Rocking Christmas

Thanksgiving

Before the break, Vinci's preschool teachers asked their students about what they would do on Thanksgiving.

His comments: "We will have Thanksgiving at grandma and grandpas house. Mama will buy the turkey and Papa will cook it for 1000 minutes in our bedroom in the oven. He will put sparkles on it. We will also have blueberries, pizza and pears. I would like to invite Ms. Deb and Julian."

He made some correct predictions! Mama did buy the turkey, and Papa did cook it in the oven, although not quite for 1000 minutes and not in the oven in the kids' bedroom.

All Hallows' Eve

Vincent commented on "Trick or Treat Street" at Eddie's school (an after-school event, with teachers giving out treats along decorated "haunted" hallways):

"I really like the spooky decorations. Well, I REALLY like candy."

Octamonster

The authors Shannon and Dean Hale, and illustrator LeUyen Pham, behind the Princess in Black visited Eddie's school today!

We've read those books, and several other books drawn by LeUyen Pham, so this was very exciting.

Among the things they demonstrated was taking a random squiggle produced by a member of the audience, and turning it into a monster. Eddie demonstrated the technique after he got home, and produced this monster!

Apparently, the author-illustrator team also demonstrated sucking an egg into a bottle by placing it on top after putting burning paper inside.

First day of preschool

First day of first grade

Tooth fairy visit

Eddie was excited to find that the tooth fairy did indeed exchange a coin—a golden dollar—for his tooth. He also left a note for the tooth fairy under his pillow.

Lost tooth!

Eddie just lost his first tooth!

It has been loose for quite a while, and after incessant wiggling with his finger it finally came out.

Eddie is looking forward to putting it under his pillow and seeing what happens!

A surfeit of Vincis

Eddie's art exhibit

Map

Eddie got a book called "Maps and Mapping" from a Little Free Library and has been looking at it, and got the idea to create a map of the new layout of his and Vincent's room. There is a new bunk bed now, and each of the kids has his own desk to work on. Here's the map he made:

You can see "My desk" (the words are a little cut off by the scanner), the AC unit, the window (in blue), V's Desk (Eddie commented that this looks like "versus"), the bunk bed (with lots of fluffies on V's bottom bunk), the cat-shaped clock on the wall (upside down), and the closet door.

Relatives

Vinci, after returning from hanging out with his cousins: "I wanna be with my guys. I wanna be with my grand-brothers."

I asked if he meant Grandma and Grandpa, but he said no; he confirmed he meant his cousins. It seems like a pretty systematic word for that.

(Earlier, he kept referring to them as "Eddie's cousins"; I said "They're your cousins too!" and he said "Huh?")

Nursery rhyme a la Eddie

Eddie marched into the kitchen saying "The giant duck of New York."

I said "The giant duck of New York?"

He said "Yeah, the giant duck of New York, he had 10,000 men, he marched them up to the top of the hill and he marched them down again."

Hot air balloon

Eddie just showed up with this Lego creation (he claims he tried to tell me about it earlier, but I was ignoring him.)

Counting

Vincent was spending his morning taking a bunch of beads and other little things out of a bowl, lining them up around the coffee table, and putting them back. He did this several times and then asked Mama to count them. Then he corrected her when she miscounted—116 things, according to him.

Christmas 2017

We had a nice quiet Christmas here. Vincent is three now, and this was the first Christmas where he was really savvy to what was going on. He got up in the morning and urged us to go downstairs, telling Eddie "Santa will bring us presents!"

They were both excited to find the pile of presents which appeared under the tree. Vincent happily commented "Santa brought TOO MANY presents!" (which was pretty much right).

Vincent was really happy with every present he opened, and he was also eager to distribute everyone else's presents to them. He's able to recognize his own name, and Eddie's too.

Vinci was very proud to get his own little Lego set (as opposed to Duplo), just like Eddie has. He carefully put it together, with Eddie closely monitoring the whole time (directing him from the instructions). Vinci did very well assembling it—he seems to have stolen enough time with Eddie's Lego to develop substantial technical skill! He also dealt very gracefully with having "backseat builders" hovering over him, and just laughed when he made mistakes. I was very proud of him.

The final product

Edward meanwhile was very pleased to receive too many Legos of his own!