Creativity

From September 2009

One of the offshoots of some of my recent reading, as well as just feeling a transition in the boys, has led to my attempts to integrate more creativity into all of our lives. I've been greatly influenced by Amanda Blake Soule's (Soule Mama) blog and her first book (i can't wait until the second one gets to our library!) And have embarked upon creative attempts in a several different directions. Partly i'm interested in incorporating more "arts and crafts" in a straightforward manner into our lives. And partly i feel something a little more complicated about wanting to slow down more with the boys and have time to actually create together. So "create" has taken on a very relaxed interpretation in the past several weeks.

Practically I've approached the idea of "creating more" by re-tuning our schedule to allow tv/videos/computer only on the weekends. It's amazing how this helps open up little pockets of time. I've started a binder of kid friendly projects that i've been using to select one big project for each weekend. I also reorganized all the art supplies so that both the "no assistance necessary" (crayons, color pencils and the like) and "some assistance necessary" (pompons, "real" glue, beads) are within Henry's reach. The two biggest contributors to forward progress though have been buying a small desk for Henry so that he has a dedicated "creative" space, and sitting down with Henry to water color, cut, or just create.

From September 2009

Henry's very excited about his desk and it has given him a little special space that is out of the way and lets him go off and have some alone time when he needs it. As Henry and Silas get closer, they get more and more intertwined. There bond has grown for sure, but so has (at least Henry's) need for some alone time. This desk was a pretty crucial step in helping them find a way to establish this.

You'll notice that so far i'm only talking about Henry in all of this. Silas is not interested in "art" right now and only very fleetingly will deign himself to color or paint. He was exactly the same way with books for a very long time and only just recently became interested in sitting still to be read to. This has prompted the biggest creative development for all of us-- periodic book time. Sometimes they don't go willingly, but i find that if i can get the boys to the couch or the bed or the playroom floor and agreeing to a book (or at least who gets to pick first) everyone's blood pressure drops several beats and their breathing becomes more regular. I can just sense it happening for them and *feel* it happening for me-- even when 2 minutes before i was aware of my last nerve stretched taut.

The coming fall weather helps. I can forsee a winter of evenings huddled around the kitchen table, long weekends spent in the middle of big and small projects. The image is at least a good bit enticing although for the part of me wishing summer would never end, i feel like i have some new ideas to meet the long hibernation that i know is coming. I promise more pictures of all the fruits of our work to come soon.

Accomplishments and Phases

From October 2008

I don't think i've given a proper update in awhile about the various stages the boys are in. Silas is 19 months now and Henry is around 3.5 years old. Let's do Silas first.

His funny bone seems to be developing more and more. He has a quick temper and can be loud and irritable when frustrated, but he's just as likely to crack up or do something silly and wait for your reaction-- then crack up. He started this trend during the visit to Oklahoma when he purposely "missed" his seat and fell down-- laughing the whole time. I think he's legitimately ticklish because when you try to trim his toenails he laughs and then squirms uncomfortably while he's laughing.

Speaking of nail trimming. Hallelujah! My least favorite chore seems to have turned a corner. Henry has been very good about having his nails cut for a long time now and will tell you when they need to be done. Until recently trimming Silas' nails was just awful. It didn't matter what you had to distract him he was squirming and screaming and mad and doing nothing to help speed the process along. He doesn't have a bluebird on his shoulder yet, but he generally sits somewhat patiently and just watches as i speedily make my way through all his fingers. This, and sitting in the bath, are pretty huge in my book-- forget about first steps, to me *these* are the real parenting milestones.

Silas' favorite activity at home is pushing his shopping cart back and forth in the house. He enjoys it immensely and if someone else, a visiting friend or say his brother, decides to take the cart for a push, he generally shrieks and then just watches until the unsuspecting shopper abandons the cart for an instant. He throws down whatever he's doing and runs with arms outstretched, toddling back and forth, to recover control.

Henry is getting very good at puzzles. Several of the large floor puzzles he got for Christmas last year (approx. 25 pieces) he can now put together either by himself or with a little support from an adult. He's somewhat obsessed with his letters and can now recognize all of his letters (at least all capital letters and most of the lowercase letters). He can write many of them from memory now and is completely adept at tracing-- stays right on the dotted line. One of his favorite activities is his "homework" which basically means any type of letter or number work.

We're still working on cutting, but he can now move the mouse where he wants and click the correct button. We actually find that we have to actively limit the amount of "screen time" he gets now between his old tivod favorites (Dora and Curious George) and his new computer faves (www.pbskids.org). During the week he's limited to one of either for a total of 30 minutes. On the weekends we've been letting him do closer to an hour spread over the day.

His language continues to develop apace. Recently he's been putting his final understanding on subtle words like "definitely," "similar," and "delicate."

