We’ve been practicing, sort of, lower case letters. A few days ago, Charlie put together a puzzle of all lower case letters, and knew most of them, Jesse said.
When he saw f, he asked if it was an r.
“No, it’s an f,” Jesse said. “What starts with f?”
Charlie said, “F. F. F. Cat!”
We spent this weekend gobbling up NYC shows and films (and unplugging from the computer due to work turmoil.)
We saw Peter and the Wolf at the New Victory Theater, and Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang at the Tribeca Cinemas kids festival.
Charlie has never been a kid who loves to be scared, and we’ve deliberately chosen not to expose him to much violence in media. (In real life, it’s sort of unavoidable.) But he’s warming up to the idea that the dangerous can be scary and memorable.
In Peter, he was terrified when the wolf ate the duck, and asked after the duck’s location for the rest of the piece. When the duck came out for a bow, Charlie was ecstatic that the bird was alive. His favorite part of the show, he said, was when the wolf ate the duck, seeming to forget that he was squirming the whole time.
In Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang, which was a very long movie in my opinion, he was riveted to the screen, pointing out all the animals and asking questions.
[An aside: The two seven-year-old girls in the bathroom gave this movie an enlightened review. Girl 1 said, "I thought it was a charming film." Girl 2 said, "So did I...and then it slid sideways." So correct!]
His favorite part of the movie, he said, was the child-catcher–the terrifying man who lures the kids into a cage with promises of free lollipops and ice cream. But then he made me promise that the child-catcher was not coming here to see us.
It seems that the complex idea of danger is one we’ll be discussing more now that he can understand some layers of nuance.
We see the Gowanus Canal every day on our commute into the city. It sparkles out the subway window during the two elevated stops on the F train.
The water looks rather pretty from up high, though surrounded by trucks, debris, and warehouses. Up close, it stinks to high heaven and is filled with goo. Charlie loves to look for it before we hit the tunnel to 7th Ave. (His other two landmarks are the Statue of Liberty and the “gorilla”–a blow-up ad for car sales.)
On Columbus Day, when Charlie and I were flying back from GA, we passed over NJ. Out the window we saw a lovely, glimmering river, surrounded by forest on both sides. (Our two NJ-native friends say this must have been the Delaware River.)
Charlie looked out and said, “The Gowanus Canal!”
I’ve noticed something weird this fall. It took a few weeks for it to sink in because Charlie and I were away and doing other fun things that kept us away from our local playground.
Used to, we’d spend the morning in the playground, when the older kids weren’t around to outrun a toddling Charlie. But now, when we go at 11 before our lunch at the pizza place across the street, Charlie is the oldest kid.
He loves babies and is very gentle with them, so I don’t worry about him running them over. But it is an odd sensation to be at the jungle gym–or, like yesterday, in the park and the bigger playground with the sandbox–and see no kids over the age of two.
All of Charlie’s peers are in some sort of preschool, as he is most days. We’ve entered a new stage.
I posted part one of “Getting In…Kindergarten” a while back.
For those who have an interest in seeing more parents confront NYC private school admissions, parts two, three, and four are now available on Youtube.
The emphasis on testing in this film and in the whole school process is especially interesting in light of a book I just read, Nurtureshock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. It seems that IQ is very flexible and can gain or drop 15 points from the age of 4 to the teenage years, and many really smart kids don’t actually have fully developed intelligence until they are 11 or 12, way beyond the time that schools test for that kind of thing.
(Of course that also means that those IQ tests I took in first grade, to get me into the gifted program, are null by now. I could be 15 IQ points less intelligent than I was in kindergarten. Hmm. It does kind of feel that way sometimes.)
Kylie, Kathryn and Nanny are coming to Brooklyn for a post-Thanksgiving visit!
Charlie was asleep when I found out, but he’s going to bust a gut when I tell him. He loves sharing his favorite places with those he loves. I’m pretty sure “Bunny-Turtles” (Sean Casey Animal Rescue) will be on the list. (I’m having fun thinking about all the fun we can have, too.)
Chime in if you know somewhere I MUST take them.
Charlie’s daycare was on our local CBS station last night in a discussion of daycares “going green.” The video clip is here.
Fedkids is pretty good about being eco-friendly, though I do remember that when we first got there, the parents had to beg and plead for organic milk. And don’t be fooled by the mention of organic snacks. The kids still mostly ask for Cheerios.
The video features the indoor playspace and Charlie’s BFF Maryn with her mom Kristen and brother Newie.
Yet more photos and videos I should have put up a long time ago, from this spring. At this rate, maybe I’ll be caught up by next summer.
Absolutely pathetic. It has taken me six months to get these photos uploaded, Flickerized and put on to this blog. Ugh. In any case, click on smiling Charlie to see the March 2009 birthday fun. (And if you compare six-months-ago Charlie to the Charlie in the apple pictures, the difference is amazing. He’s grown at least two inches since then.)
There are more than a hundred photos–fair warning–and four videos. You can tell the videos by the little arrow in the lower left corner.
