The things this kid knows

Tyler is wrapping up second grade. Fourteen days of school left. He started second grade not knowing a single kid in his class and now knows--and likes--most of them. He taught himself to write his name in cursive this year, but when we went to the third grade classrooms at Open House, he got anxiety seeing entire paragraphs written in cursive. "I can't do that," he exclaimed. I assured him he will be able to learn it by reflecting on the stuff he didn't know in the beginning of second grade. Not only did he learn multiplication, but also division and fractions. And this kid didn't just memorize the facts, he actually understands it. He mastered paper inventions blowing through no less than five reams of paper and ten rolls of Scotch tape and moved on to sewing with fabric, thread and needles. He was his teacher's first student to memorize the names of all 44 US presidents. He read the first Harry Potter book, the entire series of Diary of a Whimpy Kid, Calvin & Hobbes, and countless other books. He won his classroom's spelling bee and can spell words like intuition, perseverance and pterodactyl. This kid has mastered second grade and we are so very proud of him.

Progress

At his teacher's request, Tyler just looked back at the writing journal he's been writing in all year. She pointed out how much better his penmanship is now and how much more he's writing. It's so true. When I look at the work he's doing now, it still looks messy but it is worlds better than the messy work he did in the beginning of the year. I grew up always thinking left handed people were just messy writers. Tyler doesn't tilt his paper or tweak his wrist the way I've seen other lefties write, but he's definitely gotten especially good at erasing better so we can actually read what he's re-written when he makes a mistake. Writing has been a big struggle for Tyler but the day he wrote in his journal about how much he hates writing, that was definitely the day he hit rock bottom and now has turned the corner to maybe someday actually liking it. He should like it, he's good at it now!

Patriotic Songs

Tyler's class is learning 4 patriotic songs and they're putting on a concert next week. Tyler practices constantly but has yet to learn how to control the high and low notes. He likes to perform and is pretty good at it too. Meanwhile, with baseball he's in a 3-consecutive strikeout slump. So we're busy practicing that too. I can't imagine how there'd be any time for another activity, phew!

The Big 7

Just 28 days until Tyler's seventh birthday! This year the party will be at the new Lego Store in Arden Fair Mall. He invited five friends from school and a few others. Inviting kids gets hard without their home address, you don't want to hurt other kids feelings but more and more the boys only invite the boys and the girls only invite the girls. Tyler chose not to invite one friend because he said that friend always talks about video games Tyler doesn't know the names of. I told him to remember that and have already pointed out several instances of him doing the same. Due to overwhelming popularity of the new Lego Store, there was only one date available to hold the party relatively close to Tyler's real birthday, February 15th. So yesterday we were at the dentist having an excellent check up and the dentist asked Tyler when his birthday was. Not sure if it was the dental anxiety or the Bee Movie playing on the ceiling above him, but Tyler declared February 15th as his birthday. A few minutes later, he clarified that the 15th was when his party was and that his actual birthday was the 17th. I made a mental note to explain to him that his birthday is, and always will be, on February 27th and while he got that, he didn't like the fact that he wouldn't be getting presents from the family until his real birthday. So the countdown is on.

Rough Morning

After a rough start to our morning following even more of Tyler's temper tantrums, this one about not getting a cinnamon roll (we didn't have any and didn't have time to bake any) and not getting to play Wii, we had a big laugh once we got to school. It was freezing on the walk and Tyler complained about cold hands. It takes a lot of cold for him to complain. Or maybe just a lot of funk. He asked me to go home, find his gloves and bring them to his classroom. I found a lame excuse and then showed him where his jacket pockets were. He got to the blacktop where they line up by classroom. It wasn't until right then that I noticed his pants were on backwards! I considered not telling him, he's been so sensitive lately. But I sucked it up and whispered to him that his pants were on backwards. He thought it was hilarious. That was the biggest smile I've seen on him in a few tough days.

A Funk

It's back to school, so our routine is once again changing which is always hard on Tyler. He's glad to be back to school, back to his friends, back to buying school lunches (mmm mmm bagel dogs). But he is not so glad to be doing homework. It's not the work part of it, it's the creative part he can't stand. Last night's math homework had him drawing 3 cars and then 4 more to add 3+4 and he freaked out over how badly his drawings of cars turned out. Then he had to write in his writing journal and freaked out about how his letters weren't writing the way his hand was making them go (whatever that means) and so the i's were too messy and the y's were too long. Poor child. He's definitely in a funk. Poor mommy. Yes to my own Mom and Dad, I remember all too well throwing tantrums of my own for no reason I could explain other than equally silly things like this. Only I don't think I was in first grade. I really feel for this boy. Puberty is going to be tough for him. Meanwhile, Gavin runs around streaking and yanking on his "wiener" trying to ease the tension and get everyone laughing. I'm scared for puberty for that one.

