November

At the Thanksgiving Feast event at school.

Look how much taller than the leaf bag he is this year!

We loved looking after the kindergarten rats over Thanksgiving.

Ice skating at Skyline Park.

October

At Cousin Margaret's wedding


School field trip to Berry Patch Farms


Carving his pumpkin


Heading out for trick-or-treating as a candybee

September

In the corn maze at Chatfield


Class field trip to fire station


Exploring on our walk to school

First Day of School

August 2011

Playing in the slip and slide at Martha's and Bill's.

Linus and Grace kissing baby Ellen at the last jazz in the park picnic.

Linus is a pet owner! He asked for fish and we obliged, as Matthew isn't allergic to fish. The orange one's full name is Goldy Fishy Gold and the multicolored one is named Rainbow Colors Fog. Linus was starting kindergarten the next day. He said, "Will you take care of them when I'm at school? Talk to them and read them stories. They'll like that!"

July 2011

In the Fouth of July Kiddie Parade with his friend Ravi

At soccer

Showing us how he safety bobs with his swim instructor

At Denver's very first county fair. He enjoyed the rides and having cotton candy and ice cream for lunch.

June

Walking through City Park after camp at the museum

In Wisconsin visiting family and friends, and meeting Desmond

Reading a book to me while I sew

At the top of Mt. Evans, an elevation of 14,264 feet

Mother's Day

I was tickled pink with one of my Mother's Day cards from Linus. He drew a picture of Shakespeare for me, "because you love Shakespeare!" He knows me well. He also drew a few of the babies we know and included himself because he is my baby. I lost track of how many times he cheerily wished me a happy Mother's Day. At school he painted a terra cotta pot for me and planted a yellow snapdragon in it. He apologized for the flower not being red (red wasn't an option), but he knew I loved snapdragons. He was charming and adorable. He and Matthew also made me chocolate chip pancakes and bought me fancy chocolate. I was in heaven. I treasure my role as his mom.

Easter

We hosted our 4th Annual Easter Egg Hunt in the backyard and kids ranging in age from 1 to 7 participated. I filled 146 eggs this year. That is the most I've ever done. Linus had fun with the event, but told me later that he was disappointed he didn't get to talk to everyone. Most of our gatherings have fewer guests and are planned so that we can meaningfully interact with each guest. The egg hunt is a different kind of activity-based event.

We colored eggs after the guests left. We colored a dozen eggs, but he wished he could do more. Even a dozen is almost too many for he and I to eat. (Matthew doesn't eat eggs.) After he ate his dinner, he went and rested on the couch. He looked completely worn out. It seemed like a good time to give him the quilt I made him for his fifth birthday. All that remains for me to do is hand stitch the binding onto it. I didn't want to delay any longer in giving it to him. He was very pleased with it and has been calling it his special quilt. Once I complete the binding, I'll post a photograph of it.

He still hasn't started eating the chocolate bunny that was in his Easter basket, but has been eating the jelly beans and gummy candies. He has been very generous with his candy and shared it with us.

Five!

Linus says it is a lot of fun being five and that he'll be able to do new things this year. When I asked him what things, he said, "I don't know. Lots of things!" It is fun to see how proud kids are when they turn five. Four of his friends came to the house for his birthday party. He invited Ravi and Grace from his current class at school, Audrey from last year's class, and Barrett, whom he has know since he was about 18 months old. He really wanted Oscar to come, but he was out of town for vacation. I planned a couple of space-themed activities and then let the kids just play. The weather was perfect, which meant I could have most of the party in the back yard. This was ideal. We recently inherited an electric bubble blower and the kids had a very giggly time dancing and playing around in the bubbles that blew around the yard. It was a beautiful sight! Matthew and I had fun hosting our very first party without the kids' parents present. Linus' friends are polite and very well behaved. Linus giggled a lot and has happy memories of his celebration.

