have (my mom may be considered a hoarder by some), when I feel like I figured it out and started reading. It seemed like an epiphany - I probably just forgot all those 4-sentence books that got me there.

In the fall, Julia was starting to sound out words here and there and made us realize that there are so many many exceptions to the reading rules she was learning. Why is the word "post" not pronounced "pahst," but "poste"? Why is "have" not pronounced like "save?" How do know if a word starts with "c" or "k"? So many things we just accept, but Julia is at a stage of actually thinking about reading. It's amazing to think how her brain is changing. We were at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia over the winter break and saw a cool presentation about the brain. They invited us to read words that were different color names, like black, blue, orange, etc. Only the words were printed in colors that did not match the word. For example, the word black might have been printed in orange ink. We were supposed to name the color of the word that they pointed to, but there was always a lag time because our brains our hardwired to read, so that we might have started, "Bla. . . I mean orange." Then they asked for a 5 or 6 year-old who was just starting to learn how to read to do the exercise and there was no lag time at all. These past few weeks, Julia has really gained steam in reading, so I think a month ago, she would have seen the colors first, the word second, but in a few weeks, I think she'll be like the rest of us readers and see the word first, the color second. I know that there are babies who can read from the infomercial, "Babies can Read!", but in the normal world, quite a milestone.

Anyway, here's a little clip of her reading one of her more advanced homework books.

Step Into Boredom

"White horse, brown saddle. Black hoof." Words - verbatim - from a Step Into Reading book that sells itself as the perfect first step for your kindergartener who is eager to read. Julia purchased the book - based on the upcoming Disney movie remake of Rapunzel - from her school's first Scholastic Book Fair. She was very happy to buy it. Now, she is worried that the movie will be like the book!

To be fair, the back of the book does say that it is about how Rapunzel loves colors. But really, how can a kindergartener get excited about a book that makes no effort to tell a story? There's an interesting picture of Rapunzel singing on a table while Vikings toast her with their mugs of beer, but all it says is, "Rapunzel wears a purple dress." The "story" ends, "Rapunzel is happy. She loves colors. She loves the lights." I know it's useless, but still I wrote to Random House to complain.

Julia and I did have fun though, imagining if all princess stories were told so stupidly. Snow White meets the 7 dwarves. They wear different colors. Prince Charming's hair is brown. Snow White is happy. The end.

Julia's 5th

In hindsight, we're glad Julia asked for a backyard art party. It took a lot of planning and finger crossing for good weather, but it was a really beautiful day. Our friends, Joyce and Steve, were awesome enough to make us this video slideshow of the pARTy. The kids got to decorate their own goody bags, journals, rubber duckies and party hats. They made their own colorful lollipops and spin art with water guns turned paint guns. They played, "Pin the Smile on the Mona Lisa," and just got to paint whatever they wanted on large paper taped over the garage. I think Wayne and I had almost as much fun as the kids.