Skeleton Tyler

Halloween

We had a great Halloween despite the rain. It was not just any ordinary Halloween, it was also our last day of school before tracking off for a month. That meant Spirit Rally and a minimum day! The spirit rally was great, first grade won the reverse pie toss with Brooke hitting Dr. Roundtree right smack in the face with a pie she threw over her shoulder. Then we got home and got ready for Halloween.

Tyler's school hosted a harvest dance the previous week, which was a costume party and dance. For that he decided he wanted to be a skeleton so I quickly threw together a costume made of glow sticks. The costume was awesome, but it didn't get dark as early as I had thought it would so I tried making the kids stay inside the dance party area as long as possible to get the most out of his costume. Of course, they preferred playing outside because it's not every day you get to run around your campus in a costume but outside it wasn't quite dark yet. Note to self, glowsticks on costumes only work in dark places!

For the real Halloween, he was Boba Fett who is a character from Star Wars. Boba was the guy responsible for freezing Han Solo in carbonite I think, and his son is Jango Fett which is what Gavin was supposed to be. But Gavin once again insisted on wearing his pirate costume. That thing was passed down to Tyler three years ago from Cousin Jordan so it's quite old. He did promise this would be his last year wearing the pirate costume but I think I'm going to have to hide it to make sure of that. Boba and Jango Fett have jet packs. Papa Curt got these costumes for the kidlets and we made sure they'd fit next year too, seeing as how much they love to dress up as Star Wars characters. So now we've got a choice of Storm Trooper, Darth Vader, Jango Fett or Boba Fett. Gramma visited for her first Halloween with us. She took us from house to house and even tried to get Tyler to go to the houses with scary decorations, but he refused. He'd stand firmly on the sidewalk watching Gavin and Gramma go up to the scary houses. Heck, he can't even listen to me read his child-friendly Halloween books he gets so scared. Poor child!

Perks of Helping

In Tyler's first week of kindergarten, I eagerly volunteered for all kinds of things including making memory books. Here we are at the end of the year and my dining room is full of memory book pages. The perk of helping is that I get to read and look at all the other kids' work and projects they've worked on all year. There is one boy in particular who I knew was different but couldn't quite peg how until now. Various writings throughout the year asked the kids to answer questions about their favorite stuff. His favorite color is pink and he loves to draw hearts, this I know from my weekly volunteering in the classroom. Yesterday I read a page he had written about what he wants to be when he grows up and I really hate to stereotype but he wrote that he wants to be a nurse. Today I was reading everyone's answer to what their favorite part of recess was. Standard answers were things like monkey bars, jump rope, playing. Funnier answers were the girls who said their favorite part of recess was chasing the boys and the boys, including Tyler, who said their favorite part of recess was chasing the girls. The funniest answer of all was from this unnamed little boy. He said his favorite part of recess is being chased by the boys!

The Story Of His Two Front Teeth

Tyler has been wiggling his two front teeth since January. I know it was January because I begged him not to wiggle them until I had his & Gavin's professional pictures taken in February. Then I recall about two months ago declaring "Any day now" for the loosest one to come out. Well, apparently it takes forever for the top teeth to come out because after months and months of wiggling and waiting and testing and wiggling and waiting, we struck gold this weekend. Friday he informed me he could turn it around, so I knew it would happen very soon. Once again, I found myself begging him to wait...this time I needed time to find the video camera. Saturday morning I found the camera, turned it on and voila, he pulled the tooth out ON FILM! Yay! Now I just need some video editing software so I can get that on YouTube. I only know how to get video from my digital camera on the internet and it's times like this that I find myself anxious for Gavin to get a little older to help me with this sort of stuff.

With one tooth out, the other top tooth moved exactly to the middle of his mouth. Looked absolutely hilarious. Every time we looked at him we laughed. Uncle Tom came to visit and saw the funny gaping hole and I took this picture.

Sunday morning, he came into the living room announcing he pulled out the other tooth. So now he's missing his two front teeth. Listening to him talk never ceases to crack us up. We teased him so much for words like six and season I began to wonder if we were going too far. It's just so funny! At school he's learning to write stories with words like First, Then, Next and Finally. So he wrote his own story.

"First I had a tooth.
Next, it was loos.
Then, it was rily loos.
Finally, it fel out."

Acting

The other day, Tyler realized Han Solo and Indiana Jones are the same person. When I explained to him that Harrison Ford is just a guy like me and you but his job is being an actor, Tyler was quite interested in this profession. Well now his class is going to put on a play, Commotion in the Ocean, and Tyler has been cast a jellyfish. He came home on day one and insisted his mask had to be made and his lines had to be memorized. I explained that he had June 13th so we should really take our time to work hard on this project. His kinder class is now in week two of practicing their play and Tyler has not only memorized the lines for his role, but for everyone else's role too. We can pretty much say acting in this play is his new obsession.