Reading and Writing

Disclaimer: Some ghostwriting from Emile.

Watching literacy happen is a fascinating thing. Larkin has been interested in words, letters and writing for a long time, but it seems like the last week or two has seen a real explosion in synthesis.

The "rhyming game" has been a popular one for quite a while... someone says a word and then we take turns listing other words that rhyme with it. We've also been playing a version of 20 Questions (which, for our purposes, is more accurately Infinite Questions). In the last couple weeks, one of the clues Larkin hands out (which she often likes to do even if we don't want them yet) is what letter the item in question starts with.

Reading has been a huge activity lately, for both kids. We read all of Charlotte's Web in 5 days last week. Graphic novels are very popular... we can easily burn through a "Bone" in one sitting if my voice holds out. They ask me to point to the character who is speaking as I read so it's less confusing. Last time we read the latest Bone, Larkin would occasionally stop me and point to one of the words in a dialog bubble saying something like "that must be 'close' because it has an 'o' in it."

Emile and Larkin have been reading the Harry Potter books at bedtime. I admit to being a little peeved that I am not the chosen bedtime reader. :) They're already in Book Three and a whole new chapter of imaginary play has been inspired.

Last night we were listening to some classical music (bear with me, this is not a total non sequitor). When Beethoven's 9th symphony came on, Larkin listened for a moment then threw her arms in the air and announced, "this is the best music in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD!" Later, when we were talking about who wrote the music she enjoyed so much, I mentioned that his first name was Ludwig. Her next statement confounded me for a minute before I figured out that she said, "Ludwig has a 'wig' just like Hedwig has a 'wig.'" I'm so pleased that, in her mind, Harry Potter's owl and Beethoven have a wig in common.

Alphabet books have seen a recent surge in popularity, too. Especially the horse/cowboy alphabet books. Finn likes them because they have horses and cowboys... Larkin likes to find every incident of the letter-of-the-page.

Writing continues to be one of Larkin's favored art forms... she still likes to copy text that we have written. She has liked to type on the computer for a long time as well, typically making blocks of repeated symbols. Yesterday she asked Emile to set up the computer for typing and fetch her catapult (from Eli, a board with a fulcrum so you can stomp on one end to launch things from the other). Why? She wanted something with her name written on it to try to copy. After all had been arranged, and CAPSLOCK adjusted so that symbols showing up onscreen would match the letters on the keys she went ahead and copied LARKIN.

When she has wanted to type her name in the past it's mostly just been "Ok, what's the next letter?" after each one, wanting us to show her the key. This time, the first time through her first name she mostly just wanted some general hints about where on the keyboard the next letter came, and reassurance that she had the right letter once she found it. Then she wanted to copy her full name from something, so Emile typed it out and positioned the cursor one line down. This time through again she wanted the name of the letter said but for the most part seemed to be finding them from the name.

Then she wanted to know how Emile could type her name so fast. "Hours and hours and hours and hours of practice typing."

There is definitely a literacy revolution afoot.

Matrimony

One of our exciting holiday celebrations this year was Don and Vicki's wedding. Larkin and Finn were thrilled to be involved, and for their benefit it was partly a costume wedding. Larkin wore her brand new princess dress and Finn dressed in his cowboy duds. Their mission was to follow Don and Vicki down the aisle (with Emile, as it turned out) and deliver the rings to the officiants. They performed their duties with great aplomb and made their way to their seats for the remainder of the ceremony.

Finn lasted about thirty seconds. I whispered that we needed to sit quietly so everyone could hear the ceremony. He said he would just go hang out in back. I re-emphasized that quiet was paramount. He said, "That's okay-- I'll sneak." So he hopped down from his seat, assumed a half-crouched subtle, sneaking posture, and loudly stomped his big cowboy boots all the way back down the aisle to where Jim was DJ-ing in back. It's a good thing little kids are cute... and that the bride and groom in question were very tolerant grandparents.

At the reception dinner, Vicki produced an attention-getting silver whistle when the toasts started. Larkin *really* wanted to blow that whistle. I explained that it was only getting blown as people got up to say a few words about Don, Vicki and/or the wedding. Her response was immediate: "Well, then... *I'll* make a toast!" After the most ear-splitting whistle of the night, Larkin stood up on her chair, raised her glass, and announced "I'm glad Grandma and Grandpa got married!"

