Spring Break 2013

 

Spring already? Wasn’t January just yesterday? There is no true winter here, but trees around us signify the change: the flowers have all fallen from the Orchid trees and now the Silver Trumpets are like yellow Truffulas and the Jacarandas are just starting to offer us their lavender-purple blooms. The slippery months pass like weeks, weeks like days, and I haven’t updated Finn’s garden in — what? — a quarter of a year. No photos of Finn as ring-bearer in two family weddings, no Valentine’s poem to my heart-of-heart, no pictures of his St. Patty’s hat or latest artistic creations, nothing about his love of counting as high he can or his increasing hatred of bedtime, “the worst time.”

At the very least, with a bit of down time today, I must store away, secure, protect a few moments of our recent end-of-March Spring Break.

Finn spent some of his vacation visiting with family, joining his older cousins and Gram for an Easter Brunch…

…and hanging around the house and garden with his younger cousins, Sarah and Margot:

They ran around inside and outside, played on the playground, cooked lots of pretend soups and desserts, drew and colored space scenes, and, well, fought over toys. Finn isn’t always good at sharing, but he did read to them very maturely from one of his new favorites, a book about the robot WALL-E:

Finn reads to his cousins from Sarah on Vimeo.

Other important jobs over break included helping Daddy to plant green bean seeds in the vegetable garden…

and directing us to Legoland by drawing us a map as we drove:

At Legoland, although he refused to go on rides, Finn enjoyed exploring a giant “treehouse”…

…and traveling around to various Lego cities in “Miniland,” including NYC, Vegas, D.C., and cool spots not far from us, like South Beach…

…Key West, …

…and a place he’s been asking to visit (it’ll be our next trip, so shhhhhh!), Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center:

He also had a blast building and testing out a Lego car he made (and crashed) himself:

Still, much to our dismay, he claimed his favorite part of the trip was the ice cream (What? We drove three-and-a-half hours for ice cream?):

Back at home, we had even more fun, decorating and dyeing eggs…

and hunting for more eggs in the back yard:

After Finn had found his eggs and eaten the treats inside, he wanted to hide some for us. So he told us to wait on the patio while he prepared his own egg-hunt. We found eggs with messages inside, words he had sounded out and written himself: “I (heart) you,” and “grat gob” (great job). I’ve never enjoyed a misspelling so much: it was one of the sweetest mistakes I’ve seen.

Sometimes imperfections make things so much better. But I’m not sure that rule applies to family photos. One day we’ll get a good one…

But Spring Break was good — even though it went by much, much too quickly.

From garden to table…

 

Holiday Fun, 2012

So far, five days into winter vacation, Finn has celebrated the holidays in his first suit (donned for my brother’s wedding)…

…in his first (monogrammed) chef’s hat and coat, preparing food in his new kitchen (all courtesy of Grandmere)…

…and on his new playset, his holiday gift from Mommy and Daddy:

 

Can you believe we still have eleven days of vacation left?

Halloween 2012

Finn’s stellar space-themed party

Other than the twenty juice boxes I forgot to take out of the freezer and the fact that I wish I’d posted photos sooner, I can’t think of much else I’d want to change about Finn’s 4th birthday party. It was, I have to say, a blast.

Finn had a spectacular space banner hanging in his honor (thanks to a few of my very talented students who helped me out after school)…

…posters of himself in space on display…

…and inflatable planets hanging from the patio:

The rockets they’re holding are actually homemade contraptions my husband made by wrapping sticky foam paper around old film canisters, which, with assistance, were opened, inserted with pieces of alka-seltzer tablets and small quantities of water, and “launched” into the air after the kids decorated them with markers. I didn’t get photos of the launches, but this was a MAJOR hit. They just couldn’t get enough of it… especially the boy that came dressed in an adorable astronaut suit.

For those who just didn’t happen to have their own space suits at home, we took old-school polaroid shots of them as astronauts and gave them out as one of their party favors (along with space stickers and a copy of a National Geographic PLANETS reader).

Then the kids experimented with gravity inside of a bounce house and an inflatable slide, and a few romped around with a giant Earth ball:

Finn had an amazing time playing with his school friends, family friends, and relatives, slowing down only momentarily to snack on peanut-butter and jelly rocket-ship sandwiches, macaroni-and-cheese meteors, pesto puff pastry spiral galaxies, and vegan rice-crispy stars and moons. The only time he wasn’t socializing was when he was focused on something else: the cake.

I should say CAKES, to be more exact. Thanks to my sister Ilianna and her fiance Brian (who also did Finn’s 2nd birthday cake), there were NINE (yes, nine) of them: a delicious Sun and eight gorgeous planets:

We polished off the Sun and Jupiter pretty quickly, and clearly, they were a hit:

But, later, when I asked Finn what his favorite thing was, he said, “the Earth.” I assumed he was speaking of this…

No matter how we look at, though, I think it’s safe to say that it was a good day for Finn on Planet Earth.

