The Construction Olympics

I was talking about the upcoming Olympics with J&D. I told them how there would be lots of different sports that we could watch – including soccer, and basketball, and running, and swimming, and gymnastics.

 

Daddy - “You guys are really going to like it, especially you, Dillon”

 

Dillon – “Oh.”

 

Jackson – “I’m going to like it too … [pause] … is there any construction in the Olympics?”

 

 

Misc Thoughts - Jackson (4 3/4 years old)

Jackson is a bundle of energy, and never seems to need to sleep. He often will still be awake at 8:15 or 8:30 (sometimes 9) after being put in bed around 7:30, and in the past 6 months or so he has started to wake up much earlier (for a while it was 6 or 6:30, more recently its been closer to 7). For a while it was really bad b/c he was keeping Dillon up late and waking him up early, and Dill just needs much more sleep than Jackson.

More recently, J has been a lot better about quietly leaving the room in the morning and doing something on his own so Dillon can keep sleeping. The first solution was the "Teacher Anne toy" - a great game with colored pegs that you used to make pictures (by following sample diagrams on a page). Jackson loved it, and was quite good at it (a little better than his brother at tracking how many pegs of each color to put on each row).

More recently, he's been using his workbooks - intro books that are helping him learn to write his letters and numbers, and to practice drawing lines, etc. Jackson loves these, too - he can occupy a full hour of quiet time or in the morning just sitting down and going through them over and over again. He's improving on his writing, but he's still quite a bit behind Dillon on forming letter and numbers.

Jackson is incredibly inquisitive and talkative - he asks about EVERYTHING ("what does XXX mean? Why do you do YYY?" etc.) It's really quite amazing how much that boy can talk! But he's also very smart, and has the most amazing memory. One recent example - the boys had some gummy worms from some party or something, and while J was eating one, he said "Dillon, this is just like the gummy worm we had in the car on the way to Black Butte last year, except that gummy worm had sugar on it too" -- which was true, although this was about 9 months after the BBR trip. He pulls out things like this all the time.

Sometimes we feel like a broken record with Jackson as we try to get him to stop doing something (harrassing either of his brothers, or putting his hands in his pants), and he never listens ... ah the joys of a 4 yr old. But he's a sweet kid, just like his brothers. :)

Misc Thoughts - Dillon (4 3/4 years old)

Dillon is currently obsessed with sports, especially basketball. He loves to shoot baskets on his little hoop in the backyard, and to do it on the bigger hoops at Colter's school. There is often a running commentary: "Daddy, you're Washington State (for some reason they show up a lot) and I'm Stanford, and it's 82 to 76." Or, "Daddy, look at me, I'm shooting 30-point baskets" (it started out that long shots were 3 pts, then 5, now 30! inflation...). He's a pretty good shot, too. He also likes to slam dunk it.

In addition to playing, he's obsessed with watching. We're in the midst of the '07-'08 playoffs now (tonight was actually game one of the finals - Lakers-Celtics) and he's wanted to watch every game he can. He loves to know which teams are playing, what color are they (uniforms), where is the game being played, and what's the score. It's been great, as this process (which has been going on for over a month now) has really helped both D&J get pretty good at the numbers between 20-100.

D&J also just finished up a soccer class session (Kidz love soccer). Dillon really liked it, and was pretty good (D seemed to like it more than J). They both loved to talk about how many goals they were going to score at each session.

Dillon has his challenging streak as well -- he can still be very sensitive and sometimes gets upset about little things - for example, when we head upstairs for bath time without him (if, say, he's still watching a b-ball game). He can also talk back quite a bit when he's getting in trouble (me-"Dillon, don't talk back to me" Dill -"You don't talk back!" Just today, Dillon got in trouble for chasing some kids at the park and spitting on a girl (twice!). He also loves to push Jackson's buttons, just as Jackson loves to push his buttons.

Misc thoughts - Tyler (16 months)

wow - it's hard to consistently post. I'm going to try to get back into this, even if it's just quick updates. There's far too much that goes on at various stages with the boys. At the time it is so obvious, but how quickly we forget...

Tyler - at 16 months now, he has been walking for a while (4 months? see what i mean!), and never sleeps enough. He is obsessed with flowers, and trees, so loves to point at them and make his trademark grunting sound. He also likes to point at various pictures in the house (esp. the one on the landing of the stairs - mommy, then jakson , then dillon). He's starting to respond to questions - e.g. "where's daddy?" and he looks at me. We've recently gotten out the first round of puzzles and he's having fun with those (in particular, the one with animals - "where's the duck tyler?").

He's a very fussy eater - some days it seems like he doesn't want to eat any solid foods, and only some of his milk. You often have to distract him with various toys/gadgets to make him drink at all. Arrghh! it can be so frustrating. When he does eat, he tends to favor pasta/bread and usually he likes proteins. When he's not hungry/cranky, he's such a sweet little man these days.

His older brothers like to treat him as an interactive toy, and we often repeat the mantra "guys, leave Tyler alone." "Jackson, put Tyler down. Jackson, don't pick up tyler. Jackson!" Poking him, or pouring dirt on his head, are also favorites. Speaking of dirt, Ty loves to eat it, and he loves to be outside.