Oranges is oronges, lion scin and oreng juse.

Yellow is lemen heds, lemens and lemenad.

Green is money, grass and frogs.

Blue is the sky, blue berries and a pool.

Purple is graps, eggplant and medeicine.

Matthew and Jared both took pretty long naps the other day, and for the first time I can remember, they couldn’t fall asleep that night!

They tiptoed into our room twice. “Our tummy hurts,” they said in unison.

“You share a single tummy? It’s the collective tummy?” we teased.

I went to check on them and both children were lying next to each other in Jared’s bed. They didn’t hear me sneak to the door and poke my head in. By the light of the snowflake lights, Jared was reading Go Dog Go! to Matthew.

It was SO CUTE!!!

With Ethan out of the room, Jared gets to take on the role of big brother. I think he’s enjoying it.

The biggest drawback was our music. The room also served as the music room where I could practice singing and the boys could play drums and sometimes work with me on rudimentary music theory. Also, the room served as our library and we would have to find a new place for all of our books.

We have moved Ethan into his own room now! We bought some bureaus for clothes in both rooms. We are slowly trying to remove the extra things in Ethan’s room to make it his own. Ethan loves having a place to put all of his sports and chess trophies. Jared and Matthew are happy with their new bureau. Matthew picks his clothes out every morning and brings them to me to dress him without being asked!

All in all, I miss my music. But I think the psychological benefits of splitting up the boys at this time are more important.

I hope Glen makes millions of dollars soon to buy a 5 bedroom with a music room/library. Then we could have a guest room AND a place for me to sing AND each boy could have his own room. Nana thinks we could afford that in Florida without millions of dollars and she said she’d do all of our laundry if we moved to Florida!

Glen likes it here though. A lot. Something about people in line at Starbucks talking processing speeds.

(You better like it here honey – I figure we need at least $2 million to buy a house the size we need – $1 million down payment on a $1.5 million house, plus a million in the bank to earn the money we’ll need for taxes and upkeep!!! And that’s not even in the neighborhoods I’d like!)

Ethan had never been on the big, adult roller coasters. He had never had the chance. He loved every minute of them! He not only went on the fastest roller coasters there, like California Screamin (which includes a loop de loop!) but even on Tower of Terror – 13 stories free fall! Thank goodness for Uncle Daniel who accompanied Ethan on most of these rides.

Ethan’s favorite rides: Tower of Terror, California Screamin, Indiana Jones

Jared was terrified of many of the rides. After trying the Matterhorn early on the first day, which is very jerky and has “scary sounds,” he was really nervous about getting on any but the mildest rides. Over the next 2 days he found the courage to try some rides that scared him, particularly Orange Stinger and Mulholland Madness at California Adventure Park, and actually enjoyed them! The thrill for him was not how much fun he was having on the rides like Ethan, but in how proud he was in himself that he had conquered his fear. I could see a huge change in him during that trip and in the weeks since. Conquering that fear at Disneyland gave him new confidence in himself. And it made him happier.

Jared’s Favorite Rides: Orange Stinger, Pirates of the Carribean, Peter Pan (he especially enjoyed Uncle Daniel’s commentary during this ride), Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, Gadget’s Go Coaster, Mulholland Madness, Redwood Creek Challenge Trail

Daniel also had to draw on character in this story. On the last night, as we sat lined up on the curb watching the Electric Parade, Daniel reached back to get his video camera and threw his back out. It was awful. He was in such pain and couldn’t move. On our last vacation with him, everyone in the house except Lindy threw up in the space of 48 hours. Then he had a kidney stone and Bapu had to rush him to the E.R. I hope he doesn’t decide not to visit us anymore, although I could hardly blame him! WE LOVE YOU UNCLE DANIEL!

Uncle Daniel’s Favorite Rides: ???

Aunt Lindy and I both had some favorites from childhood, including The Tiki Room, which wasn’t such a hit this time around.

Nana’s Favorite Ride: Definitely NOT the Toon Town Roller Coaster, Gadget’s Go Coaster

Aunt Lindy’s Favorite Rides: FROM AUNT LINDY: “My favorite thing about disneyland is reliving my childhood experience with molly and the lipka boys- it’s so fun to share all the things i loved so much as a child with them. Altho i’m sorry i had to miss it i’m SO happy that they got to see the electric parade – for me that counts as a ride. My other favorites are Pirates of the Carribean, the Jungle Cruise and the Tiki Room. The Tiki room appeals to me not just because it’s pseudo historical- it opened in 1963 and retains it’s 1963 cultural references- i also like the corny jokes, the family friendliness and the international flavor. I am also a big fan of Space Mountain (the inclines and declines are just right for me and it’s like an intergalactic chiropractic adjustment). It was closed this time- perhaps next time all the kids will be tall enough to accompany me!”

