Boys Update

We took one of the ideas from the Fun For Nothin' group already. On Saturday we painted the concrete with a mixture of 1/4 c corn startch, 1/4 c water plus food colouring. It was a big hit, and I have already had requests from Andrew to do it again. Its funny, becuase whenever I look at photos of other kids doing these kinds of things they are always carefully holding their paintbrush and artfully drawing these amazing pictures on the street.
And then I do it with my children and we end up with blotches and drips all over the driveway everywhere from the back gate to the front step, plus two children and one adult covered in food colouring. We all went to church red and blue today.

The boys are both at pretty cute ages right now. Andrew seems to have come through his latest bout of being terrible, and adjusted to sleeping in his own bed. It ends up the issue was that HE got moved out of the bed and AARON did not. I explained that when Aaron was big like him, he would come and sleep in the boys room too. This explanation not only led to complete satisfaction on the moving rooms issue, but has led to the whole "I'm a big boy" stage that everyone talks about 3 yr olds going through. So my big boy is now occasionally dressing himself and putting on his own shoes, and very excited about helping his brother with boots, shoes, food, and whatever else I can think of to get him to help. I know most children his age are completely dressing themselves, but Andrew has a really high (low?) frustration threshold. If he can't get it right immediately he just starts screaming, and then he is so overcome with emotions that he can no longer function and about five minutes of panic, screaming, wailing, and finally doing something about it ensues. I have learned to just accept the wails as background noise and let him do it himself unless he is really having a bad day.

Andrew's imagination and language are still amazing, in my humble opinion. His latest thing is dinosoars. We watched a National Geographic video from the library about this paleontologist (Andrew remembers his names, but do you think I can?) who digs up a whole new variety of pseropod in the Sahara dessert. So everything is now about digging for bones, preparing for expeditions in jeeps and chasing little Aaron dinosoar around the house. He used the word "crucial" in proper context the other day, and yesterday when I suggested he might try to play peacefully with Aaron he said "that might be a bit of a challenge, mom." What three year old talks like that? It is pretty fun hearing the beginnings of narrative driven stories and individual characters developing in his pretend play, though.

Aaron has also levelled out a little bit. He is still wildly active -- climbing, trying to jump and, most recently, dancing up a storm every time he hears music. But he is starting to get more motor abilities and so he's quite happy about that. He has started putting on any pants he finds around the house, wether his or Andrew's, and he can get his own rubber boots on, too now. He is starting to use a few two word phrases -- "on shoes" and "mine shovel" most notably, and he's now picking up and responding to everything. If I am talking to Andrew about eating his carrots Aaron will pick up his carrot and point to it. When we mention that we're going out soon Aaron appears ready to go with his hat and one rubber boot on (usually still in a diaper and maybe a t-shirt). Its pretty funny. Unfortunately he's also in that really-hard-to-get-anything-done-with stage. Lots of banging, swinging, throwing and generally exploring and abusing anything that comes to hand. This includes dishes (one glass and one plate were casualties this week alone), brooms, large sticks, heavy rocks . .. he's a bit of a safety hazard. He also loves to walk himself and stoop to examine every single leaf, twig and grain of sand on the sidewalk wherever we go. So I'm learning that a walk to the park may, in fact, be a 40 min. walk and 10 min. stay at the park.

Summer is a good time for the boys. We are all a lot less stressed when we can get out and explore nature, soak in the sunshine and run in the open spaces. Here's hoping its a good, long, happy summer.