It was a lovely wedding, Don and Vicki made some very thoughtful allowances for the kids, and a splendid time was had by all.

Preoccupation

While Larkin was sewing buttons on a hankie, she suddenly realized that was something she could do as a job. Later that night, she asked Emile to make a list of all the things she might do as employment one day (as dictated by herself, naturally):

animal helper
baseball player
light fixer
yoyo champion
finder
builder
bouquet seller
dressmaker
rescue center worker (like diego)
teapot fixer
sewer
knitter
light fixer (yes, this one came up twice)
boardgame seller
painter

Emile asked what she liked doing most right now, and the immediate answer was "digging up buried treasure!" When Emile told her there were actually people *in the real world* (a big point of distinction in our house) who were treasure hunters, she immediately declared that was her intended vocation.

A quick web search revealed a TV show dedicated to real life treasure hunts. An episode is at the top of our Netflix queue.

Sundry Vignettes

On our trip down to Tahoe, we stopped at a restaurant for dinner. It was one of those restaurants where they bring you a small loaf of bread on a board with a knife. Our waitress made what I thought was an oddly exaggerated statement of how sharp the knife was. She also made a point of mentioning that the knives included in the napkin-wrapped utensil sets were sharp steak knives. Finn has been fascinated with knives and cutting lately, so of course he ended up with the bread board in front of him and spent a great deal of the dinner slashing the loaf into ribbons. He uses sharp knives quite often at home... we watch him closely and move his hands into a safer position when necessary. We got odd looks from a couple of the other diners and I was sure our waitress was going to say something several times on her way by, but she never actually did. I had no idea why everyone was behaving so bizarrely and chocked it up to being back in California. I didn't realize until we were getting back into the car that Finn had decorated every one of his fingertips with a bandaid before we left home.

It continues to be very amusing to see how Eli and Larkin play when they are together. And people say young kids don't fully understand the fine art of compromise. The big, all-consuming game they played last time they were together was the Care and Feeding of Zombie Babies. Think about it. It's a dilemma.

A couple Eli and Larkin exchanges:

L: Oh no! A dinosaur is coming! Let's defeat it.
E: There are no dinosaurs. They were all destroyed millions of years ago when a giant meteor hit the earth.
L (exasperated): I KNOW about the meteor! I'm *pretending*.

L: Let's play wedding!
E: Uh... are we allowed to do that?

I have often been annoyed by the lack of an equivalent to "starving" for being very very thirsty (parched just doesn't cut it somehow). Larkin recently noticed this lack and (after a pause in the middle of the sentence in which it was required) inserted "droughted." I like it.

We have never tried to convince the kids that Santa Claus is real. We have also never told them that he is not (although last year I did ask Larkin if she wanted a gift we were wrapping for Emile to be labeled from us or from Santa). A few days ago, totally out of the blue, Larkin told me that she wanted us to pretend that Santa Claus was real this year. I asked her what that would mean and she said they should have stockings and presents "from Santa." (If she knew about air quotes she would have used them, I swear.) I asked if there was something she wanted us to do differently than last year in that regard (since we did stockings and presents, although we never specified who they were from). She said that she just thought it would be fun to pretend that Santa actually brought the presents that we bought, and we should talk about him more. Yeesh, Finn is going to end up confused.

And finally, it has been very cold lately. Larkin still likes to wear summer dresses, but will wear pants under them and a coat on top when we go outside. On this particular day, she was wearing a sleeveless summer dress. We were leaving the Book Exchange (which contained a large number of other people happily browsing for books), when she stopped very dramatically and announced loudly: "I shall need a coat, for I am dis-armed."