Book Review- Jamberry and Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb

Books have been a favorite in our household for quite awhile and Silas is now starting to get in on the act. He won't sit to listen to any stories that i might read, but he will get a book, hold it up right in front of him, and jabber, jabber, jabber away as if he's doing a perfect imitation of what "reading" sounds like to him. I thought i'd periodically review some favorites in our house and i'm kicking if off with my favorite genre-- short and rhythmic.

We have board book versions of both (Jamberry and Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb) so when bedtime is calling they satisfy a request for a story without risking excessive delays.

Jamberry is like an exquisitely rhythmic poem-- it starts simple and slow

one berry, two berry pick me a shoeberry,

mixes in active, colorful and whimsical illustrations, does rhyming without being syrupy

Quickberry! Quackberry! Pick me a blackberry!,

and concludes with my favorite crescendo:

Moonberry Starberry Cloudberry sky
Boomberry Zoomberry Rockets Shoot by
Mountains and Fountains
Rain down on me
Buried in berries
What a jam jamboree!

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb starts off with a simple beat:

Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb, one thumb, one thumb, drumming on a drum

Throws in masses and masses of silly monkeys with

rings on fingers, rings on thumbs

adds in more instruments

hands play banjos, strum strum strum
hands play fiddles, zum zum zum

and continues the forward momentum until the end

many more fingers
many more thumbs
many more monkeys
many more drums
millions of fingers, millions of thumbs
drum drum drum drum drum drum drum

Stream of consciousness

At this point we don't really notice it, but Henry keeps up a pretty animated level of banter anytime he's around people with whom he's comfortable. Today Henry and Silas and I headed for our monthly visit to the chiropractor. JT was already there (he's going for stuff related to his arm injury) and once Henry saw JT he just launched into run-on after run-on that paid no heed to linear thought. I believe it went something like-- Oh, dad! Hi, i need to go potty-- but i want to wait and read this dinosaur book. You read the dinosaur book to me, what's his name? why can't we play the dinosaur game? You make sure baby doesn't get my water-- i want some water, i have to go to the potty with daddy...etc.

It didn't strike me as unusual-- that's just the level of chatter to which we're acclimated. But, the receptionist was laughing about how Henry went from quietly looking at books to an uninterrupted stream of thoughts as soon as JT walked in the door.

Speaking of books-- i've mentioned several times that Henry is big into reading. He's also very interested in just about everything-- but lately a lot about the natural world. We got on the topic of the seasons and the role the sun plays in determining how long and warm, or short and cold are days are. I gave a simple explanation and then said-- i bet you'll get to learn all about the planets at school. To which Henry replied-- i don't want to wait to learn about planets at school, i want to learn about planets myself. So-- we made sure to fit in a trip to the library today and found several cool books about the sun, moon, and all the planets.

I've heard a lot of mothers with similarly aged kids mention how the younger one wants to do everything the older one does. We see that some with Henry and Silas-- if Henry has a toy Silas wants it, although about the time Henry starts to complain about how Silas isn't sharing-- Silas usually crawls off to something else that's caught his eye.

Silas does however have to have a book to look at in the car just like Henry. Lately he's taken to holding it up in front of himself-- usually upside down and babbling along as if he's reading the story.

3 Years, 13 Months

I know my posting rate has certainly declined and the photo frequency isn't quite what it used to be. Although the dust has settled on our injuries, my free time has been curtailed. Coupled with spring garden season and i find myself sharpening my garden shears at 10:30 at night instead of plotting out a good post.

For now i'm aiming for two posts a week-- ideally one that is topical and one that has updates on the boys. I'm just squeaking in with my second post this week and wanted to try to catch up on the developments i've failed to document.

Silas is climbing the stairs like a pro now and if we don't keep the baby gates locked at all times the second you turn your back he's up half a flight of stairs. I'm not so worried about him going up but he tries to go down either by just walking down (!) or scooting forwards off the step. Neither method are particularly foolproof and as our steps are very steep we have to be there to catch him. He's similarly fearless in the bathtub, constantly trying to scamper up the slippery tub walls-- not deterred by nightly face plants into the water. He generally still loves the bath and likes to splash around and put bowls on top of his head-- and then initiate peek-a-boo.

Speaking of peek-a-boo he's obsessed. Henry was a jolly enough kid but Silas starts games like there's no tomorrow. And, once you've made something a game-- for instance while he's looking at the ceiling you tickle his belly, he'll remember and initiate the game on his own months later. He's still not walking but pushing anything he can get his hands on around the house. He has a few walkers and uses them but just as quickly abandons them once they hit a wall and goes for the kitchen chairs or step stool. Brenda told me she bought a walker for him to use at school and after 3 minutes he was back to pushing the kid-sized chairs around.

