5.5
Five and half is fantastic. Just super awesome. So awesome that I've forgiven Henry for having been three. I have so much to report from the last few months! Most of these items should have been posts all by themselves.
He has had an absolutely phenomenal year at school. He started off in the fall working on nothing but letters and sounds. It was moveable alphabet all day every day. Then after Christmas he moved off the language materials and became a math machine. He would work on the golden beads and addition strip boards for hours a day, then come home and do math at the counter just for fun.
We didn't hear anything about the reading materials until he came home one day a few weeks ago and asked to read us something. Okay, sure. . . I pulled out The Cat in the Hat. And he read it.
I was amazed at how well he could go from sounds to words. I thought we would have a long phase of "cuh...aaaa...tuh........dog?" He must have been doing a ton of work at school without us knowing it. This video was a few weeks ago. His skill has already improved quite a bit since then. He's now back to telling us math is his favorite work. He even convinced Aunt Linda to give him a math lesson at Sunnyside when we should have been enjoying happy hour next door.
Outside of school (when he isn't doing math), he has been doing a lot of writing and picture-drawing, running around outside, and helping Karl with the house projects I dream up. We cut kid-sized gates in the back fence so that the kids from three neighboring yards can go back and forth. He helped with the project and loves that he can access a couple of buddies without a chaperone. Then Karl decided he didn't need a contractor for my plan to open up the cupboard under the stairs. We found approximately 50 pounds of hundred-year-old construction debris in there. Henry single-handedly hauled out about 35 pounds of it. It's going to be an awesome hidey-hole for the kids.
He still does guitar lessons. Makes some progress, but not much, because he hates practicing and I don't usually have the bandwidth in the afternoon to shepherd him through it. Karate has largely fallen off the map, which is too bad. When he tested up for his yellow belt he was placed in a new class. The teacher isn't as awesome and the new schedule is harder for us to make. I'm not too sad about him having more free time to just run around, especially now that the weather is nice. Maybe we'll pick it up again in the fall. He still does a Parkour class at the gym most Saturdays, but he does a lot more climbing on stuff around the neighborhood.
Henry remains the consummate big brother. He and Ingrid antagonize each other a lot, but they love on each other even more. Ingrid crashed his photo session and he very patiently let her get in front of the camera first. Sometimes they spend almost an hour talking and being silly before they fall asleep at night. Heidi thinks he is the greatest person on Earth, and to her, he really is. She doesn't antagonize him like Ingrid does so he can be endlessly benevolent to her. When she is upset she calls for Henry like he's going to deliver her from whatever torture Mommy is inflicting.
The only time I really get mad at him is when he takes silly past the point of funny. I'm trying to get him to do something, he's showing off his antics, and he doesn't knock it off until we've progressed from amused to irritated to seriously annoyed.
Mostly, he's just really great. He is becoming more observant of other people's emotional states and tries to help out. There were a couple of days when Karl was gone that I was really struggling with Heidi, and Henry stepped right in to feed her while I cooked. He really saved the day a couple of times. He's also picking up on some adult social graces and mimics them. At dinner, he'll ask, "Mom, did you cook this chicken? It's so good! How did you cook this?" He's so earnest about it. It's adorable.
On Mother's Day we went to breakfast at the pretzel bakery. I was sitting there, enjoying my pretzel egg sandwich in the sunshine, when Henry said, "I think my tooth is loose." Sure enough, the center-left bottom tooth -- the first one he got at four months old -- was a little wobbly. I might have teared up a little right there on the patio. I immediately requested a photo shoot to document the last weeks of his perfect, adorable baby-toothed grin.
A few days later the center-right one started wobbling too. Karl just did the ceremonial tooth-pull on Monday (the second tooth actually came out first due to a run-in with a giant lollypop). In good Karl fashion, he yanked the tooth with his shirt and then left a real silver coin from the American Precious Metals Exchange in the tooth fairy bag. Henry was thrilled.
How can my sweet baby boy be big enough to lose teeth? It just isn't possible.
