Party, party

We went to Claire's third Birthday party this morning - a beautiful day for a party in a park. Cal, Dec and Aidan played soccer (Cal got marks on his knees from falling over on "the green stuff" - ah, my urban boy). The Cal and I zoomed off to North Sydney so he could go to Angela's 6th Birthday party (more soccer and a pinata). Then back to Leichhart for lunch and more soccer in the back yard. A huge and very fun day.

Sickness

Callum has had a cold all week, and stayed home from school on Tuesday (at our suggestion) and Friday (his own suggestion). I was a bit worried that he'd realised after Tuesday that school was optional if you were sick, and decided to take matters into his own hands, but Evan assures me that Callum was pining after school during the day.

Courtesy of this latest cold, it seems he may have finally learned how to blow his nose.

Cal's big effort

Many things about Callum choke me up, but over the last few days he's surpassed himself as he tries so very, very hard to stop saying 'f' for 'th'. He's been saying 'free' for 'three', 'fick' for 'thick', and so on. A few days ago I really noticed and showed him where his tongue should be. Since then he's just tried so hard (and if you've ever tried to change the way your tongue does something automatically, you know how hard it is) to change. With great effort he's got it down pat as long as the 'th' sound is accompanied by a vigorous nod of the head which, in endeavouring to teach him the tongue movement, I fear I've convinced him is part of the communication process.

Parties

I think Declan's been noticing that Callum's been to quite a few birthday parties lately (it seems that most of the kids in his class are inviting the whole class). Today he asked me plaintively whether Claire was his friend, so that he would be going to Claire's party, and not Callum. I'm not sure if he was satisfied with my answer that Claire was Callum's friend, too, and so both of them would be going.

Declan events

Declan's swimming is improving significantly. While he can't breathe he's doing a good job of kicking and moving his arms.

His reading seems to be more than a flash in the pan too, he's added several words to his range and is making a fair fist at the beginnings of sounding things out.

Shocked

Callum has a favourite phrase when he learns something he deems amazing: "Evan, I'm shocked at that information." It is invariably accompanied by his shocked look of wide-open eyes and rounded mouth.

Fort Denison

We took the boys to Fort Denison on the weekend. We've been pointing it out to them while walking across the Harbour Bridge and catching the ferry to Manly, so we decided it was about time we took them there.

It was a beautiful day, and both boys enjoyed it. The guide gave a few set piece speeches, and after the last one, when she asked, " any questions", Declan put his hand up, politely, and waited with his hand up while she answered Evan's question (he got in first). He got a bit shy when being asked what his question was, but he was quite chuffed (once we'd figured out what it was) to have it answered.

When we got home, both boys decided that they had to draw Fort Denison, and Declan made his drawing into a book, to be taken into Neutral Bay Kindergarten for Show and Tell the next day.

Rapper C

I went to the School's assembly yesterday. Cal's class performed for everyone. They did this wonderful rap about the class and their day written by one of the class parents (who's a professional musician). They were all utterly cute in their jeans, white shirts, sunglasses and caps (although Cal's clearly inherited his father's sense of rhythm).

Cal also got a merit certificate and two good work cards, much to both our delight.

D read red

We have pretty tough rules on when the kids started reading as opposed to recognising the shapes of a few words. I've been uncertain on which side of the line Declan has fallen with reading 'yes'.

During the week Declan has managed a couple of more words without much reference point. Last night we were reading a lovely, but obscure, book which has some lyrical text to a series of Van Gogh pictures. I asked him and he read, and he sounded out, the word 'red': which falls solidly on the reading side of the card for me.

Reading

Last night Declan and Evan were reading a book, and Declan read the words "yes, yes, yes" without any help. I think he's worked out that word from computer games. So that makes two words he's read without pictorial help - no and yes. Unfortunately the word "no" is the word that most often gets used in conversation.

Why left to right?

Something to muse upon. Declan has been doing a lot of writing letters recently. He writes them right-to-left which is a thing a great many kids seem to do. Which raised the question why do we write left-to-right when there seems to be a natural tendency to go the other way and many alphabets go the other way. A bit of research has revealed no answer although early alphabets all seems to go right-left a fact that seem to be attributed to the use of scrolls (although I also wonder if it is easier to chip a rock in that direction if you're right handed?)