Baby Squirrels

The absolute highlight of the second half of this month was our experience rescuing orphaned baby squirrels. I sent Linus and Matthew back to the park with binoculars to see what kind of bird was making a shrill call from the nest. It turned out there were two baby squirrels in search of food and their mama. Sadly, she was dead on the ground not too far from their tree. We believe she was struck by a car, as the tree is near a busy street. One squirrel was on the ground and Matthew and Linus brought it home. The other one was too high up in the tree for them to reach. When I returned from being out, they had the squirrel tucked into a box with a warm water bottle. I went back out into the dark to look for the other little one. It was sleeping on the ground under the tree. We fed it some drops of a homemade squirrel pedialyte and I tucked it in with its sibling. Linus was very understanding that we couldn't have direct contact with them because they needed to remain wild. The next day while he was at school, I drove them 45 minutes to give them to a wildlife rehabilitator. It was hard to part with them, but we did all that we could for them.

We also took Linus to his first play and musical. We saw The Musical Adventures of Flat Stanley. In the weeks leading up to the performance, he wondered how they were going to have an actor become flat. They accomplished it by dressing the actor in a flat, foam outfit that hung from the front of his body, which was clothed in black. The music and plot was fun. Afterwards, we played in the playground that is outside the Arvada Center. It included an amazing concrete dragon that kids can climb on.

With his birthday party just over a day away, he is excited to have his friends over to celebrate his turning five. Matthew and I cried last night when we looked at the photos from his first birthday. This has been the most amazing five years of our lives.

March

Playing evolution

Planting peas

Playing in the yard


Linus invented a game he calls Evolution. He grabs a book that includes dinosaurs or early people, his compass, and our globe. He spins the globe around and around and then stops it when he decides time has entered a new era. He calls out which creatures have evolved or died out. It cracks me up that he pretends he has this much control.

He got a new teacher at preschool and he adjusted to the change just fine. He told me, "I don't need Dina." I asked him why not. He said, "I never need help with anything." I explained that she is responsible for planning all of the interesting activities they do. The kids adjusted to the change, but the parents are having a harder time of it. I really clicked with Kay and miss seeing her at school. His class went on a field trip to the zoo and got to be on the news for donating pennies for the new Pachyderm Exhibit.

Preparations are under way for his fifth birthday. We sent out the party invitations and next week I'm taking him to Target to get his portrait taken. Turning five is such a big deal to him and and friends.

Lessons in Democracy

I've been focused on the protest movement in Madison and worried a lot about what Scott Walker is doing to Wisconsin. I've talked to Linus about acceptable forms of protest, including writing letters, making phone calls, and joining a rally. After showing him some great short YouTube videos of the protesters, he wanted to play that we were protesters. We carried long wooden blocks as our signs and we chanted, "Kill the bill!" I chose to be a school teacher and he was a fire fighter. After we were done he said, "It was like we were helping in Madison! That is what I imagined; did you?" Acting responsibly, I explained to him how killing a bill is not like killing a living thing.

Kiddo got in trouble at school recently. Miss Kay told me after class that he was not being himself and was playing very rough with his friend. She separated them for the last part of class, so they couldn't sit together during snack or story time. He flipped out when I said he couldn't stay after school to play with his friends. He denied everything Kay said and wouldn't cave in, even when I pointed out the Miss Kay likes him a lot and wouldn't say bad things about him if they weren't true. He threw a big tantrum at home and then fell asleep. After dinner Matthew got him to confess. We had to talk to him about not doing bad things, even if your friend is and we talked about why lying was not nice at all. After a few days I got over the shock that he'd misbehaved. For the most part he comports himself quite well.

He went to his first drop-off birthday party. I wasn't worried about him being at Barrett's house without us. Her parents are great. It just felt weird not being there and celebrating with him. He is excited about turning five soon and is proud to be fitting into size five clothes. He is getting better at building interesting train tracks without using the picture guides that came with the train set. In the last week or so we have pretended to be astronauts working at the International Space Station, geologists hunting for rocks and minerals, and he pretended his xylophone was a computer and he played an evolution game on it. He began with life in water "because that is where life started, mom." He included asteroids crashing into Earth, but he said all of the creatures survived "because that makes us happier."

The photo is from when we went to a story time led by a children's author, Barney Saltzberg. Linus liked it because the man was very silly.

