(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!