Mr Contrary and cutting to the chase

Declan boggles my mind. He is unbelievably stubborn and mulish. He simply will not do anything when asked, in fact asking is a good way not to get a thing done. This doesn't apply to his whole life just anything that looks either time-sensitive or like a chore: getting dressed, getting undressed, tidying up, etc, etc. Only one tactic seems to have any impact: the compressed narrative.

It goes like this. "Declan, if you don't put your shoes on I'm going to have to ask you again. The I'm going to raise my voice. Then I'm going to shout at you. Then I'm going to send you to the stairs and pretend to leave the house without you. That's going to make you sad and you'll cry. And then you'll put your shoes on. So why don't we just pretend to have done all that that and you put your shoes on?" At this point Declan generally gives a Hmmph and puts his shoes on.

Routine changes

We've been fiddling with a routine that had been set in stone for a long time.

A couple of weeks ago we decided, as it was school holidays, to try putting the boys to bed later in the hope that they might wake up later in the morning. Nope. Just meant they went to bed later: it makes no difference to the morning, so they're back to 7pm bed-time.

The second change has been much more successful. We've moved from an evening bath to a morning shower. It gives us more time in the evenings, uses less water and is probably a better clean for the boys. I'm hoping it will withstand the change back to a school-term regime.

Sore ...

Poor Declan is a bit unhappy. He has an infection - I'll refrain from saying where as I don't want people searching for bad things to hit this site, but it's awkward. He's responding well to antibiotics after a highly dramatic trip to the doctor.

Writing

Last night, Declan decided to have a go at writing a letter - "Dear Granny, love Declan". After getting my advice on the letters in dear, and writing G, he decided to cut to the chase and write "Declan". He's been able to type it for a while, but this was his first attempt at writing it. I was very pleased with him. Although he wrote from right to left, and a few letters were also backwards, they were all clearly recognisable and in order, and without any help from me.

He was also very chuffed with himself, and demanded to immediately post the results to Granny (I'm not sure I want to give away such a milestone piece of writing, myself).

Holiday

We just had a mini-holiday - a trip to Canberra. We mainly decided to go there because of Questacon; we thought (rightly) that the boys would love it. But we also went to the Canberra Zoo, the Black Mountain Tower, and a fairly ridiculous place called Cockington Green (miniature english villages, but also a ride on steam train).

Everyone had a great time, and Questacon was indeed excellent - the standout gallery was the one about geology, which had demonstrations of earthquakes, landslides and cyclones. Also a lot of fun was the preschoolers section, which had fabulous set of different ways to play with water, including sluice gates and an archimedes screw.

The other reason we went there is that we thought cold might be fun; it wasn't. The excitement of seeing frost on the grass and being able to see your own breath was outweighed by freezing cold walk to the cafe around the corner from our apartment. Still, it was fun, and when we got home tonight, Declan asked if we were going on another holiday tomorrow.

It's genetic

We were stopped at the traffic lights in North Sydney when Callum pointed to the painted advertisement on a shop window and exclaimed with great disgust: "Evan, they've forgotten to put in the apostrophe!". His grandmother must be proud.

Swimming update

The boys finished their swimming term on Friday. They both appear to be doing OK but not spectacularly. Callum continues to show willing but has not quite mastered what's required. Declan does not seem to like his teacher and refuses to cooperate during the lesson and then goes on to do all the things when we play afterwards.

Egyptian mythology

Cal just did a two-day course on Egyptian Mythology. He had a great time and was completely unfazed by the more gruesome aspects. He appears to have a very firm grasp of something being true and something being only fiction or a story.

He now knows a frightening amount about Egyptian gods (did you know there are two jackal-headed dogs, and Anubis is the one with pointy ears, the other less-interesting, but apparently scary, one has the points chopped off. No? Well now you can join the Lang-Predavec family in having gained this useful knowledge.)

What am I?

We have a game we play anywhere the boys are trapped without entertainment (a car or public transport) - "what am I?" When we first started, Declan wasn't very good, but now he likes it so much that he usually initiates it.

Declan's favourite animals are a giraffe - "I have four legs, and a very tall neck, and brown spots, and I live in Africa", and a blue whale - "I am a very big animal and I live in the ocean". Callum's favourites are a shark "I live in the sea, and I am grey, and I chase other things especially fish", and a rhinocerous beetle "I am small but I am the strongest animal in the world".

We were playing it on the ferry this afternoon, on the way back from an expedition to Darling Harbour, and Declan and Callum were anticipating fast enough that they were working out each others' animals even before Evan and I had time to figure it out and pretend we didn't know.