Note to Aunt Lindy: if we go again as soon as I’d like, they won’t be tall enough yet!!!

My Favorite Rides: Soarin’ Over California (you really felt like you were flying! I loved it!!!), Peter Pan, Orange Stinger, Storybook Land Canal Boats (we went at dusk and it was so picturesque)

Everyone’s Least Favorite Ride: The Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage (even though Lindy worked some of her Lindy magic and got all 9 of us jumped to the head of the line with no wait! How does she do it?) Ethan was like – there’s the surface of the water right there above our heads! This thing is not submerged!!!

Ethan’s smile took a hit yesterday, but was then glued back on. About 15 minuted before the end of Little League practice, a ball took a funny hop and whacked off half of his two front teeth. Literally about 50%. It looked like the outline of the ball to me. Glen described it to the children’s dentist as an “upside down smile.” (Later the dentist said to me, that was a great description although Glen may not have realized it was. I didn’t bother to tell Dr. Lau that, no, Glen thinks all of his descriptions are great. (And they are honey.)

At first it looked like just his lip was fat, but then they realized the teeth were gone. Luckily 2 of his teammates found the 2 pieces. I was away picking up Glen, but also luckily, friend and fellow CPNS board member Eleni Hulman was there and she called me on my cell and gave me the news right away. Ethan was crying and pretty scared and upset. All of the parents who were there and our fantastic Coach Barney Fahey were so caring and concerned – I really appreciated knowing Ethan had that love and support around him when I wasn’t there.

At first Glen and I thought we would wait until the next day to go see the dentist because dental is SO expensive and emergency anything is SO expensive and it all comes out of our HSA. But we looked online and decided to call Ethan’s dentist, Dr. Terrence Lau.

He is a GREAT dentist. Pediatric dentistry has come so far from when I was a kid, but Dr. Lau is really outstanding. He also charges an arm and a leg and we haven’t seen him for a year because our insurance had changed. Luckily, it recently changed back. He really makes the children feel at ease, explaining everything he is doing and using language that is accessible and safe. When he gives a shot he doesn’t let them see the needle; he just explains that he has to hold the lip so can see and sometimes it might feel like he is pinching too hard because the lip is so slippery to hold on to, so just tell him. That kind of calming technique and the movie (last night was Surf’s Up which Ethan had never seen) on the ceiling really made Ethan feel at ease.

We called Dr. Lau at 6:45 and he told us to meet him at the office – he would drive back from SF. And over the next 2 hours, with no help, he carefully and meticulously bonded Ethan’s missing pieces back onto the stubs. The medical prognosis is good, but we’re not out of the woods. If the nerves in the teeth are damaged, they could die and then Ethan will need a root canal. He put medicine directly on the teeth and also prescribed an antibiotic. He said we could still go to Disneyland next week.

Can’t Stop Smiling

Matthew is a smiler. He smiles all day long. He is always smiling! Almost all of his expressions include smiles. He has his angry look, where his mouth and eyes are smiling but he wrinkles his nose and forehead. He has his surprised look where he opens his eyes and mouth as wide as he can, but the corners of his mouth are still hinting at happy. He has his scared look, where he shakes his head slightly and hunches his shoulders and blinks his eyes, but is still smiling.

Smile though your heart is breaking – learning to smile again

4 was a hard year for Jared. His last year of preschool was really difficult and Jared somehow came to the belief that the world was against him. For a while he could find nothing to be happy about. I would ask him to name some good things that happened to him at the end of the day and he couldn’t.

That’s when I started the behavior modification. That included chocolate in the morning if he could name good things before he went to sleep at night. (Some might call that a bribe, but I call it conditioning.) It also included smile therapy. I felt like I had to teach him how to smile all over again. Opposite of Matthew, he seemed to not allow himself to smile under any circumstances. Now he knows that his smiles are a gift he can give me every day, and he showers me with the gift of his smiles first thing every morning and throughout the day.

We’re still working on the whole world-is-against-me belief, but we’ll get there.

Come home and play on the Wii with friends.

Go back to Chuck E Cheese and have more cake.

Come home and play on the Wii some more.

Go to the park and have a pinata.

Come home and have a triple sleepover (that’s 3 nights in a row…)

So, we made it to Chuck E Cheese, he played on the Wii with friends, he went to the park, he had cake. He even got to open presents, blow out candles and hang out at daddy’s office! We’ll do the pinata when we have a party in a couple weeks. Not bad!

