I am going to depart from chronology a little to tell you some more about Louis. We just got out of his parent-teacher conference (btw, he is repeating the "2s" class next year -- we are holding him back :-) so he is specifically on my mind. His teacher says he is sweet (not the one to hit, bite or push, although I actually did see him push a little girl on the playground not long ago and ran away for the teacher to deal with it), has a good sense of humor, loves puzzles (that surprised me since he never does them at home), is learning finally to sit in his spot for circle time, understands the routines, and has his territory staked out (e.g. his trucks) and finally uncontested by other kids in the class. I guess they normally don't let the kids play with the rocks on the playground because they throw them, but they made a special exception for Louis because Louis is so definitive about his use of the rocks (see below on his installations). In general, Louis isn't that interested in interacting with other kids yet, other than Rosemary and her friends, but occasionally acknowledges Miles or Wilder (Ms. Jennifer says he "love tackles" them).
Louis until about two months ago did not talk. At ALL. He said "up" "mama" and "dada," as of Thanksgiving, I believe. I was a little concerned, even though I knew he wasn't autistic. It was frustrating to not even know what to be concerned about. We decided to put him in extremely expensive speech therapy, even though we KNEW he would eventually talk. It was getting hard to wait simply because Louis seemed so extremely frustrated all the time without being able to communicate, and we were getting frustrated, also. I actually think it did help (we've since stopped) -- some trigger clicked that he COULD use words to communicate. And, since about January, he talks more and more all the time. Some of his very first words: "hammer," (a huge favorite of his), "ladder," "saw," "tools" (notice a theme?), " truck" (was "ing" in December), "two trucks" (he knows the concept of "two", but no other numbers), "ketchup," "my own," and "I want..."
His first series of sentences (all in reference to the Richard Scary book
Cars & Trucks and Things that Go:
"I want to see a hammer."
"I want to see a truck."
Followed, shortly thereafter by: "I want to see a
train."
And then, "I want to see mommy."
Rosemary and Louis are really getting along these days -- it helps a whole lot that he's talking. She even defended his honor the other day at school -- by getting in a fist fight with his attacker, Calla (a very small 2 1/2 year old girl)!
Above pictures are from walk-through light installation sculpture we attended with our playgroup a few weeks ago
Running down the hill with sticks in each hand... "stick" was actually one of his first words...
Below sculpture of Louis's is actually a little sad. It's called "Fire Truck." He is REALLY REALLY obsessed with ladders (he freaks out if we try to mess with our step ladder at home -- he thinks its his) and so when Nani and Nana gave him some fire engine duplos for Christmas, he naturally gravitated to the fire trucks (with ladders. A truck + a ladder? What could be better?). Anyway, he didn't have a big fire truck at home, so he created this out of a dumptruck and the back of the car carrier, which he called the ladder. You'd have to know him to believe me, but trust me -- it was 100% intentional that this was a fire truck, even if he couldn't say the words at the time (though now he can).
The below "installations" are essentially what Louis does all day when he's not at school. He is VERY VERY deliberate about his sculptures (which, as you can see, kind of get in the way). He generally uses the white boxes Nani gave him for his birthday as a base, but whatever is around will do. Then layers on toys, blankets, etc. If you try to move something he screams. If you move something while he is in the other room or asleep, he comes out and puts it back exactly where it is. I know that parents universally think their children are remarkable, but ... I must say... its pretty unusual don't you think?
I have so much catch-up blogging to do that I'm going to keep the captions brief, but above are the proud parents of a PHI BETA KAPPA graduate, Maureen Kumar. We had yet another "half-assed" party in our backyard in honor of all things Maureen -- this time with a live eight piece mariachi, catering by Sazon, and the most interesting cake anyone has ever seen. Julie was able to finish her final critique and make it just in time for the party.
After the party was over (but the queso, beer, and the 20 pounds of Silver Palate chili I had made was not) we continued to have an awesome time with Aunt Julie, doing cool things like ice skating. I found it extremely difficult to skate w/ a kid between my legs but we did it anyway, and Louis seemed to have pretty great balance.
A surprise visit from Santa! Rosemary gave him her letter, which asked very sweetly for "Aquabeads" and a "Kinderegg." Santa didn't really know what either of those things were. Obviously he was in on the American ban of Kindereggs (which I found out after calling four or five stores) due to the danger of "mixing toys with food." What? Good thing Santa was able to find illegal Russian knockoffs.
We were all able to make it to the St. Marks Christmas Chapel, where Rosemary was a little angel singing with a golden voice, and Louis was too shy to get up on stage (he just cried in his teacher's lap, poor kid).
Our last Happy Hikers hike before Christmas
All the excitement of Fiesta, upcoming Christmas, and aunts in town meant Rosemary started not to sleep (seriously) at least 2 weeks before Christmas day. I was halfway tempted to just get it over with and celebrate early.
