Friday, February 21, 2014

We're Mellllltiiiing

All the snow that has piled up over the past two totally frozen months is now washing past the house on its way to the lake. Hello, rain! And  accompanying muddy slop. Gross.

Cubby summed it up nicely while he was staring out the window during lunch, "It's like everything you don't want outside."

Pretty much. And more of the same this weekend.

Have a lovely weekend, poppets. Here's hoping it's drier than ours.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

A.P.D.--The Literacy Edition

Last week, Cubby received many nice Valentine's Day cards from his preschool classmates. In fact, only Cubby and one other boy didn't make valentines for the whole class*. And without exception, every card was signed by the child.

Well. That's interesting, since not only is Cubby unable to write his name, he can't even recognize it. Or, more to the point, he won't.

It's kind of annoying how resistant he is to the whole idea of letters or numbers. If it's brought up, he announces with great certainty that he does not want to learn to read. Or tell time. Or write. No. No way.

I don't know why he's so stubborn about it. Probably because he recognizes this as an issue on which adults seem to fixate, and so he will deny their enthusiasm on the subject with flat rejection. He doesn't have much power over his life thus far, but he has this.

A power trip? From a four-year-old? Surely that's a little dramatic.

 Yeah, well, so is Cubby.

There's really no doubting Cubby's intelligence, so I'm not in the least concerned about this myself, except for what might happen when he starts kindergarten and may have to deal with certain age expectations. But since he's still a year and a half away from kindergarten, it's not really on my radar yet. I'm more concerned with trying to curb his incessant pretend shooting.

I don't remember when I learned to read myself, which leads me to suspect it might have been somewhat early.

So there's the question, my lovelies: When did you (or your children) learn how to read?

* Although, since we're talking three- and four-year-olds here, it's really their parents who didn't make any. Which would be, uh, me. Win!

Monday, February 17, 2014

Tattling

Although extremely personable and charming, Charlie is most definitely relentlessly naughty. Luckily for me, though, I have an older child who is happy to play the informer. Thus, the following news bulletins were relayed to me by Cubby during dinner preparations today:

"Charlie's using the phone!"

"Charlie's in the spice drawer!" (Which was the end of a full cup of zataar.)

"Charlie's crawling under the chair with the cat!"

"Charlie's got the fire tool and is dropping it into the stove!"

That last one earned a "DAMMIT" from me, which of course was repeated by my small mimic.

I might resort to frozen pizza one of these days, if only to save my nerves.