On Halloween

Has anyone read the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin? If so, you will recognize the recitation Xander is making right now:

"White sandal, white sandal, what do you see? I see a red door looking at me. Red door, red door, what do you see? I see a brown shelf looking at me. Brown shelf, brown shelf, what do you see? I see a green couch looking at me. Green couch, green couch, what do you see? I see a dark green Daddy looking at me. Dark green Daddy, dark green Daddy, what do you see?"

Here insert Erik telling what he sees and Xander correcting him. "No Daddy, try again."

I think what started the whole thing was the jack-o-lantern decoration on our red door. The red door really was kind of looking at him.

We are about to get him dressed up in his ninja costume again to trick-or-treat around the neighborhood. He told the bagger at the grocery store that he had a ninja costume but he was going to Batman tonight. He said he had that costume at home. I told the bagger that was news to me!

This morning, I told Xander, "Happy Halloween!" He said, as if he was very touched, "Thank you, Mommy!" When we went to meeting today, he told everyone Happy Halloween. Wendy had made us all Halloween cards and on Xander's she put: "Happy Halloween! Zander! Zander! Zander! I love you. Wendy" The card was three mice dressed up as cheese and other things. It was perfect for him. The name was misspelled but he doesn't care.

Tonight we had breakfast-for-dinner: pancakes, bacon, and juice. And milk. The boys were very happy. Nick can eat more pancakes than any of us. I am afraid of diaper-changing time.

I will add pictures of Xander once he's dressed.

Here they are:

Heaven and the "Debbil"

I see a pattern in my posting. I will go for a week or so without posting anything, and then I write four posts in one day. Here's another one. ;)

I am on our back porch, a cool fall breeze blowing, listening to my music (not the Raffi and Cathy Fink and Cedarmont Kids I listen to every day in the car with the boys), checking my email. Heaven! The main reason it's heaven? Xander and Nick are both running around in the backyard having a great time, making happy sounds.

Xander is wearing the devil horns I had hoped Nick would tolerate and holding a red plastic golf club. Apparently, "the debbil stole everyone's cars!" He is holding all of his Matchbox cars in the upper level of the wooden playset.

Ninja Goals

Grandma Lucy made a very detailed book about ninjas for Xander this Halloween, since he is dressing up as a ninja. I just read him a passage about ways to increase personal power and reach goals. Xander asked if they were soccer goals. I tried to explain what abstract goals are: "I have a goal to speak very nicely to Xander. If I say, 'Hi, Xander! How are you?' am I reaching my goal, what I wanted to do?" He said yes. Then he told me, without hesitation, "My goal is to speak badly to bad guys. 'Go away! Or I will beat you dead!'"

Xander's Halloween Party

Nick and I went along with Xander's class today. They got to come to school in their costumes and trick-or-treat on different floors of their building. We started on the 26th floor of the building (the Wachovia building) and the views were spectacular! I bet the kids got a thrill out of taking the elevators, too. They got much more candy than they needed and then went to their classroom to change into regular clothes and play outside. Nick was initially intimidated by all the costumes but then had fun, especially since he got a package of Goldfish from one of the "treaters." He and I went to lunch with Erik while Xander's class played outside, then came back for the class lunch which was brought by parents. It was Xander's first time having lunch with his classmates. Their classroom was all dolled up with the crafts they had made over the last couple of weeks: tissue paper ghosts, pumpkin paper bags, paper plate spiders...and ghosts cut out by their teachers, miniature pumpkins elaborately decorated by Ms. Valerie for each of the kids, a picture backdrop which was really cute (I will post pictures if/when I get them)...and more that I'm not remembering.

It was also nice to find out today that Xander's vision is good. Yesterday a nonprofit organization came in and tested all the kids' vision so we have official "good vision" results. And a shiny mouth of crowns and sealants. Oh, well. We can't be entirely perfect.

Halloween Decorations

See our cute house! The fall flowers are from Bonnie, the jack-o-lanterns courtesy of Erik and the miniature painted pumpkins by Xander and Nick, and the ghost and pumpkin decorations are from my grandma.

Thank You!

Well, no one else would recognize these words yet, but today Nick said, "Chips, please," and then when I gave them to him, said his version of, "Thank you!" I had to blog that!

Sunglasses

I bought Nick and Xander sunglasses yesterday. The sun bothers them on our car trips and I hoped that they would both be helped by sunglasses. Nick is fascinated and bothered by them at the same time. Maybe sometime soon he will realize their benefit.