Henry alternates between very loving, very obstinate, and very inquisitive. Why is still one of the questions we entertain minute by minute in the course of our day. I have figured out that i think part of his whys are aimed at enforcing consistency. He will ask the same "why" question at the same point in a story, song, etc. I've started asking him why he thinks and he seems quite pleased to give you the answer he was expecting. Which is great until he asks "why" essentially wanting you to explain all over again.

He's always loved books, loves anyone and everyone reading to him, loves to look at books on his own in the car and now to listen to stories on cd as well. He's also getting more interested in "reading" the words-- asking how to spell things, what words say what on books, yogurt containers, etc. For his Birthday Henry got a big magnetic board with magnetic letters and we've been trying to spend frequent bouts of time spelling out words he's interested in. Brenda told me he's the only kid that asks to do "homework" at school and gets upset if they don't have time to do it.

We had his 3 year Doctor appointment a few weeks ago and all systems were go. He was 31 lbs and some amount of height that put him in the 50-75% for weight (we'll take it!) and the 75% percentile for height. We have some skills he needs to accomplish by the end of the summer (walking up and down stairs like a "big boy", i.e. one foot one step, pedaling, and jumping.) If we don't seem him improving on these tasks-- especially the jumping and stairs we're probably going to have him evaluated for physical therapy again.

So far we've made pretty drastic progress on the stairs. We got his tricycle out today and he got frustrated but i think if we work on it consistently this summer he'll make progress. Besides the coordination though, you can tell it's really hard on his legs to push himself. That lack of strength is what we have to take pains to improve and if it doesn't improve enough, we'll probably need some extra help!

Okay, consider yourself updated. Even if there are no new pictures.

Babies!

As i've mentioned before, we're expecting our second at the end of March. I have two other friends in Chicago that are also pregnant and due just a few weeks before and after me. We also live in roughly the same neighborhood and i'm very much looking forward to having other new moms around while i'm off on maternity leave. I saw both of them this weekend and we did some initial talking about baby showers i'll be helping plan for each of them. The baby is moving around all over the place now and this Thursday we have the 20-week anatomical ultrasound, although the primary purpose of the ultrasound is to make sure that things are progressing anatomically correctly, we hopefully get to find out the sex of this little one. I had a dream last night that we were at the ultrasound and it was a boy but as the stats predict, it feels like a toss-up to me.

Henry and i made our first outing to the library on Saturday. We went to pick out some new books for him and then headed to the book store for story hour. Unfortunately they don't have story hour at the library on weekends, thus the two-stop outing. Henry was so cute sitting on the little bench looking at the book (and really everything else all around) and then had a great time wandering around the store and looking at the truck/tractor/airplane books (and one "my secret diary book all done up in pinks and purples with included stamps-- he was transfixed by that one.)

We went out for walks a couple times today and he's getting pretty quick walking on the sidewalk in front of our house. Everytime we come home now he wants to walk outside rather than go inside. Once i coax him to our steps he'll hold my hand while he walks up a few and then insists on holding onto the handrail while he does the rest. This was something the therapist identified as a weakness last week so we're glad to see some progress.

We also saw "progress" in going down the stairs but that wasn't quite as pretty. For the past few weeks if Henry is near the back of the hours and sees or hears me going down the steps into the basement he'll wait at the top of the basement stairs and occasionally yell down to me until i come back up. Tonight i ran down to take some of his outgrown clothes to their respective boxes, and before i got back to the stairs i heard him crying. He had plenty of crying jags/tantrums this weekend so i figured he was just upset i wasn't back up there. Once i rounded the landing though i saw that he had taken one step down and he was terrified. He was basically stuck and afraid. He cried for a little while even after i picked him up, and for the rest of the night would say "no, no, no" when he looked at the basement stairs. At least he tried them, but now we have to close the basement door when we go down there and continue to work on his descending skills.

17 Months, 4 Weeks, 2 Days

Henry seemed to be feeling more like himself yesterday. He was chipper in the morning and Brenda said he had a good day but a restless nap. He seemed tired when i picked him up in the afternoon, but once he got home he was extremely animated. I however, was a lump on the couch as the winter germs have caught up with me again.

Henry was eagerly walking from the kitchen where he was eating his snack while JT cooked back and forth to me in the living room. He was chattering away and just really happy and being silly. It was pretty easy to tell when he got tired because he just started whining out of nowhere so he was off to bed a touch early.

When i dropped Henry off Brenda had a stack of books in her hands and all the other kids had their chairs arranged in a circle with books. Henry was zeroed in on the kids and scanning the room at their books. Brenda told me he has a favorite book that is some kind of "pop-up" that she holds back for him because he goes crazy if someone else is looking at it. I'm hoping we can move out of this intense non-sharing phase before the new baby arrives. Considering he gets bent out of sorts when the cats walk near his toys, i'm not sure how much he's going to love the new baby laying on "his" stuff.