First Bullfight and Other News (or lack thereof)

Pablo Hermoso was back in town this weekend, and Mario was dead set on getting tickets. Pablo Hermoso is a bullfighter who does all his bullfighting on horseback, and he´s pretty famous.  I haven´t enjoyed watching him in the past--I was too afraid for his horses. 

But now, after seeing him on Saturday, it´s clear that he is quite a master and that he spends a good deal more time training those horses than many people do with their children.  It was clear he wouldn´t let anything happen to them.

 In addition to my normal Pablo Hermoso qualms, I was nervous taking the kids.  Clara has been to bullfights before, but that was before Joey was born and she was too young to understand what was going on.  At the ripe old age of five, I was afraid that this would be a little too real for her. 

At two, Joey was still too young to understand quite what was going on, but he really enjoyed seeing all the horses and bulls and still talks about it.  But he was missing some key information as, after they killed the bulls and were dragging them out of the ring, he´d yell, ¨Bull!  Up!¨

Yeah, he can´t get up again, Joe. 

 Clara watched with interest and claims that she enjoyed it.  I believe her.  Beef is still among her favorite foods, so I don´t think we´ve scarred her for life.  The experience may have been like our outing in December, when I took her to see the Nutcracker.  I asked her if she liked the ballet and she told me, ¨I just like being with you, Mama.¨

Awwww . . .

 In other news, Clara´s class wrapped up a unit on storytelling, so Clara´s class put on an original play.  It was the animal race.  A caterpillar wanted to race with all the other animals and, as it turned into a butterfly, the caterpillar won the race after all.  Clara got to be Butterfly #2 and tie for the win. 

And Joey´s just cute sucking on a vampire pacifier sucker.

3 Months Without an Update

Clara decided over Christmas (or perhaps earlier) that she´s going to marry her buddy, Lucas.  Buddy Lucas lives in Indiana, and for months she had been referring to him as her "boyfriend".  I realize that that meant that he is a boy and he is her friend.  However, we spent Christmas in Indiana and actually had the chance to see Lucas, so I warned her that she might scare Lucas away if she called him her boyfriend within his hearing. 

Like any innocent little girl, she immediately asked me why.  Why, indeed?  *Sigh*--silly boys. 

I explained that the people that are often called boyfriends are boys that we´re thinking about marrying. 

Her immediate response--"but I AM going to marry Lucas!"

(I also let her know that she better not tell Lucas that, at least, not within the next twenty years or so, or she´ll likely scare him away forever. What big lessons to teach an almost-five-year-old!)

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Yesterday when I picked Clara up from school, her teacher was beaming with pride for Clara because she´s noticably integrating herself well with the other kids.  I asked Clara about it, and she said, "Oh, yeah--I got in trouble for playing with Yamile´s hair."

So basically, Maestra Mary is proud of Clara for having enough gumption to get in trouble. 

I love this woman.  

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I can finally no longer count the number of words in Joey´s vocabulary.  He learned to say "cow" as we were driving through northeast Texas, "football" on Super Bowl Sunday, and "luge" the other day when we were watching the Olympics. 

To which Mario responded, "what´s luge?"

Me makes these great little two-word sentences like "Mo´.  Eat."  And, because he has a five-year old sister, "Beat. You."  (As in they´re always talking about who´s going to finish eating first.  He´s not going to physically beat her.  She does that.  She also always beats him eating, but a boy can always dream.)

Usually, he´s pretty easy to understand, but the other day we were skyping with my parents and it became clear that Joey was consistently referring to my dad as "bunny".  For a few minutes I couldn´t figure this out at all. 

Me: "Is Grandpa funny?"   [thinking he was just mispronouncing the word]

Joe:  "No.  Bunny."  

Hmmm . . .

Finally I realized that we have a book that the kids like called Grandpa Bunny.  Since "Grandpa" is still a bit of a mouthful for him, it just made perfect sense for him to call Grandpa "Bunny".  

Of course. 

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In mass a few weeks ago, I was super excited when I noticed that one of my children was actively participating.  Whilst crawling around the kneelers, I distinctly heard a little boy´s voice singing away during the Alleluia.  "Loo-ya . . loo-ya!" 

A little while later, everyone in our church raises their right hand while we recite the creed, like we´re being swarn into a judicial hearing.  Hearing giggles behind me, I turned around and noticed Little Joe, entertaining the people behind us as he raised his hand for the creed, too!  Two and a half, and nearly confirmed.  [rolling my eyes]

The "loo-ya" thing has stuck in his head, as whenever he sees a cross, or a picture of Jesus, or a church, or hears church bells, he proudly proclaims, "Loo-la!"