As I told my mom, Xander picked his solely based on the picture on the tag. It was some kind of Cartoon Network warrior hero. They seemed like the most uncomfortable sunglasses available, but he insisted that they were the ones he wanted as I kept mentioning that they might start to hurt.

I asked him how they felt, and he said, "Cool."

Upcoming

Xander has his dental procedure tomorrow. I think I will be more nervous than him. Nick will be watched by a babysitter he has met - but he has always been in bed when she babysat before. This time they will be together for a few hours while he's awake. It'll be interesting to see how he takes it.

Tonight, if we have time, we may decorate and carve our pumpkins.

Day Off School

Xander and all of our county had school off today.

We met JT and his mom at the zoo and had a nice morning there, although it was warmer than I would have liked. It was all decorated for their Halloween Spooktacular but no lines and no candy. Good for parents of young kids.

Alphabet Cookies

Xander wanted to make these cookies out of our Preschooler's Busy Book.

I Help Daddy

Goal Scoring

So I wasn't sure how Xander was going to do at this soccer thing. He is more interested in the people around him than balls or goals. But he seems to get it now.

Chapter Books We've Finished, revised

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Sir Reddy and Sir Pants

Dragons

Prince Caspian

Catwings

Catwings Return

Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings

Jane On Her Own

The Water Horse

T. Rex Attacks!

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Silver Chair

Volcanoes! : Mountains of Fire

Magic Tree House #37: Dragon of the Red Dawn

The Horse and His Boy
The Magician's Nephew
The Last Battle 
Stuart Little 
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
A Light In the Attic 

We're Best Friends

Last night, Xander said he loved all of us: Xander, Nick, Daddy, and Mommy. He said we are all best friends.

This afternoon, unfortunately, we had to go to the doctor's office to get flu shots for both boys. Xander cried and said it hurt really bad but for once it didn't take much discussion to get him in and out of the room peaceably. He is starting to actually be rational about shots. Nick screamed in protest when I moved him from the Constructables to the doctor's bench, and cried about the shot, but as soon as I put him down to do his own thing again he was happy.

A Bob Books Giveaway on Babywisemom.com

So my online friend Valerie is doing a giveaway on her blog again, www.babywisemom.com. She's giving away new Bob Books, which I really love, so it's worth entering the contest for me. One of the things I can do to increase my chances of winning are to blog about it, so here I am. :)

Fighting Flashcards

Today Xander got a bag of goodies from the Mayor Peyton's Book Club. It was a decorated reusable bag that held about 13 books about Jacksonville, a Jacksonville coloring book, alphabet flashcards, a soft flannel Book Club blanket, and a Book Club t-shirt. He was excited about it. So were some of his friends at school. One boy got his bag yesterday and wore the t-shirt to school today. That's probably going to be Xander on Monday.

So I decided to let Xander just have fun with all this stuff and do whatever he wants with it, since he is already ahead of the game in terms of reading. He wanted to play with the alphabet flashcards and he did some letter activities on his own with them. Then he wanted to play them with me. His pile of flashcards were the "good guys" and my pile of flashcards were the "bad guys" and they fought. Okay? Are you getting this? Alphabet flashcards turned into a fighting game.

Now he is looking at the one book that stood out to him from all the rest: It has fighter planes. Guess what? It's the book about saluting our military. Huge surprise.

Oh, and one of his closest friends at school is named Russell. Guess what Xander calls him (without realizing he's wrong)? "Wrestle."

I am very proud of his recall for his classmate's names, though. He has 15 other kids in his class and he wanted to make cards for them, so we had to make sure we knew each kid's name. With his help, I wrote down all of them this morning!

Countdown to Halloween

Today Xander and I made a paper chain to count down to Halloween. This is the idea we used: http://learningdevelopmentactivities.blogspot.com/2009/10/countdown-chain.html

It was fun. It gets more and more fun to make things with Xander because he is capable of so much more. For our chain, he cut out some of the strips of paper and he connected some of the links together. He also came up with some of the ideas for activities that we wrote on each link, including the category of "loving acts." He really wanted to do some nice things for JT and JT's mommy and daddy and his friends at school and Bailey.

Then he wanted to make a ghost while I was busy with Nick, so I told him I was unavailable to help him. So he got a piece of paper out of the printer and took his scissors and cut a ghost shape out of the paper. I can still hardly believe it. It was missing a head, but since I couldn't immediately cut one out for him, he cut a small head shape out as well! Freehand scissoring! It looks great!

When we were making the chain, Xander said, "Oh, I am so exciting for Halloween!"