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!

Costumes

This year, Vincent is a bat

and Eddie is Batman. (Blue Batman, to be specific; we have two Duplo Batmans, one black and one blue, and he wanted to be the blue one.)

There was some trick or treating in Eddie's school in the afternoon, after school let out, and then we went trick or treating after dark here in our neighborhood. There were some really spooky houses (with fog machines, scary sounds, moving automata, the works) which we skipped, and a lot of less-spooky houses giving out candy. We just went two blocks in each direction. It was chilly but not too cold—yesterday's snow has mostly melted, and tomorrow is supposed to be warm.

Skeleton story

Eddie brought home this picture from school and wrote the words at home. He was spelling the words out phonetically. It reads "I am Eddie Skeleton and I know somebody named Eddie who says he knows somebody who is called Mama AND he loves Mama."

First day of kindergarten

Two years after starting kindergarten in Canada, Eddie is starting kindergarten in the US!

He has been very excited. He went for an assessment last week, where he was asked to write his name, among other things. He later told us that he wrote the letters better than he ever had, because he is ready for kindergarten.

They gave him a coloring book to take home, and he carefully colored it in. He is taking kindergarten seriously.

Of course today is also eclipse day! That'll make his first day a bit more chaotic, I think. We're getting about 93% obscuration here.

Human prerogative

Eddie insists that animals cannot paint. I told him about Koko the gorilla and elephants that paint, but he claims I am telling him made-up stories, or talking about a human named "Koko the Gorilla", or just lying. He is ADAMANT about this.