Category: Uncategorized

Apple orchard.

Today we took a trip to the apple orchard. Two huge 10-lb bags of honeycrisp are sitting on our back porch right now. And will be eaten I’m guessing within a week. Art and Lewis devour them, Papa does, Mama does and Netta and Bailey happily gnaw at them.

It’s hard to see here but Lewis is atop Jessica shoulders reaching for a fruit.

For the past couple months Art has been unable to eat an apple without it first being cut up (he has a couple loose teeth up front). But today Art told me with great confidence that he could eat an apple regular. Here’s a photo of him biting into it (he did this only once, since small amounts of blood and pain quickly followed). And, about an hour later, the thing fell out (see his bloody smile below).
Bloody, toothless smile (small to lessen grossness…)

Success.


Netta and Bailey immediately crawled under a tree and grabbed a couple apples. They just make little tooth marks and require a pre-bitten piece to really go at it.

Feeding chickens.

Yes, that’s Art blue fingernail polish.

Birding.

I found a bird feeder for free the other day, put it up and within twelves hours had a whole slew of birds (downy woodpecker, brown creeper, white breasted nut hatch, house finch, chickadee and yes, eventually a squirrel). Although it’s hard to see here Arthur and Lewis each got a bird book and ran outside like little ornithologists watching and looking at whatever random page their book was opened to.

Why I love garbage trucks.

Lewis, a few months ago, was playing with some trucks in the living room. "Papa?" he said "What is your favorite truck." I was not really paying attention to him. He asked again, so to please him I blurted, "garbage truck." Those two words immediately burned into his developing brain. And now, whenever we pass a garbage truck he says "Papa! There's your favorite truck!" as if he's discovered something wonderful, just for me. Lewis' big bright eyes look at me, seeming to say "Doesn't that make you super happy? To see your favorite truck?!"

I realize now that when Lewis asks me a question, he really is doing just that. He wants to know something. So I am careful to give a truthful answer. I'm starting to like garbage trucks more and more as Lewis points them out, and by the time I tell him the truth about how they're not my favorite, they might actually be.

Home work.

I just helped Art with one of his first homework assignments.  Yes, he had to finish tracing some 2’s last week, and work on coloring in a picture with lots of small parts, but today was the first time I really had to do the parent/child “Don’t want to do my homework” struggle.

The assignment was to finish a picture that he started at school.  He told me that his teacher, Gloria, said he was supposed to add “more details” to the picture.  I think it’s a fine motor/writing readiness activity.  He said he was not supposed to use crayons and asked if I had colored pencils and colored pencils with “no color”, aka regular pencils.  The paper was only about 6×6 inches square.  Fine motor, indeed!
Since he was totally intimidated by trying to decide what to draw and because i thought the purpose was not artistic authenticity but rather just practice using a pencil I drew some small things on a separate piece of paper for him to imitate in his drawing; a bunk bed and a stick man.  He also added a window and an egg.  Go figure.  

I had a great time problem solving his initial resistance to doing his homework and also trying help him get through it while still making sure he was getting the right lesson out of the work.  At least I hope I was right!  All it took to get him to do the assignment was to kindly say, “Ok, Art.  I hear you.  You don’t want to do it.  Well, then I’ll visit school tomorrow and talk to Gloria.”  This was totally not a punitive threat.  I really thought that a veteran teacher like Gloria must have encountered this a million times and would have some great way of getting thorugh the resistance.  But we didn’t have to visit.  He acquiesced immediately and got to work with me.  
I love doing homework with my kid.

Sharing sisters.

Today was Art’s scheduled day to share something in kindergarten. And lucky for us, he chose Netta and Bailey. Jessica and I were of course rooting for this, and had mentioned it in passing as something he could share. “Well, think about what you’d like to share. It could be a story, something you made, the babies, whatever you want.” So, we did put the idea in his mind, but he’s the one who woke up and decided with confidence what he’d like to share.

He took a number of ‘questions.’ Including, “um…um…um…um…um…I forgot.” And another, “They’re cute.” then Arthur answering the question, “I know.” Someone also asked who was oldest, and Art said Bailey. WRONG! And then, as you can see in the video below, someone asked what do they like to play with. “People,” he said.

I think it’s fun to see what the other kids’ names are.

Projects from Kindergarten. Art Projects!

Here is a lovely piece from Art’s first weeks in Kindergarten.  I really like the art teacher there.  I happen to know that the grid was one day’s project as an exploration of pencil and dark/light lines and that the next week they used paint, apparently revisiting the paper they started with the previous week.
I’m not sure what this project was about but Art kept saying, “And see how I filled this in?”
Here’s his name! 
And his self portrait hanging on the wall at school. Can you tell which is his?
Art was very proud to have written the word “Stop” on this bus, which he cut out himself (following the lines drawn by the teacher).  He also drew all the kids in the back of the bus, sitting vertically of course, and the bus driver in the front.  “See, it says STOP.  S – T – O – P.”
This is Lewis’ wet on wet watercolor painting. He called it ‘Big’ because he had filled in all the white space. The paint was big even though the paper was not.