Finn, aged 4, still on Earth

When people say, “I can’t believe he’s four already,” my first instinct is to agree, but the truth is that I can’t believe it’s been only four years. Part of that feeling, of course, is due to the fact that life BF (that is before you came along, my Finch) seems so very far away; the other reason is that you seem so very much older than three.

This past year you’ve become an artist, a reader, a student of geography, oceanography, and, most significantly, all things related to space. You’ve thrilled me by reading short sentences, stunned me by identifying all of the countries in South America, and entertained me with your crayon drawings of your teachers and friends, creatures of the deep, giraffes eating kale, bunnies in rocket-ships, your family floating around free of gravity in space, and, most often these days, what is beyond any of us: colorful nebulas and supernovae, red giant stars, blue supergiants, white dwarfs, and (even though they’re invisible) x-ray-emitting black holes. I love the fact that it’s the science that intrigues you rather than just speeding rockets (although you like those, too!). When we read your space books, I’m not just entertaining or teaching things to you; we’re two students learning things together, trying to make some sense of the mysterious vastness of the universe.

But interestingly enough, despite your obsessive fascination with space, it’s still your changing interaction with other inhabitants of our little planet Earth that’s characterized your growth most this year. You still have a lot to learn about the art of conversation (you always talk, talk, talk and rarely slow down to listen), but even so, you want to chat with, be with, play with others most of the time. Our departure from a  party, play date, or even simple gathering sometimes devastates you. This has made me hyper-conscious of the fact that you are an only child — and fiercely determined to surround you with a consistent, loving group of family and friends.

At school, though, separate from us, you’re part of your own community, and although this is a healthy part of growing up, it’s also brought hard lessons our way. Last May, when you were three-and-a-half, Daddy and I struggled to understand why you were suddenly alarmingly resistant, belligerent, and temperamental until we saw you interact with a “friend” at a classmate’s birthday party. The boy was a bully, encouraging you to engage in rough games during which he slammed into you, or, as you both called it, “crashed you,” a dynamic that we’re certain affected you psychologically during those trying weeks, leading to night terrors and aggressive behavior. Daddy and I talked with you and with Ms. Mary about staying away from this boy, and these days, despite the fact that he’s still in your class, you play with other kids instead. You’ve learned something that is so important — that you have the power to change the social dynamics of a bad situation.

You’ve also learned that these dynamics change even when you don’t want them to. When  you returned to school this August, you discovered that your best friend — the sweet one whom we all loved — left to attend kindergarten at another school. I was so worried about how you would handle the change, the loss. But you’ve found new friends to play with, and seem to mention new names every week. With Alex you’ll play “jumping on the moon,” with Caleb, jets, and with Lexi, something called “scrubbers” (during which, as I understand it, you run around “scrubbing people clean”). Next weekend at your birthday party, both new and former classmates will attend, as well as your friends from outside of school. You wanted to invite EVERYONE.

You see yourself now in relationship to others, and have become sensitive to how others see you. Yesterday you suddenly brought up how some of your friends who like character parties might be sad to discover that there will be no characters at yours. Has the peer pressure begun already, the desire to fit in? You understand how others fit in with one another, too. I know that this is normal, but part of me laments how, although I try to teach you not to generalize, you’ve still learned to categorize people at school. I’ve heard you distinguish yourself from the the “hot-lunchers,” talk about the “nappers” (a group to which — much to your joy — you no longer belong) and say with disdain that girls like pink and play with princesses. Still, outside of the milieu of school, two of your closest friends are girls with whom you LOVE to play music, “restaurant,” and any other activity under the moon. Although you’ve learned that labels exist, you still don’t let them limit you or your friendships.

You just love interacting with people — love it so much that you’ve decided that you’ll be an astronaut who, as you put it, only goes into space for very short trips. You may be obsessed with the makings of the universe, but in your heart-of-hearts, you love it right here.

I love you, too… as you say, “to the Pleaides.”

Back to school — as a real reader!

Before Finn’s third birthday last October, he was reading two-letter words off of index cards and sounding out three letter words with me as we read together. I was always enthusiastic; he was, as I saw it, occasionally reluctant. But after he told me one day that he “hated reading,” I paused, terrified. He’s always absolutely loved our nightly ritual of three or four books before bedtime, and I wasn’t willing to risk his joy — or mine. It was too important, too meaningful, too special. Besides, I figured, he’s at a Montessori school: he’ll make progress with it there.

Well… although he made progress in geography, in drawing, and in Spanish, his reading skills didn’t improve much by the end of the school year. So I resolved to make this summer a turning point for him. I used rewards, excessive cheerleading, LOTS of persistence, and quite of few deals (“if you help to read this one, I’ll read the next TWO,” or “Okay, we can stay up later to read ONE more — but only if you help”). I  took him regularly to the library to pick out tons of books, bought plenty of new ones, and got him to read “BOB” books with very simple words and sentences (albeit strange stories) that he can actually handle on his own (and, as a reward, color after he finishes). It’s working! When he returned to his preschool teacher last week, I was so excited to give her the news: Finn’s a reader now!

I’m so proud of you, Finch!