Imagination

Sophie has been using her imagination more and more. Here are a couple examples

Sophia making up a story on the spot, about witches and robots, and her friend William and his dad Kelvin get into the story somehow... I think it's about Dads taking kids trick-or-treating...


Here, she uses her imagination to read a book

Giggle Baby

Jacob is generally a happy kid, most of the time. He has his moments, when he gets really angry, and is hard to calm down. Those moments are few, however, and are fully compensated for by moments like this. Sophia (for some reason) had her socks on her hands and was playing with an ice cube tray and a bendable bracelet ring thingy, and Jacob found this utterly hilarious. It wasn't funny when Daddy or Mommy threw the bracelet thingy, but when his sister threw it, he couldn't control himself. There is indeed a special bond between brother and sister.

I dare you to watch this without laughing.

Eye Doctor

The whole family trekked out to the eye doctor today, and Sophia had her first ever eye exam. It was quite a painless experience, all in all, and Sophia's eyes are of course perfectly fine. The optometrist said that they usually start to look at children's eyes around 3 years old, and that the government pays for routine eye exams up till kids are like 18 years old or something like that. She also said that Sophia is a little bit farsighted but that's very normal for kids her age as they are still growing into their skulls, and the shape of their eyes will change. Jacob was along as well, but didn't get his eyes checked. Instead, he spent the time wandering around the attached glasses shop, charming the people working there and getting into absolutely everything.

A little side note - the eye doctor has a set of pictures of animals and such that she uses for younger kids and folks who can't read. No need to do that for Sophia, though - she did the regular eye chart with the letters. The eye doctor says that she almost never gets kids as young as Sophia that can use the letters for the eye test. Once again we discover (although we really already knew this) that our child is a genius.

 



(sorry, the sound is quiet in the video. Watch her feet jiggle as she concentrates)

Halloween Costume

What do you think?

 
 

New Park

The weather this fall has been quite strange. A snow day a week ago, and now it it is "unseasonably mild". A while ago, I noticed that there was a fancy new park where an old wooden one used to live, so we figured we'd go and check it out. The park has a big fake rock suitable for climbing in the middle, and a set of three climbing structures off of the rock with various scales of slides and climbing apparatii. There's even a pair of plastic drums, a car dashboard complete with transmission, and a voicepipe. All in all, quite the cool place. We have dubbed it "the orange park" since the pipes are orange and blue. We've ventured there many times since discovering it.

Sophia is always the most happy when she arrives at the park to discover more kids playing there. She always goes right up to them and introduces herself and starts to play. This usually means she instantly makes a friend and they play together until it's time to go. Once, however, there was a group of slightly older boys (maybe 6 or 7) who were playing their own gross boy games, and try as she might, Sophia was not allowed in to the group and she was even teased a bit. I felt bad for her but everything is a life lesson after all.

Here are some photos of the park

 
 

and here are some of Jacob in the leaves.

 


and, for reference, here is sophia in the same leaves a couple years ago

Tall Skinny Half-Caf Latte

 
(just kidding)

Sewing Fantastic

Tricia has been sewing up a storm lately, making all sorts of amazing things including pajamas and underpants for Sophie. Tricia's crowning achievement, however, was this year's Halloween costume. Sophia chose to be a witch, and Tricia made this stunning outfit. it took her a big chunk of time and effort but the result is worth it. More photos of Sophia wearing it will come soon.

 

Help with the Dishes

Jacob is such a little help around the house. Everything he sees is an opportunity to clean up, and generally contribute to the welfare of the household. Of course, that is what we'd like to believe, but really, he is always into everything. Sometimes its cute enough not to be completely annoying, as in this ultra-adorable discovery of the dishes. We made sure there were no super-sharp knives in the cutlery basket, of course.

Handwriting

Sophia has been practicing her "writing" and has been mimicking us as we make lists and things. Her dexterity with the pen is definitely improving, and she loves to play with her "phonics book", which is an enormous book of pre-k activities like drawing triangles and identifying which thing is biggest. She spends hours going through the book, and I think it is good practice for homework (never too early, right). She has been able to draw basic faces for a while now, most recently including eyes, ears, cheeks, nose and mouth, (all of which are round squiggles), this linear "list making" is a relatively new development. It's clear that she knows what writing more-or-less looks like, and is trying to replicate that.

 

Snow Day

October is a little early for snow, but this is saskatchewan after all and these things have been known to happen. It wasn't much snow, but we made the most of it, making rudimentary snow angels and little tiny snowmen.

 

 

 

Sophia loves to swing in the snow (go figure) and her favorite swing game is to knock daddy over. Daddy sometimes chooses not quite to go along with it, what with the grass stains and the falling over, but in the winter, it is much easier to fall over without significant damage to jeans, knees, or dignity, because of snow and extra padding. We can't really credit the snow and breaking a fall today, but the extra padding helped.

 
the windup...

 
and he's out! (see the nice snow angel?)