Payback

Larkin has declared that the only m&ms she likes are the dark brown ones. The other ones taste funny. Those of you who know my personal history with m&ms are presumably already amused. For the rest of you, here is the stuff of Hamilton Lore:

When I was a wee bairn (5? Help me out here, parents) I claimed I could taste the difference between different colored m&ms. Jim, as the supportive parent he has always been, demanded a scientific trial so he could prove me wrong. Out came the blindfold and what he figured was a statistical sample of m&ms. The results? I got every single one right. Okay, actually I think I couldn't tell the difference between light brown and dark brown (I'm aging myself by remembering the light brown ones), but it sounds better to claim a perfect record. After simmering down from the heights of disbelief, Jim and Mary figured I could probably actually taste the different dyes used in the candy coating.

Granted, the m&ms we have now are the hippie version and it's not so hard for me to believe that whatever vegetable/fruit extracts they use in the dye are slightly more flavorific than red #357 and blue #123 or whatever it is in name brand candy these days. So far, no one has been blindfolded in the name of science (well, not recently anyway), but I think I might see if Larkin will agree to the experiment.

In the meantime, I guess Emile will have a lot of yellow, orange and red m&ms as work snacks in the trailer.

Tahoe!

We spent a week by Lake Tahoe with the San Jose Cousins to study the lives of off-season yuppies. The trip was a 6.5 hour drive (as in time actually spent on the road) and we were quite pleased to find out how easy car trips are these days. We read books, played pretend games, sang songs, ate weird food, peed by the side of the road, drew pictures and generally made very good time. Sleep cycles were thrown a bit out of whack, but that is an easy, no-questions trade for babies who don't want to be in a car seat and want to nurse all the time.

The kids were Super Excited to spend more time with baby Kiyo (and, um, her minders, of course).
They danced for her, sang for her, cuddled her, provided tummy time surfaces for her to lay on and were generally thrilled by her existence even during her rare fussy moments. Finn even doled out some pithy parenting advice while covering his ears with his hands to block out the sounds of crying baby: "Hurry up with that boob! That baby's hungry!" and a slightly panicked "Bounce her! Bounce her! She's not happy!"

Larkin made fast friends with another 4.5 year old who was staying in the same complex as us... a short, flurried exchange of cards is presumably in the works.

Elly and Janelle, bless their fuzzy little hearts, also gave Emile and I several opportunities to flee from the condo and its inherent chaos to take hikes at normal adult speeds and/or loll about in a coffee shop. They made up several brand new pretend games and spent lots of quality time in the hot tub with the kids. No value can be set on adults ready to play (almost) all the time. At this point, it's kind of a toss up whether a "vacation" is going to be absolutely draining or actually refreshing, and this turned out to be one of the latter. Woohoo!

Many thanks to Uncle Ken and Aunt Molleen for passing on the time-share opportunity.

Pirate Booty

This month, while Felix was staying with us, the kids received the following letter from one Ezekiel Haul IV:
This was the beginning of a several hour adventure during which seven clues were found hanging in trees, under a grate, off a fencepost, inside an old wood stove, underground and in a treehouse. The walk was crazy amusing... Larkin could hardly believe this was actually happening and talked nonstop (literally... we couldn't get a word in edgewise, even when she was supposedly asking us questions) about whether there was actually *real* treasure at the end of all the clues and who the pirates were and why the letter would have been sent to her and Finn and what the treasure might be if it turned out to be real and whether the next clue would lead to another clue or to the treasure and I think you get the general idea. Meanwhile, Finn was turning over every leaf and picking up every stick and declaring them all clues ("AHA! I found a CLUE!") and generally needing to be cajoled to keep up with the leading treasure hunt party. In the end, I think Finn ended up finding two of the clues and Larkin found the others. Here are a couple of the discoveries:


Finally, they found the X that marked the spot and started to dig:
When the treasure turned out to be a whole chest of booty, Larkin was initially stunned completely speechless (and that's saying a lot). Note shocked posture here:
But, really, if you dug a hole in your backyard and discovered this:
Wouldn't you be flummoxed? Finn's response was a little more sanguine. He gave a great shout of "YAY! Treasure!" and threw a handful up in the air. Larkin's summation of the experience: "Pirates might be mean, but they sure have beautiful booty!" Many hours admiring, sorting, wearing and generally fondling the treasure have since been joyfully spent.

Full photo documentation of the hunt can be seen at our Picasaweb site.