They're growing up so fast

Start of the new school year.

Big Jack's off to Big School.

Nicholas will be off.

Mark will be starting with a cast on his foot. Not sure if that will suck or make him the coolest kid in his class.

Jessie will still be doing part time preschool and us.

Jack and Damon and Sian I think will be going to our preschool.

I pity the preschool teacher if perchance we actually have one.

And Hugo will be going to Nemarluk. In a taxi. Hmmm.

And I'll be starting at 8:30 instead of 9am. Sucks to be me. Except not, cos I only have two and a half more weeks before I basically say goodbye to them forever. Now that sucks.

Logic

Damon, Hailey and Syd were playing under one of the tables.

M (yelling across the room, as she does): Damon! Hailey! Sydney! We don't hide under the tables.

Damon: Where can we hide then?

The complicated web of friendships

Last week, for some reason everyone wanted to sit next to Jessie. We had about five three- and four-year-old girls fighting over Jessie at every single meal.

Mark and Damon together are pretty smart. Mark being older and wiser is a good influence on Damon, who is prone to silliness and easily led that way, in my opinion. However, Mark's eating habits are questionable at best, although he has been improving heaps since we've had the handling of it. Still prone to loudly telling us what he doesn't like (which is 'most everything) so we don't want Damon next to him at mealtimes lest he pick up on these unfortunate tendancies.

Jack and Damon are increasingly hanging out together. Jack's parentes aren't thrilled about this as apparantly Jack has picked up a habit from Damon of calling people "silly dragons," something I've never actually heard Damon say, but we're monitoring it. However, it would be good for Jack to be hanging out with the older boys some more instead of constantly with his trains (which are now no longer there anyway). And Damon with Jack and without Mark can be quite silly, excitable, and annoying.

Just on a side note, Jack has picked up the D-word from somewhere:
Me, Damon and Eleanor? Molly? someone anyway were doing a puzzle when Jack comes up with a cheeky little grin on his face:
"What doing little dragons?"

And Mark is moving up anyway. *Sniff* I'll miss him.

A Different Planet

So we're having afternoon snack, frozen yoghurt cones. I have the director at my table, which was packed full of kids, as well as two parents who'd come to pick up their kids but were hanging around til we'd finished eating. Slurping. Whatever.

They're all being impossibly loud, and I'm frantically trying to get cones for all of them, charm the parents, and look competant in front of the director, who wasn't helping a whole lot).Although she did later. Anyway... Out of nowhere:

Damon: Is the bunny asleep?
Me: ignoring him, while I concentrate on getting a cone to another hungry kid. No one else answers him, so I decide I should. I'm sorry Damon?
Damon: Why is that bunny asleep?
No it didn't make any more sense when I was actually paying attention. I look at Alison. Nope, I'm on my own with this one.
Me: What bunny is that Damon?
Damon: That one.

The box of cones had a picture of an ice cream in a cone on it. It had two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. No long ears. No whiskers. No fluffy tail. I swear, the kid lives on a different planet.

I just noticed that all my posts seem to be about Damon. This is both suprising and unsuprising. He really does sees things differently. He will grow up to be Gabriel, I'm sure. But I really thought Hugo would provide more food for thought.

Sage advice

So I'd scraped my knee open the night before. Some chick (who plays for Jets) rammed her finger in my eye, I fell over, hence the bandaid on my knee the next day at work.

Scene: Me, Mark, and Damon, sitting cross-legged on the floor, building vehicles.

M/D: What's that?
Me: It's a bandaid.
D: Why? [ok, this is a really bad habit he need to get out of.]
Me: I fell over yesterday and hurt my knee.
D: Why? [see what I mean?]
Me: Cos a girl poked her finger in my eye.
[ok i was fully expecting 'why?' in a whiny tone of voice, but he surprised me]
D: What kind of girl? [what kind of question is that?]
Me: A jet girl.
D: Orh. Was she in a jet? [points for not assuming]
Me: No she just had a jet on her shir.
D: Orh. Why?
Me: Well, I don't she meant to.
D: [very firmly] You should tell her to stop.
Me: I think it was an accident, Damon.
[this is where they both jumped in, to tell me how to be more assesertive and in control of my own life. they were so concerned that i might not know how to deal with this kind of situation]
M&D: No, you need to tell her STOP. You don't like it.*

*This is the phrase we encourage them to use when dealing with each other. Everyone does. Repeatedly. And usually at high volume. Sometime on the verge of tears. But their concern for me, that I might not have heard of this magic phrase, was touching.

Talk about nothing...

The preschool has planted a garden. Watermelons, tomatos, things like that.

So all the kids were standing around looking at it, pointing out what had been planted, big discussions and plans going on. When there a was a lull in the chatter, Damon takes a step back from the fence, sits down, and very deliberately says:

"I'm just going to watch them grow."

For the Fish

With kids, it pays to be specific:

Damon comes over to where I'm sitting with Emma on my lap.
D: Is this a lemon?
Me: Yes Damon, it's a lemon.
D: Ohh. Do you want a bite?
Me: Yes please. [chewing sounds] Yum. Thanks Damon.
D: Emma, do you want a bite?
E: No. [totally uninterested]
D: [holding it up to her mouth] Emma, do you want a bite?
E: No!
Me: Damon, I don't think she wants any.
D: Ohh.
Me: Maybe if you put it on some fish.
D: Ohh.

[holding his hands together at ground level with the lemon in his palms.

D: Here, little fishies, do you want some?

A is For ...

A is for Apple, right? Maybe A is for Ant. But no, these kids have to be smart. Not only can Damon tell you what his name starts with, (a D, in case you were wondering) and recognise every letter of the alphabet, he can also tell you a word beginning with every single letter. None of this boring A is for Apple, B is for Ball crap either.

A is for Anchor.

Reading

It is interesting the different ways the people (children in particular) choose and respond to books and reading.

Hugo only likes ones with some sort of repitition eg We're Going on a Bear Hunt, We All Went on Safari or pattern, like the counting or alphabet books. Also, inexplicably, the big world altas, maybe as it has lots of pictures, and a lot of them are in oval frames (one of his fav shapes).

One of Jack's fav's (one which I don't like and never read to him) is one about the phases of the moon. I don't think he knows it's about the moon. It has a cat looking up at a moon, and I think he likes it for the cat, with the moon being a bonus.

Em currently likes one of the new ones, Where is the Green Sheep? which I'm sure she has at home. When we get to certain parts, she always tells us the same thing, putting herself into the story.
Em: I climb up that ladder and splash into the water [pointing to the bottom of the page].
Also I'm not sure if she knows it's all about 'sheep'. She can recite almost the whole thing, but I don't know if she knows all the fluffy things are sheep.

Mark, Damon, and Samuel all love the Space and Spaceships books. They will read it to themselves, with great discussions, and also enjoy us reading it them, asking a lot of questions. I had a big discussion with Mark the other day about listening to what the book says, then asking things he still doesn't understand.

They really do know their space stuff.
T tried to argue with one of them, Mark again I think, about which planet had rings, and which was 'the big planet'.
T: The biggest planet is called Saturn.
Mark: No [turning to the right page and obviously repeating from somewhere] Jupiter is the big planet.
T: No Mark [fully believing she was right] Jupiter has rings.
Mark: Jupiter is the big planet. Saturn has rings around it.
Me: Um, yeah he's right.
T: [Actually looking at the book] Oh yeah. You're right Mark.

When it comes to these boys and space, that's a given.