   

The REAL Reason for Preschool and Thoughts on Dora

In the last month, we have discovered the REAL reason why it´s a good idea to send kids to preschool! 
Now, keep in mind, I´ve taught preschool, and taken graduate level classes in early childhood education.  I can tell you any number of ways a child would benefit from a preschool education. 

But this year, as a parent of a preschooler, I have stumbled on the Number One Most Important Reason to send one´s child to preschool:  to boost their immunity! 

In the last 6 weeks, Clara has missed 2 weeks of classes, thanks to being sick.  I had a feeling this would happen, as Clara was rarely sick before this year (with the exception of spring allergies).  I was afraid that as soon as she started school, she´d be a magnet for any germ that would come her way. 

Nuts, I was right. 

But, on the upside, she´s naturally boosting her immune system, so (here´s hoping) that by the time she´s in elementary school, she´ll have a robust immune system and won´t have so many sick days.   Furthermore, this time around, she´s passing on her germs to the younger brother, so he´ll start his school days with some natural defenses. 

It´s not much fun at the moment, but I´m hoping that it will pay off in the end! 

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On a side note, it was always my rule with my kids that we do not watch TV unless we´re sick or if the weather has been really nasty for days on end. 

After Clara´s first bout with a cold a bit over a month ago, we developed a daily Dora the Explorer habit.  While she was sick, I said, ¨Sure--we can watch Dora!¨  But then, once Clara was better, we just kept watching Dora!  Where have my principles gone?  ;) 

However, Dora is on at 7pm.  It´s great incentive for the kids to eat dinner in a timely manner (as opposed to taking an hour or more to eat a bowl of yogurt) and take showers quickly.  Like any preschoolers, my kids are GREAT at doinking around, so telling them that ¨there´s 10 minutes until Dora is on!¨ really gets things moving. 

But, on another level, I really like Dora.  There´s goofy parts about her show--the repetitiveness, waiting for the audience to respond to a question--that I always thought was a little silly, but the kids eat it up.  They stand up and jump when she asks them to jump, they verbally answer her questions.  And when I say ¨they¨, I mean BOTH my kids.  Yes, Joey-child-with-next-to-no-vocabulary, VERBALLY answers as many of Dora´s questions as in can.  With real words.  In Spanish. 

Seriously, he´ll talk to Dora, but not with his own mother?  I may have to pull the plug.  Except he´s so cute!

And there´s another reason for keeping it on--it´s in Spanish.  Sure, Clara is getting much better Spanish exposure through school, and Joey is really learning it through Tía Patty, but . . . the more they get the better, right?  Sure.

But you know how´s Dora is a wee bit bilingual?  When she´s Spanish-dominant (on TV in any Spanish-speaking country), all her English comes out with an accent.  Now, that´s not necessarily a bad thing, but surely they can find a Dora voice that is rather accentless in both Spanish and English, right?  Apparently not, as ALL the characters (except Tico) have really thick accents.  Which sounds even more ridiculous when Dora asks my English-dominant children to tell a character to ¨STOP¨ in English.  However, Dora says ¨stop¨ with a long O, and my English-dominant children will repeat it back to her--with the long O! 

sigh

It seems Dora is around to stay.  And, overall I am OK with it, or I could bust out Big Bad Mommy and pull the plug.  However, it is rather ironic, as the week before we started the Dora habit, I filled out a survey at Clara´s school.  The very last question:  How much TV does your child watch in a week? 

Very smugly, I wrote down, ¨Less than 1 hour a week!¨

I knew I was far too smug when I wrote that!

Thoughts on Preschool

Now that we´ve been doing the whole ¨school thing¨ for nearly two months, we´ve got some patterns established and observations that we´ve made.  

1)  Clara still enjoys school, playing with the kids, cutting and pasting, playing ¨chase¨ with anyone who will chase her, etc.  

 2)  We´ve gotten a lot of information about Diego, a boy in her class.  Apparently he had a rough transition to school, following instructions, etc.  Clara still gives us daily, unasked-for updates on Diego´s progress (or lack thereof, somedays).  For the first few weeks, Diego seemed to be her only interest in school. 

3)  Fortunately, her interests have expanded in the last month, and now we get updates on the other girls in her class.  Who played with her, who has a new backpack, who threw up in class.  You know, the things that make a four-year-old´s world turn. 