 

 

Getting along famously

Sophia and Jacob are siblings. And they do fight. Most recently, whenever Jacob pick up a toy and starts to play with it, Sophia suddenly gains interest and will grab it from him. A few weeks ago, Jacob would not mind, simply moving on to another toy which Sophia would then steal. But a few days ago, Jacob started to get indignant. Whether it's the new teeth (more evidence soon) or whether he is just starting to be aware of justice or is just inhereiting his father's temper (sorry my buddy), it is starting to change dynamics in the household. Sophia no longer gets away with grabbing Jacob's toys, and as a result, she often asks for "when sophie gets angry" as a bedtime story.

Regardless, the two of them get along very well most of the time. Here is evidence.

 
 

Excuses

Sophia must be hearing us make excuses from time to time because she came up with this masterful argument, completely bulletproof, that allows her to avoid anything she doesn't want to do. "My hands are full ... of hands". I mean, I can understand it if her hands were full, say, of toys that she was picking up off the floor, or if her hands were full of dinner she was preparing, but apparently, hands are enough to fill hands and prevent any kind of work. Here she is avoiding brushing her teeth...

Sound Effects, with blocks

Sophie loves to play with blocks, and for the longest time her block-playing has consisted of knocking over the towers I build for her. But recently she has discovered something new - when she puts two "fireplaces" (as I call them, you may know them as "arches") together, arch-to-arch, she apparently produces a camera. This alone is sufficient proof that she has an amazing imagination, but she also produces the sound that goes along with the camera. Now what do you suppose the sound of a camera is, exactly? "click", perhaps? or the less onomatopoeic but more common "snap"? Nope, for our daughter, the sound of the camera is "chick-zot". just listen for yourself...

(No) Singing at the table

Sophia was demonstrating her beautiful singing voice at dinner recently, showing off her numerous french songs she is learning in class, including "bonjour mezzamy". And although most of these videos were incoherent, slightly embarrassed, or mouth-full gross, this photo pretty much says it all...

Forms of artistic expression, part 2

Jacob has chosen a more traditional route, working in the medium of lego bricks. as you can see, he gets right in to the work, almost surrounding himself with his building materials. His approach to this traditional artistic form is, however, very non-traditional, since he mostly just sucks on the bricks. Some are calling it "performance art"...

(Bottom picture is a link to a video)

 
 
 

Forms of artistic expression, part 1

Sophia has been painting in preschool. Amazing stuff, very abstract, but very consistent in form and colour. Random splotches in abstract art are one thing ("my three-year-old could do") but she routinely repeats colour forms and patterns, and often creates a series of two or three related works. Here is her current set (we have a wall for these things) along with a close-up of each. Particularly look at the first two for a good example of a pair of related works...

 
 
 
  
 

Backyardigans Live!

Back on the 26th of september, Sophia and I went to see the backyardigans live. We had a good time:



It was quite a new experience for her, in the concert hall for an actual show - she'd been there before for a rehearsal of a choir performance I was in, but that wasn't when the hall was full of people. and when I say people, I mean 3-to-9-year-olds in various stages of scream. To be fair, most of the kids were pretty well behaved, and most of the adults were too. At one point in the evening, Sophia leaned over to the perfect stranger beside her and asked if she could have some of his popcorn. In another circumstance, I would be terrified for her safety and worried about her manners, but in this case the man was a parent of a child who was almost the same age and also loved the backyardigans, so things were pretty safe, and he was happy to share his popcorn.

The show was well received and quite interesting to Sophia and to Daddy - they took songs from several episodes (for those of you who watch the backyardigans) and stitched them together into a new plot which included a "real" person as well as stagehands in mascot suits. Most of the sound, the music and dialog, was pre-recorded so all the puffy suit people had to do was move along and wave their hands so everyone knew who was speaking. I suppose it was the only way to make it work, though, because the kids would be expecting the voices they remember, and if the show had adults who were dressed kind of like the backyardigans and pretending to be children, it would be a bit creepy...

Anyway, we really liked it. After the show, Sophia was a little quiet, and as we asked her all sorts of probing questions trying to get commentary and opinion, she didn't have much to say. After a few days she talked about it more, but at the time she was more overwhelmed. From time to time she has talked about going to see the backyardigans again and then we have to explain that it's not likely to happen for a while.

We resisted the lure to purchase overpriced stuffed toys and strange LED-light fans with backyardigans stickers on them.

For an idea of what it looks like, click here. It's a different show but you can get the general idea.

One Year Stats

So we have been to see a pediatrician, a general practitioner, and a health clinic nurse, who have each weighed and measured little Jacob. Each of those visits was for a different issue, but more on that later.

Anyway, they all agreed on his stats:
WEIGHT: 17.5 pounds (7.8 kgs roughly)
HEIGHT: 28.5 inches

Now, he is still a little below the 10th percentile for both weight and height, but he is still consistent. We need to track his growth and go back to see the GP in three months to make sure that he is continuing to increase or maintain percentiles, rather than dropping. The long and short of it is that he is a little guy, a healthy little guy (who gets into everything!) but he's smaller than average, so they want to keep an eye on him.

Here's his birth stats for comparison's sake:
WEIGHT: 5 pounds 12 ounces
HEIGHT: 18 inches.

Translates into: itty bitty.

Way to grow, Mr.J!