But I guess it's true. Here we go -- officially embarking on the big teeth, big milestones, big kid years!
He has had an absolutely phenomenal year at school. He started off in the fall working on nothing but letters and sounds. It was moveable alphabet all day every day. Then after Christmas he moved off the language materials and became a math machine. He would work on the golden beads and addition strip boards for hours a day, then come home and do math at the counter just for fun.
We didn't hear anything about the reading materials until he came home one day a few weeks ago and asked to read us something. Okay, sure. . . I pulled out The Cat in the Hat. And he read it.
I was amazed at how well he could go from sounds to words. I thought we would have a long phase of "cuh...aaaa...tuh........dog?" He must have been doing a ton of work at school without us knowing it. This video was a few weeks ago. His skill has already improved quite a bit since then. He's now back to telling us math is his favorite work. He even convinced Aunt Linda to give him a math lesson at Sunnyside when we should have been enjoying happy hour next door.
Outside of school (when he isn't doing math), he has been doing a lot of writing and picture-drawing, running around outside, and helping Karl with the house projects I dream up. We cut kid-sized gates in the back fence so that the kids from three neighboring yards can go back and forth. He helped with the project and loves that he can access a couple of buddies without a chaperone. Then Karl decided he didn't need a contractor for my plan to open up the cupboard under the stairs. We found approximately 50 pounds of hundred-year-old construction debris in there. Henry single-handedly hauled out about 35 pounds of it. It's going to be an awesome hidey-hole for the kids.
 |
| Henry works. Also note Ingrid's construction outfit. |
He still does guitar lessons. Makes some progress, but not much, because he hates practicing and I don't usually have the bandwidth in the afternoon to shepherd him through it. Karate has largely fallen off the map, which is too bad. When he tested up for his yellow belt he was placed in a new class. The teacher isn't as awesome and the new schedule is harder for us to make. I'm not too sad about him having more free time to just run around, especially now that the weather is nice. Maybe we'll pick it up again in the fall. He still does a Parkour class at the gym most Saturdays, but he does a lot more climbing on stuff around the neighborhood.
Henry remains the consummate big brother. He and Ingrid antagonize each other a lot, but they love on each other even more. Ingrid crashed his photo session and he very patiently let her get in front of the camera first. Sometimes they spend almost an hour talking and being silly before they fall asleep at night. Heidi thinks he is the greatest person on Earth, and to her, he really is. She doesn't antagonize him like Ingrid does so he can be endlessly benevolent to her. When she is upset she calls for Henry like he's going to deliver her from whatever torture Mommy is inflicting.
The only time I really get mad at him is when he takes silly past the point of funny. I'm trying to get him to do something, he's showing off his antics, and he doesn't knock it off until we've progressed from amused to irritated to seriously annoyed.
Mostly, he's just really great. He is becoming more observant of other people's emotional states and tries to help out. There were a couple of days when Karl was gone that I was really struggling with Heidi, and Henry stepped right in to feed her while I cooked. He really saved the day a couple of times. He's also picking up on some adult social graces and mimics them. At dinner, he'll ask, "Mom, did you cook this chicken? It's so good! How did you cook this?" He's so earnest about it. It's adorable.
On Mother's Day we went to breakfast at the pretzel bakery. I was sitting there, enjoying my pretzel egg sandwich in the sunshine, when Henry said, "I think my tooth is loose." Sure enough, the center-left bottom tooth -- the first one he got at four months old -- was a little wobbly. I might have teared up a little right there on the patio. I immediately requested a photo shoot to document the last weeks of his perfect, adorable baby-toothed grin.
A few days later the center-right one started wobbling too. Karl just did the ceremonial tooth-pull on Monday (the second tooth actually came out first due to a run-in with a giant lollypop). In good Karl fashion, he yanked the tooth with his shirt and then left a real silver coin from the American Precious Metals Exchange in the tooth fairy bag. Henry was thrilled.
How can my sweet baby boy be big enough to lose teeth? It just isn't possible.
But I guess it's true. Here we go -- officially embarking on the big teeth, big milestones, big kid years!
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