4)  I´ve been very impressed with the homework that Clara´s teacher assigns.  My only experiences with Mexican preschools have been in private schools, and the director that I had in Metepec insisted that I give the kids homework EVERY DAY.  I felt rebellious giving them homework only 4 days a week.  (Knowing in my head that it´s ridiculous to give a preschooler any homework at all.)  Clara´s teacher, being a good deal smarter than that director, only asks for homework once a week, or once every other week.  Usually it´s before a holiday, and we (the parents) are to explain said holiday to the child and they draw a picture, or cut out pictures from magazines about anything having to do with said holiday.  That´s the kind of homework I can get behind.   The piece of homework above was a reflection on the United Nations, as they celebrated the founding of the United Nations on October 24th. 

5)  The only complaint with school is that she seems to get pushed and hit a lot.  I´ve walked past the school at recess time and all the kids have recess at the same time and it´s just a giant free-for-all.  I´m guessing that most of the hitting and shoving happens simply because preschoolers don´t tend to pay attention to their surroundings, so having 100 preschoolers running amok in a fairly confined space makes for any number of accidents waiting to happen.  On a daily basis. 

However, Clara is also not quick to defend herself (to put it mildly).  So she may be a bit of a target.  Mario and I encourage her to hit back when someone hits her first.  From what she says, her teacher encourages her to retaliate, too.  (I love this woman.)  Growing up, I can´t say I ever heard in a school setting that it was OK to hit anyone, even if they hit you first.  It was always, ¨take it to the teacher, take it to the teacher, blah, blah, blah . . . ¨ (Keep in mind, I never went to preschool myself.)  So I´m really happy that this teacher wants to encourage her to stand up for herself and is actively teaching her to defend herself, instead of letting her slip into being the perpetual victim. 

A friend of mine also suggested that she learn how to pray for problem children.  So tonight when she was praying for her friends, I suggested that we pray for another little girl, who Clara said that nobody likes because she hits and pushes everybody.  After we did that, Clara mentioned that Pushy Girl is doing a lot better.  Here´s hoping that´s the case!   

6)  And finally, Clara has been recruited by the speech therapist.  She doesn´t have any noticable speech problems, but the therapist will just work with her to increase her Spanish vocabulary.  Apparently, for her assessment, they didn´t realize that she spoke English at home (strange, because her teacher sure knows), so I can just see Clara sitting before a stack of flashcards they wanted her to identify, over and over saying, ¨I don´t know, I don´t know, I don´t know.¨  Until it finally dawned on her to explain that she knew how to say all these words in English!  Poor kid.   

She is doing really well and her Spanish has improved tremendously in the last two months.  Today, I even caught her using indirect objects, direct objects and both forms of the past tense!  (Yes, Spanish has two forms--and my four-year-old is beginning to dominate that!)

Obviously school has much to do with this improvement, as does Tía Patty coming back to live with us (so Joey´s getting solid Spanish exposure, too!) or if it´s also thanks to our new-founded Dora the Explorer habit.  Even Joey yelled at the TV this evening for Mapa to come out of Dora´s backpack.  (Of course, he called it Papa.)

But in the end, we´re really happy with school and pleased in our choice of schools.   

And I still can´t get over how stinkin´ cute she is in her school uniform!

All About Joe

As I figured, I am really enjoying all my Joey-time, now that Clara is in school for three hours a day.  At just over two years old, he´s got a lot going on, and surprises me all the time with new things he can do and the ways he shows us he´s understanding the world. 

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  Entertaining himself on the walk back home from school.

  
  His speaking skills are FINALLY taking off!  It became clear sometime this summer (like August) that ¨mama¨ really meant Mama.  For the longest time, he only said Mama when he was mad, so I wasn´t sure if he was taking to me, or if it was just the sound he made when he was mad.  Once he got over that stumbling block, the words are starting to roll off his tongue, and this week it seems that he´s learning a new word every day.  His vocabulary so far: 
• Papa--he just mastered this this week, but hoo-boy, he´s got it down! 
• quack-quack--really, this was his second ¨word¨, as all summer he´d quack at the ducks, geese, pigeons, any bird at all merits a good ¨kak-kak¨
• hot--he says, ¨ha¨ but I know what he´s talking about, as he only spouts this when he´s in the bath or eating.  Then again, the other day he hurt himself, I gave him an ice pack, and he proclaimed the ice pack to be ¨ha¨. 
• The other day he really got going on saying ¨hi¨ to me and Clara.  But I haven´t heard much of it since. 
• He attempted to say ¨apple¨ this evening.  I´m curious if we´ll hear it again soon. 
• The other day he asked Mario for ¨agua¨ without prompting.  Knocked my socks off!
• When he really, really wants more of something, he will ask, ¨mo´¨  He first said ¨more¨quite clearly way back on Christmas Day, but we haven´t heard much of it since until these last two weeks or so. 
• When he was trying to figure out how to say ¨Papa¨, he´d get all excited and stand at the door when Mario came home, shouting, ¨Mama!  Mama!¨  At least he now has the Mama/Papa distinction down.  However, asking him about other people in his life goes something like this:
• Me:  Joey, how do you say, ¨Clara¨?
• Joey:  Mama
• Me:  How do you say, ¨Tía Paty¨?
• Joey:  Mama   [glad to know that I´m so interchangable]
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  One evening, he insisted on wearing Clara´s school apron and backpack, then happily waved goodbye to us and trotted off to ¨school¨. [This is also the first picture I´ve taken of him when he smiled when asked to smile!  Huge milesone for the child of a mamarazzi!]

