Growing and Changing and Staying the Same

Thomas has been going to school a few days a week for a month now and he's becoming more and more a Montessori kid. After the first week, he insisted on putting his dish in the sink after he finished eating, and tucked in his chair as he left the table. A few days later, he went and got a stool from the bathroom, carried it into the kitchen, got into our utensil drawer, got a spoon and told me he'd like some yogurt. Had he been able to open the fridge, I'm sure he would have managed to get his yogurt as well.

I welcome this independence from him because, thus far, he has been my most helpless child. He drops something, he looks to me to pick it up. If he has a cup of water and is finished drinking it, he will find me and give it to me so that I can put it down somewhere. He has two doting sisters who treat him like a little Prince and he has me wrapped around his little finger, so it's no surprise, I guess, that he is slow to do things for himself.

Thomas is still a very social and outgoing guy- charming even those to whom I think he is rude. He has no problem telling others when he doesn't like something. A lady at the school gave him a weird look (a nice, weird look, mind you) and he told her to stop it as he pointed at her and gave her a very serious look. He tells the older kids to leave him alone, and to be nice, and to go away. He says to me, now, when he's unhappy with me, "Mamma! Don't be mean! Be nice! You're rude! I'm not your friend.... EVAH! EVAH!" Yeeks. He gets the "I'm not your friend" thing from Callan- who was on that kick for a while a month or so ago, and gets the other stuff from me when I'm correcting him for talking so frankly to people. On the upside, most males cannot express their feelings. He has no problem with it thus far. And, to be fair, Thomas is very charming and usually has only very nice things to say to people. He gets along well with everyone and people see him and are drawn to his feisty little self. So expressing his feelings and being forthright are two things he's picked up from his sisters (and the rest of us- we're all kind of loud and outspoken). But Thomas also has picked up on liking the girls' stuff too. We were in a store before Halloween and he suddenly screamed "HANNAH MONTANA!!! HANNAH MONTANA!!! I LIKE HER!"

Thomas is IN LOVE with "Bea'" (how should we spell this?) right now. Up until a few weeks ago, he was head over heels for Papa, but now it's all about Bea. My mom was gone last week and the first day they were back we went over to see them and when it was time to go, he said " No, Mamma. I stay at Bea's house. Bea's home now! Yeah." And he handed me my keys and said "Bye Mamma. I love you!" and that was it!

I'm glad he loves his grandfolks and I'm thankful that he has them close. I have such fond memories of being with my grandmas as a kid. From getting Finch birds at the swapmeet and drinking out of those cold, brightly colored metal cups at the swapmeet with my Grandma BoBo (my dad's mom) or Grandma BoBo's turtles hiding on newspaper in her spare closet and being amazed with her rock tumbler, or the many times I spent the night with Grandma Bo (who was then Grandma FiFi) and having those wonderful sort-of-crispy-pancakes for breakfast, or eating dinner at the table with Grandma and the way there was always bread and butter on the table (unless a ball game was one, then we'd all eat on the tv trays in the living room and watch the Dodgers and drink high balls- mine was a 7Up), walking the dog every evening after dinner, and taking turns on the family room tv w/ my cousin when he wanted to watch Dukes of Hazard and I wanted to watch something else. Or being forced to watch 60 minutes and thinking that when they show that second hand ticking up to the 60 right before they click to commercial, that it sure seemed like it'd hit 60 waaay before that darn boring show ended (I was thinking it was 60 seconds, not 60 minutes). All those fun memories are treasured and I'm glad my kids will have their own.

Callan is reading more and more, learning all the little tricks that change the sounds the letters are supposed to make. She learned earlier this week to tie her shoe, which is amazing since she hardly ever wears shoes with laces. She was zooming right along in her piano book, taking pride (and voicing it) that she was catching up on her sister (who had up until recently, refused to practice) and now, in the last week and a half, hasn't been too excited about piano- I think she hit a difficult song. She is loving loving soccer still and is sad that her first season is coming to an end. We're planning to play in the Spring too, so no circus for us this year. We've signed up for a month of swimming lessons and Callan is really liking that. It works out perfectly because it's during the time of Emmy's dance class. I have a feeling, though, that she's going to want to keep doing it for a while. She enjoys school and enjoys her friends. She told me today that all she did at school was one piece of work, but explained that it was a big work, that it was grammar and that it was hard. Callan has a strong resolve, she focuses well and doesn't frustrate easily. The kid, a lot of times, out thinks me. She's got an analytical mind on her, and that, paired with her dry humor, makes her hilarious.

Emmy's still wearing soccer cleats to school half the days and singing her Hannah Montana songs. She's been playing soccer with the boys at school during recess, but lately has told me some of the other girls are playing now too. She's doing a dance class at school and she loves it.

As far as schoolwork goes, she enjoys math the most, I think. In her spare time, she is either conducting class (which she does quite well), writing poetry or her "rock songs (which are quite good), or reading. She's been reading a book a night for the last two weeks and is out of books. I was thinking at this rate we'd better start heading ot the library more often, but tonight, she decided she'd read Harry Potter now and she read the first chapter of that instead of whizzing through one of her Jack & Annie Books or whatever other old chapter books she's found lying around.

Emmy's verbal and artistic skills have always amazed me- even when she was a wee one drawing happy faces- they always had chins and dimples and eye lashes, her people had elbows and knees and such. She's quite the actor too and with her well-projected voice, I can see her in musical theater, though, at home she's mostly playing director, telling Callan and Thomas when to enter and exit the stage, what to say, how to say it, etc. Tonight I had someone from her school come up to me and tell me that they were going to gather some information on the different theater troupes in the area because "that kid needs to be on a stage." Emmy's a good kid. I worried for a while as we were venturing into the "big girl realm" of Hannah Montana and Radio Disney in the car instead of Kids Place Live..... But I'm ok. My sweet, level-headed Emmy is still there. She's growing up, but she's not completely morphing into a devil kid, thank God ("not yet"- I bet some of you are saying).