Catchup

Well it's been a week or so since I have posted an update. I think we have been working - the usual - just getting through days and working until it's sleep is overdue. Yes my job has been busy, but also we have been having daytime appointments. For example....

I think Tuesday we took Simon to visit a Montessouri school where we sat in on a classroom and the teacher tried to interact with him. On this day he was too freaked out by all the kids - I think it was the most kids he's been around in one place outside of a playground. Although they were all remarkably calm, all quietly working on something at tables or on the floor all across the classroom. In Montessouri schools, there is mostly this loose time where kids do whatever they want, among lots of constructive things, and receive guidance from teachers and peers.

So Veronika took him back on Wednesday to interact with the teacher. This time it went very well, and he did several tasks with her, such as puzzles, a latch box, etc. It seems like he "passed" since she later talked to Veronika about enrollment.

It's after midnight so I'm literally just typing, sorry, but I don't want to get too far behind.

Simon has been parrotting a lot of sentences we say, and a couple that always make me laugh are when he tells me "You're such a big boy, Papa!!", and "You're my boy!". Sometimes he'll just point at me or Veronika and yell "YOU!!" which is hysterical.

Anna's first mention!! She is now 10 months old, and it is only because her brother has more history that I have only written about him up to this point. But she herself has already provided plenty of things to write about. She now has 3 prominent teeth - 2 on the bottom and 1 on the top - so her wide-open grins now are rather jack-o-lantern-like, but she couldn't get any cuter. Her hair has become very blond, and I suspect by the end of the summer she'll be a total toe-head. It will be more noticeable once she really grows hair, which so far has remained just a light covering on her adorable little head.

I mean to post pictures with these updates and promise to do so. I haven't yet experimented with images in place but will. Hopefully this becomes a place I want to continue writing, but I need to ensure I can download these logs later on so they do not evaporate on someone else's hard drives.

OH right - so anyway, Anna has been crawling for couple months I guess, now she is very fast, and likes to climb the stairs. She's also climbing other stuff like store shelves. She appears to be rather fearless. Lately like in the last day or two she's started dancing!! She bobs her head and grins happily when she hears music she like. The head-bobbing usually involves most of her body though, especially when she's standing. Oh yeah, that's the other thing she likes to do, she's pulling herself up on furniture and standing - sometimes she gets so excited she starts a high-pitched shrieking like a monkey.

This is more on Simon. He's 2.9 YO. He has picked up some new comical lines. Yesterday he yelled to Veronika, pointing to the sky like a bandito, "GO MAKE COOKIES!", which in fact she was already doing. Today, while working on a water-color painting at the kitchen table, he chided Veronika and I to "Go Upstairs. Simon painting. Go Upstairs!". I don't think he fully realized however that he would be alone once we did go upstairs. In about a minute he yelled for us to come back.

This is the reason I started blogging. Simon asked his first question that I could not answer. He is not even 3 years old yet; maybe this in itself is not so remarkable; other kids are doing a lot of talking by this age. However his conversations are still developing and he spends a lot of time talking about robots.

Anyhow - We were sitting in his bed looking at books and things, and I guess he saw a picture of a starfish. Then he asked "Papa, do starfish have a eyes?" (He says "a" a lot, like instead of saying "the' - we don't press him for grammatical perfection at this point - it's kind of cute and he'll get there). I didn't know - to be honest I panicked a little bit - here it was, his first zinger, and I was totally unprepared for it. "Yes!" I blurted out - then I thought about where the eyes would be located, and...could not come up with any little spots that seemed to make sense. So then I changed my answer. "No" I said. I think I saw him mentally register that Papa was unsure.