summer toddler

Ezra loves scooping and dumping sand. We find little heaps of sand all over the yard, as well as buckets and bowls lovingly half-filled with sand or gravel, all Ezra's doing. His mom calls it his "jobs."

I have mentioned Ezra's love of doing "jobs" in the past; lately he is very insistent that he be the one to walk the dog. This is the compromise. 

 This week Ezra made a friend at the park. They were within a month of each other's age, and spent a good 15 minutes haltingly passing handfuls of barkchips back and forth (and to me and the other kid's grandma). It was very cute.

 

Ezra has graduated from high chair to table. He is very adamant about it. And he's eating balanced meals, unlike his carbohydrates-only sister.

And we've been playing in the water on really hot days! Ezra is not a fan of the sprinkler or being in the kiddie pool, but he likes playing with Sasha (and her friends) and dropping things in the water.

Hugs,
-MP

grooming the nerdling

For Sasha's birthday (in April) I made her a Hagrid card because she especially likes when I read in my Hagrid voice. When you open the card it has a drawing of the slightly squashed birthday cake Hagrid made for Harry's 11th birthday. Things in Hagrid's pockets (all things he actually has in his pockets in the books): newspaper, coins, string, dog biscuits (actually cat food because it's smaller), keys, a letter for Harry, his magic pink umbrella, slug pellets, and a wooden flute. It would have been even better if I'd found tiny metal key charms and a drink umbrella, but other than that this was pretty much what I envisioned.

Anyway, I just found these pictures on my phone and thought I'd share, several months late.

High fives,
-MP

Sasha Says, ep. 21

"Pretty much everyone in my family is a vampire zombie by now."

"My mom is a cleaner-beaner. I don't really know what that means."

"Art is French." (it turns out she was making a generalization based on the beret-wearing artist trope)

"I'm too old for regular parks, I just like amusement parks now."

And a mini edition of Jaden Says (I'm babysitting him once a week now):

"I wished for love and I got a mermaid!"

High fives,
-MP

tough stuff

Sasha had a big crash on her bicycle recently. Fractured her wrist, knocked her teeth around, bloodied up her knees. I babysat her the evening after the big event (but before she got her wrist cast) and, perhaps following my lead, she was totally nonchalant about the whole thing. I think after her dad's fussing, her mom's hovering, and a host of medical professionals doling out pitying "poor baby"s, she just needed someone to see her in all her injured glory splayed out on the couch during a summer heat wave and just shrug and say, "bodies are good at healing."

"Yeah," she said, touching a lip swollen to four times its usual size. "My mouth is already feeling better. I can probably eat hard things tomorrow. I'm gonna save this cookie for breakfast."

And, shortly thereafter: "I hope my bike is okay -- I haven't even checked on it!"

She is going to be just fine.

Hugs,
-MP

making it work

Athena has been working very hard on mastering a new skill: buckling. She doesn't have the grip strength to unfasten the buckles yet, but with concentration and some serious dexterity development, she can buckle both sides of her high chair. Buckling, over and over again, is one of her favorite activities right now. She will do it, uninterrupted, for half an hour at a time, several times a day.

I have loved watching her learning process with this task. Once she mastered buckling one side (with huge proud smiles and jubilant kicking), she tried to apply the identical technique (without mirroring it) to the other side and discovered she needed to adjust her approach in order to succeed. For awhile she preferred to just buckle the right side, since she had aced it, and tended to either ignore the left side or get frustrated after a few attempts and fling the straps away. She persisted and practiced and now she can and does buckle both sides, repeatedly, with more and more fluidity each time.

This term I'm in an online-only (eep!) course called Young Child as Scientist, based on the constructivist theory that children are naturally theory-builders who formulate questions and conduct experiments to test their hypotheses. I very clearly see this methodology at play in Athena's work to solve the "how do I make the buckles fit together" problem.

In related news, grad school continues to totally rock.

High fives,
-MP