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.