Joshie update

Joshie playing in puddles after a rainstorm

An older photo of Joshie outside

Thanks to Dianka for these great photos and movies!

91 degrees out--so Ian & Sam take turns squirting each other while swinging

Josh playing in the water table

WARNING: Hidden Spaghetti Alert!

Below are some photos from last weekend.

This is odd: Spaghetti for dinner last night. Josh ate an entire meatball and loads of peas and spaghetti. 

A quiet evening ensued, ending in baths for all below 30 yrs of age and easy bedtimes.

Josh started waking around 10:30, and did so periodically but with increasing frequency until around midnight. It was unclear at the time why. Gave him his pacifier, changed a diaper, gave him some water, rocked him, and finally he settled in for the night again.

Cheerful little guy this morning. Even when, on the changing table at 7:17 AM, he sneezed and out a piece of spaghetti. 

You read that right.

No wonder he was unhappy last night! 

(For the record, he doesn't put things up his nose. I think he must have sneezed a strand into his sinus while eating.)

Dr. Carlin, the boys' pediatrician, tells of a tell when some parents brought in their baby, who had been crying nonstop despite all efforts. They were at their wits' ends. Dr. Carlin gave the baby a thorough checkup and lo and behold, there was a hair wrapped painfully around his pinky. 

Only, it wasn't his pinky. (This is a family show, you know.)

Problem solved, baby happiness restored.

Glad Josh just had stowaway spaghetti!

Can't say he's not modest! His Grandpa Collins saw this photo and suggested we might feed him more actual food. :-)

Josh's sea-lion awareness is already at a kindergarten level.

The waxing polar moon 

Sam with Aleeseeah (left), Natalie (right) and a lunching lion. Sam recently did a research presentation on lions in class, so when the kids were complaining about the lions' lethargy, his teacher asked him about it and Sam proudly pointed out that lions sleep ~20 hours per day

hot day at the zoo

Not a bad weekend. Saturday we all went to the zoo for a birthday party there for one of Sam's classmates. Turns out her parents are big donors at the zoo, so we were privileged to see an elephant trained to paint abstract art. (This says something both about the elephant and abstract art.) 

Sunday we hung out at home. Sam was at loose ends, so asked him to use the hose to water our flowers, and then let him play with the hose. Most of us can't remember the first time we had a chance to play with a hose. Sam was in heaven, spraying this and that, including the older boy who lives next door, who considered it a fun challenge to dodge the stream while pretending to shoot Sam with his (also pretend) rifle. Sam finally settled on digging a hole in the ground with the stream--an exercise in the power of erosion.

It was a hot day. The polar bears were enjoying playing with some ice.

Sam's art enrichment class had its art show last Thursday. Here's Sam in front of  his bio and  one of his pieces.

Sam has recently perfected the art of hanging upside-down like Spiderman.

...and whirling around so the rope traces a wide cone and he almost hits the slide.

Here Sam's posing on some metal statues of lions. The zoo just put in a lion exhibit and is quite proud of it.

Josh had a great time at the zoo as well. But then, anywhere Josh is allowed to toddle provides him a great time. Unlike Sam at this age, Josh sees and is interested in many of the animals. He was fascinated by the Mexican gray wolves, who were making rapid orbits around their enclosure. But then, like Sam at his age, he was also pretty interested in what wood chips he could find.

This is the last week of school. Of the seven first and second graders, three, including Sam, will be switching to public school. Sam doesn't talk about it, but it's clearly a hard transition for him. He's had a great experience here--some excellent teachers, and a very supportive learning environment. Time, though, for a bigger world.

More favorite books for children

A year ago I tried to list the books and authors which have been real hits with Sam.

I want to update this, so I have a record I can refer to as Josh grows older.

Sam's out of picture books except for the occasional amusing one like How to Potty Train Your Monster. We've been in series territory for a while. In the past half a year we've read James and the Giant Peach, which was a hit, and Aliens on Vacation, which was a tremendous amount of fun.The latter is written for older kids, so it includes a kissing scene, which I summarized vaguely. Other than that, it's completely appropriate and Susan and Sam and I all enjoyed it so much we'd find time earlier in the evening to read it aloud.

I tried a couple of other things since then without getting any real traction. Most recently, though, we've begun the books by about the knights of the round table by Gerald Morris and Araron Renier. These combine humor with some good vocabulary and interesting plot twists. We've read the book on Lancelot (don't worry, the affair with Guinevere doesn't come up!) and are into Sir Givret the Short. Good stuff!

Prior to Aliens we went through the Magic Tree House books, the A to Z Mysteries, and the Ready Freddy series. Those were all excellent (though A-ZM started to wear a little thin). I am tempted to try Sam on Hardy Boys, but I am not sure about that yet. And Susan says Sam's too young for A Wrinkle in Time. The Indian in the Cupboard is also nearby for us to try when we need a break from knights. (Never read that one myself.) I would like to find something adventurous by Kipling. We'll see.

What would you add?

Time for bed!

ALERT

Josh can now reach the top shelf of the fridge.

Photo journal update

Even as I write this, Sam is having  a long-requested play date with his school chum Alicia. She's the one who has publicly sworn her undying love for him more times than I can count. And when I last did a science demo in his class she told the class she would be marrying him. 

This one's 9 days old. We took Sam to a birthday party at the science museum , which meant one of us took Josh off to wander the museum. He enjoyed it a great deal, especially the Simple Machines Ball Pit. This is a big bin of red plastic balls with drawings of the simple machines on the back wall. Maybe at one point they had simple machines in the pit? 

Josh loves putting trucks and cars and buses up on this green chair on the sun porch. Who knows why?

This last Saturday was Sam's last music class until next fall. This one was purely fun & games, and they had a great time. despite reduced numbers. Afterward the teacher made a point of telling me and Sam what a pleasure it was to have Sam and what a good listener he is! It might have helped that another boy in the class was VERY LOUD AND DISOBEDIENT. I could tell this even through the heavy practice-roomy door. But Sam really is a good student as well, I am sure. :-)

A first--Sam hangs upside-down from the play set! (And calls us to witness it.)

Sam really really wanted to go to the Play Museum this weekend while Susan hosted a pinkies-up tea and meeting of the Ladies' Anarchist Society. I was worried Josh and he would move at too different paces, but it went well. A new exhibit at the museum about design of almost anything snuck in some covert learning about Lisajous figures, as shown here. 

Rocket Day at MSR!

In no particular order, here are some photos from a sciencey demo I did at Sam's school, MSR, with my officemate John and his son. The focus was delivering the difference between ballistic motion (snowballs, your younger brother) and self-propelled motion (air planes, rockets). They really got it! At one point a plane flew overhead and they all pointed up and yelled, "SELF-PROPELLED!" 

We demo'ed John's son Brendan's trebuchet first, using it to launch water balloons. Not at anybody. Discussed why they are better than catapults. 

Then we moved through four different "rockets": rubber-band, air, water and chemical. We had two chemical rockets and shot each of them three times.  Got lots of volunteers--everyone had a chance to pull a pin or press a button or chase a rocket. Fun! Gorgeous weather for it, too. Whole thing went 1.25 hrs, not including setup, or later when John and Brendan and I snuck back with a ladder to get onto the roof to retrieve the blue rocket.

John and Brendan discussing which rocket will go higher--the larger or the smaller

In the center you can see the parachute and rocket descending

Sam, about to fire the trebuchet

Tim: "blah, blah, blah, science, blah, blah"

Rocket #2. We donated this one to Sam's class. They decorated it nicely ahead of time