Charlie’s version of “O Christmas Tree:”

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
You are so brightly
I love you.

Charlie’s impression of the Catholic church’s holiday display:

When the dozens and dozens of trees and angels in the church’s yard were lit for the first time, Charlie said it looked like his “imagination.”

And when they put up the manger scene, minus Baby Jesus since he doesn’t arrive until Christmas, Charlie said it was the “mystery of the missing Baby Jesus!”

Merry Christmas, everyone!

When I picked up Charlie this afternoon for his flu shot, the first thing he said was, “Mama, today we played Santa!”

“Who played with you?”

“NoahCheng and Jonathan.”

“How do you play?” I asked.

“You say, ‘Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas, everyone!’”

Oh, of course.

So we did a lot more than just Macy’s Santaland when Kylie and Kathryn came to visit last week, but that was definitely a highlight. (Charlie had to go back the next day–hence the two Santa photos–and see if the Penguin and the Moose, who were there last year, were anywhere to be found. They stayed at the North Pole this year. Charlie said that made him sad and he wanted to go tell Santa Claus about it.)

On the first day, we saw Times Square, Toys R Us, the M&M store, Rockefeller Center, the NBC store, a Japanese bakery where we ordered things we didn’t recognize (but that were delicious) and the Rockettes! Somehow Kylie was unaware that Thanksgiving weekend is the biggest tourist weekend in the city, so she was willing to brave the insane crowds–at least until we all got hungry.

On Saturday, we stayed closer to home. Kylie said our neighborhood looks kind of like Sesame Street, and I have to agree. It’s a great little area, quiet, tree-lined and residential. I’ll take that over Times Square any day! We bounced at Bounce U, ate phenomenal pizza, and saw the winter boardwalk of Coney Island. Then Kylie and I caught a late show of New Moon. (I enjoyed it, but still couldn’t help laughing at the cheesy parts.)

On Monday, we braved the city once again, getting as close as we could while remaining on land to the Statue of Liberty; exploring Macy’s Santaland, including the Miracle on 34th Street puppet show; having tea and scones at Alice’s Tea Cup, after we’d been sprinkled with fairy dust and provided with Wikki Stix.

The girls had an early flight on Tuesday, and we miss them a lot. Luckily, there are only three weeks exactly until we see them again. Thanks for coming up, ladies!

When Kylie and Kathryn came for a visit right after Thanksgiving, they brought a gift from Nanny and Pawpaw–a magnetic bird puzzle that included a “fishing rod” with a magnet at the end.

Charlie has been fascinated by puzzles recently, and he loved this addition to his collection. He has two other magnetic puzzles, one of cars and one of birds, and we’ve been calling the magnetic stick a “fishing rod” for a while now.

The other day, though, when Charlie was playing puzzles with Jesse he called that piece a “fetching rod.”

Makes perfect sense to me!

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.)