Snow and Valentines

We are having the best winter weather this year! I love it! We got a really good snowfall, followed by a few days of very cold temperatures, and then another snowfall. We've had snow on the ground for over a week. I think this has only happened once since we moved here. We've had fun shoveling snow and Matthew and Linus built two snowmen last weekend. School was cancelled one of the days and Linus and I made chocolate chip cookies, did puzzles, and drank lots of hot chocolate.

Enrollment forms were due at Linus' future elementary school and I didn't turn them in until the last day. I'm not ready for him to go to kindergarten, but he is definitely ready. One Friday a few weeks ago he was moping around the house and when I asked what was wrong, he said, "I wish I had school today." My baby is growing up. I cried to Matthew how it wasn't that long ago that we stared at his birth certificate in awe, and now I had to pull it out to take to the school. While we were at the school office, Linus liked hearing an announcement made over the PA and he was impressed that the drinking fountains were at two heights (one for little kids and one for big kids). When people ask him which school he will attend he proudly says, "Teller!"

He and his classmates are excited about exchanging Valentines tomorrow. I'm playing a game with the kids during their party. The dramatic play area is now set up to be an airplane and Linus likes making announcements over the microphone.

My quilt store is going out of business and Linus went to their sale with me. I found him a seat on the stairs where he could play with his Etch a Sketch and be out from under anyone's feet. I kept circling back to check on him and one time found him chatting with a woman who was waiting for her friend to finish shopping. She said he was "very well-spoken and a good conversationalist." By the end of our two-hour shopping adventure, he was taking shopping baskets to people in the very long line. He had everyone charmed. People told me he was very polite and well behaved. Thank heavens! I was worried he'd get impatient and I wouldn't get a chance to take advantage of the sale prices.

January Wrap-up

All is well with Linus. He acts goofy much of the time and especially likes being silly with his friends. He and his friends are showing so much maturation lately. They've gotten taller, self-confident, share their snacks with one another, and sometimes have nicknames for each other. Linus' friend, Oscar, likes to call him Lina. This started when Oscar's baby brother pronounced Linus' name that way.

Preschool is going great and Linus enjoys each day there. Miss Kay plans fun and unusual activities for the kids. I got to help out the day she had the kids ice skating on the art room floor, which she had me cover in shaving cream. The kids skated around in their stocking-feet and the floor was just as slippery as ice, but messier. I had a blast helping out this day! The dramatic play corner has been a post office with a postal scale, rubber office stamps, envelopes and writing paper, letter carrier dress up clothes, and mail boxes. Linus has played in the post office a lot of the time.

Mr. Smarty Pants read an early reader to me the other day. It was one we haven't had out in several months. Matthew also discovered that Linus can do addition and subtraction. I wonder what else the kid knows?!

Some of the fun things we've done this month include ice skating downtown, visiting the zoo on a 60+ degree day, building vehicles out of Legos, taking care of a friend's cockatiel, and putting up the Ursa Major constellation on his bedroom ceiling with sticker stars that glow. Each day flies by faster than we realize.

Bonus

Here he is, wearing his super hero mask that he wore to the singing party, and the jester hat that Ziggy said he could keep from the Twelfth Night performance, and all bundled up for the short walk home.

Christmas

We were invited to Rich's and Lisa's house for Christmas Eve dinner, along with all of our neighborhood friends. Rich cooked us a traditional Italian Christmas dinner and the rest of us brought appetizers and desserts. It was such a pleasant evening eating, drinking, and laughing together. Linus chose to wear his reindeer antlers headband for the party. Lisa even pulled out a light-up Rudolph nose for him to wear. He and Grace took turns with it.

We celebrated Christmas at home by opening gifts, eating Christmas cookies, and attempting to have cheese fondue for dinner. The dinner was a flop: the cheese seized up and we couldn't dip anything into it. We have enjoyed having Matthew home for four days the week of Christmas and the week of New Year's. He and Linus have spent a lot of time playing with Linus' new train set. We've also had a lot of fun watching the class gerbils over winter break. It will be hard to part with them tomorrow.

(The top picture is from the singing party at Wendy's and Lon's house. Linus is wearing the jester hat that was worn by the man playing the fool during the flash mob presentation of part of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. It was a 40th birthday gift for me, a bit belated. He played the lolly pop-looking drum most of the evening.)