  
  He went potty!  I wasn´t even planning to try potty training him yet, but one night when he was running around naked before his bath he plopped his naked self down on the potty chair and when he got up there was something in it!  I was almost wondering if Clara hadn´t left something in the potty earlier in the day, but then again tonight (a week or so after the first incident) he did it again!  I´ve heard that second children are much easier to potty train, and I´m getting some pretty strong signs that that´s a true story!  Keep your fingers crossed! 

• 

  Paints with four brushes at once--what an artist!

  He´s fighting me in the bath, because HE wants to put the soap on himself and scrub it around.  At that stage, I know I let Clara do her bath mostly by herself, and took pride in how independent she was.  But bathing Joey myself is just so easy that it hasn´t crossed my mind this time around to let him try his hand at it.  Now that he´s insisting, I guess there´s no way around it. 
• Still likes to paint, draw, dance, brush his teeth, play with his cars, push doll strollers, run around, throw balls, try to catch balls, put things in boxes, play with electrical outlets, read books (especially about airplanes), climb, and take bites out of apples.  
• He really, really likes his accessories.  When I put his hat and sunglasses on him, they do not come off until he´s good and ready--usually a good hour or two after we´ve been inside.  If I put a sweatshirt on him in the morning, it does not come off.  Period.  No matter if the noontime temperature gets close to 90, that boy loves his sweatshirts.  If he could figure out Clara´s headbands, he´d probably get equally attached to those, too.  

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A friend had given us a pack of stickers and I HAD to give him a lightning-bolt scar, just like his world-famous birthday buddy! 

The Big Day!

Our yearly visit to Indiana was so timed to end the weekend of Uncle Dan and (the newly minted) Aunt Tadj´s wedding!  We figured it was worth missing the first two weeks of school in order to attend.  And we were right!

The only picture I took of both Dan and Tadj . . . sorry
it wasn't more flattering!

Clara was the flower girl, and did a very thorough job, despite plenty of misgivings during the rehearsal. 

Joey was a dancing machine during the reception.  I can count the number of songs he did not dance on one hand.  

Mario was able to join us, for his first weekend off since the beginning of June--thanks for getting married, Dan and Tadj, for giving him a reason to have a weekend off!

But most importantly, we´re over the moon about the fact that Tadj is officially part of our family now.  She´s the best thing to happen to us since . . . cheesecake! 

That wasn´t the widest hint, I´ve ever written, was it?  ;)

The big, red barn at Salomon Farm where the reception was held.

Dan and the bridesmaids.

Mario and the dancing kids!

Joey making short work of the coloring books that Aunt Tadj made.

The flower girl and her chapstick-eating brother.
It was the only way to keep him quiet while they took pictures.

First Day of School

After a month away, we´re back home.  Stories and pictures from our month in Indiana will be coming. 

However, this week saw another milestone in our family as Clara went to her first day of school! (OK, first three days--we did send her back for Thrusday and Friday.)  When we picked her up, Clara greeted full of smiles.  And it´s been that way every other day, too.  

Yay for school!  

I´m getting used to setting an alarm for the first time in five years (man, it´s been a beautiful five years!), as I now have to wake up the children every morning.  In some ways, I think I´m going to enjoy the structure that the school schedule will bring to our lives.  It was that kind of structure I craved when Clara was a baby and I hadn´t lived an unscheduled life since I was about five years old.  Over the last five years, I´ve slowly adjusted myself to a life without any set schedule, and found that I really like it.  But it took some getting used to.  Now that the structured life has imposed itself upon us again, I am resenting it a little.  

But I am glad that Clara likes school as much as she does.  So far.  

And I am looking forward to the hope of increased productivity on my part.  I think. 

And I really do enjoy the walks back and forth to school every day.  On this, there is no hesitation.  So glad we chose a school within walking distance!  (And an easy walk, at that.)

And Clara really likes pushing Joey.  No complaints here!