A Few Things About the Kids

Amaya

The other day when I was taking Amaya to school she was naming off all the characters from Star Wars. Carson is obsessed with all of the Star Wars movies so on the weekends there is a good chance that one of the six movies is playing somewhere in our house. Anyway, after she had named off quite a few I started asking her to say some that she had left out, just because it's so cute to hear her pronounce them. I told her to say Chancellor Palpatine. She said, "I can't. That's Spanish."

We were watching American Idol on the night that the girls were performing. As soon as the Asian girl came on the screen and they were showing the clips of her, Amaya said, "Hey, that's a Chinese girl just like I'm a Chinese girl." That is the first time that she has associated another Asian person with herself. For a long time I've told her she was born in China, and just recently I started telling her she is Chinese. I never really knew if she fully understood any of it, but now I know that she is starting to. Whenever I see an Asian woman (and I know they're not all Chinese, but for her three-year-old mind I keep it simple and say they're Chinese) I tell her, "She's Chinese just like you. She's beautiful just like you." It just goes to show how big she's getting that she's starting to understand things.

A neighbor of ours has a girlfriend that has a couple of kids. She doesn't live there, but apparantly she is moving in with her kids. Carson and Hayden were outside playing this afternoon, and pretty soon the boy came out and started playing with them. He is eight-years-old, just like Carson, and he has a five-year-old sister, just like Hayden. I am so happy that there are finally going to be some kids living near us that our kids can play with. As it is right now, there is a five-year-old girl that another neighbor babysits sometimes, so she plays with the kids, but she is the only one. She's in Hayden's class, too, so he sees her all the time. The only problem I can forsee is that Carson and the boy will play together, and the two neighbor girls will play together, maybe including Amaya, and Hayden will be left out. We'll see how it goes.

The behavior chart is really working. The only thing it hasn't helped much with is the fighting and teasing. As far as mealtimes go, they have been perfect. They eat their meals without fighting or making a huge mess, and they are using their manners. Also, mornings trying to get ready for school have been great. They follow their routines and are ready for school early. Their afternoon and evening routines have been going really well, too. After school the first day when Hayden finished his afternoon routine he was mad because he like following it so much that he wanted there to be more stuff on it. I need to rework a few things on the chart for next week, but overall it is a success.

Carson

Every day Carson's teacher writes me a note, with a smiley face or a frowny face or a straight face next to it, depending on how he behaved that day. One of the spaces on his chart is school. I judge whether he gets a sticker each day by what his teacher wrote. Last week on Monday they didn't have school, Tuesday he got a frowny face (which is what he gets most of the time) and Wednesday and Thursday, after I implemented the chart, he got smiley faces. On Friday he had a substitute teacher. Normally when he has a substitute I don't get a note because they don't know the procedure. Carson was so worried about not getting a smiley face that day, and not getting a sticker, that he went up to the substitute, explained how the system works, and told her to give him either a smiley face, a straight face or a frowny face. She gave him a smiley face, so he was very happy about that. I was very happy, too, because for him to get three smiley faces in four days is miraculous. I'm sure if he keeps up the good work his teacher is going to be very happy, too, because I know he really wears her out.

Hayden

Hayden is the cutest kid I've ever seen, although he got a rather rough start in life when it came to looks. The first thing I noticed about him when the nurse laid him on my chest after he was born was that he looked like a bird. For the next week and a half he looked a little pathetic. Finally, after the second week, he started getting cuter. Even my dad, who died when Hayden was two and a half weeks old, made a comment to Hayden one day. He said, "Well, it looks like you're growing into your looks." Unfortunately, right after he stopped looking like a bird he got some sort of heat rash on his cheeks that lasted until fall, about two months. After that he just got cuter and cuter. Right now he is just so cute he drives me crazy. I just want to squeeze him like a teddy bear. I could just stare at him all day long. It's not just his looks that make him cute. His personality is pretty funny, too. Another thing that makes him cute is he's got a lisp; although I hope he outgrows it someday because a 40-year-old man with a lisp isn't as cute as a five-year-old boy with a lisp.