But I have to admit I begged him not to turn 6. 6 is such a turning point. You’re not a little boy anymore. There’s not a trace of baby fat left. (Not that these kids ever had much of that.) You’re just a boy, well on your way toward awkward teeth, violent video games and less cuddling with mommy. *sigh*

He thought my begging was very funny and refused to accomodate me. I think he is quite pleased to be 6!

Sometimes we find wonderful treasures and then we buy them. Like Sam’s Cookie by Barbro Lindgren and the Tickle Tickle series of board books by Helen Oxenbury. But some of them get returned and fade from memory.

So I thought I’d start mentioning them.

Anno’s Math Games
Mitsumasa Anno

The author is a japanese artist and educator whose work has received acclaim world wide. He is noted for making mathematical and scientific concepts accessible to children and for his interesting children’s book illustrations. For more: http://www.answers.com/topic/mitsumasa-anno

This Math Games book isn’t even mentioned in most of the bios I found about Mr. Anno. But Jared LOVED it. It is a PERFECT mathematical concepts book for pre-k and kindergartners. But don’t look for numbers or addition here.

It is about matching, and categorizing, and patterns and spatial relationships and measuring and charting and graphing. You know, how to THINK about math amd logic, not just memorizing functions and tables.

Jared loved it. Usually if I let Jared pick a book he goes straight for Berenstain Bears. He picked this one every night for 2 months. It is now overdue to the library and I better get it back. I’m really happy we found this gem right at this time. it was a perfect precursor to starting kindergarten.

(Jared is very worried about starting kindergarten because, while he knows addition ok, his “minus” isn’t very good and he doesn’t know multiplication at all! Horrors! Ethan’s kindergarten teacher Mrs. Franco says it’s always the smart ones who worry the most. Meanwhile, when I give him simple multiplication word problems he figures them out fine.)

Jared. Jared is 5 now. He plays alternately with Ethan and Matthew. There’s less fighting but possibly more crying when he plays with Matty, as they play a lot of chasing games in small rooms and stub toes or knock funny bones.

This week Jared graduated from his Pre-K class. He showcased his reading talent by reading aloud all of the classroom rules that the class had decided on together. He is so excited to be starting kindergarten. Every week he asks me – do I start Kindergarten tomorrow? I keep showing him the calendar!

Lately he has been hanging out in Ethan’s classroom on Thursday mornings while I count Box Tops for Education for the school. (Do you have any??? Please send them to us!) He puts this tough, cool look on his face and answers any question, “I KNOW.”

Of course he feels like he knows nothing and he’s intimidated as heck! That’s his tough guy act as he takes it all in. Ethan loves having his brother there and explains every little thing to him and holds his hand. Mrs. Amato (Ethan’s teacher – a saint!)

Jared went to PMT (known to nost of us as PE – physical education) with 30 1st graders. They ran a big lap around the school yard. Jared finished 6th. !!!

Jared enjoys playing on the computer and playing strategy games. He LOVES videoconferencing with Nana because she’ll play tic-tac-toe, Monster Battle, Minesweeper or anything else he wants to for hours! He watches too much TV for my taste. He enjoys riding bikes, tennis, and basketball. He likes to swing, especially on the tire swing.

***

Boy, are these posts getting boooooring. Just records of what’s happening. They used to have some humor! I’ll have to work on that.

Jared turned 5 yesterday!

Something happened in the last week or so, after his early party as he looked forward to his birthday. Finally when I picked him up at school he would run out to me, instead of being sulking in a corner or screaming at someone. Finally he wasn’t saying he hated school every day. (That only lasted about 2 weeks thank goodness – I got the teachers involved as soon as I heard that.)

Teacher Nancy met with Jared for a good hour last week. She told him that pre-k and nursery school are important so he can learn how to make his feelings stronger. Just like he exercises to make his muscles stronger, he has to practice making his feelings strong too so he can deal with other people and problems well. This really resonated with him. They made 2 lists, one of things he can think about when he’s feeling blue and one of things he can do when something he doesn’t like is happening (screaming and moping weren’t on the list).

I like to have him draw a picture of how he’s feeling when he’s mopey or moody and that works pretty well. We have also tried dribbling a basketball and other physically calming actions which have surprisingly been less successful.

The important thing is that he’s coping better, and he’s learning methods to help him when it’s rough.

I remember Kristin Alvarez, a mom at ECPC, telling me that turning 5 is like a magic switch. At the time her oldest of 3 was in kindergarten and we were trying to decide whether to start Ethan in kindergarten at age 4 or 5. 4 was a REALLY hard year for Ethan, and it has been for Jared too. Ethan’s “recovery” toward sanity and out of tantrums was gradual. Jared’s was like a magic switch.