Skip to main content

The Best Things about Carl (at 5 and a half years)


1. He is friendly and happy when meeting/greeting people.
2. He responds when I talk to him.  He doesn't always like what he hears but I always know he heard me.
3. Sometimes, he responds with a cheerful, "Yes, Mom!"
4. I love to hear him sing.
5. He expresses sincere gratitude without prompting.
6. His lego designs are surprisingly elegant.
7. His new belly button looks great.  He had surgery last month to repair an umbilical hernia and he was a really good sport about it.
8. I appreciate how very attentive he is to baby Leif.  He asks to hold him at least once every day and likes to sooth him when he's unhappy.
9. He is also really sweet with Sven, who is going through an emotionally turbulent time right now.  Carl likes to help his little brothers feel better.
10. I love to watch his pretend play.  Frequently, he and his friends pretend to be lego minifigures.  Carl holds his fingers in a c-shapes in imitation of the minifigure hands.  If he is suddenly still in a strange position, you know that he has been hit with the kragle-lizer!
11. His eyes have changed color and now they are greenish.  Kind-of like mine.
12. He is picking up phonics here and there on his own and his creative spellings are fun.
13. He pitches in to help without being asked.
14. He loves going to preschool
15. and is friends with everyone there.
16. I like his artwork.  His strokes are careful and deliberate; I think he will do well with handwriting next year.
17. He has bonded with his dad over left-handedness.  They are adorably proud of their sinister natures.
18. Sometimes he will come sit next to me and put his head on my shoulder.  I like that.
19. He adapts well to different environments.  He is really good at figuring out the rules of a given situation and responding accordingly.
20. He likes to use a British accent in his pretend play.  It is so charming!

Comments

Oozaroo said…
Carl is amazing!

Popular posts from this blog

What Works for Us: Room Time

I've decided to do a new series of posts on how I make parenting work for us. Every parent does it differently--which is great!--but I have a hard time keeping my discoveries to myself. The things I do may not work for anyone else but I want to record them and remember them. Hopefully, it will also help me vent my soap-box-y-ness so that I'm not always imposing my ideas on other people. That will be what "What-Works-for-Us Posts" are about. One of the things that we have always done, but has made a HUGE difference in the move from one to two children, is Room Time . When Soren was 6 months old, I started having him play alone (in a safe place) every day for a few minutes. At first it was only five minutes in the port-a-crib but we quickly worked up to fifteen, then thirty. At that time, I used those precious minutes to do housework or relax on the couch. When I was pregnant with Carl, Soren would play alone for about an hour in his room and I would usually tak...

Surrounded by Love

One of my greatest worries about having four children was that I would not be able to welcome and love my new baby as well as I had the others.  Now that he is here, I feel that he is perhaps the most welcomed and best loved of all my sons.  More on that in a moment. I struggled to bond with Leif in utero, in part because pregnancy was old hat to me and in part because life was busy with too many other things.  The new miracle  growing inside of me was the most normal thing about my life.  There were a few good moments that helped me prepare mentally: doing guided meditations during Christmas vacation, my blessingway on January 6th, and a really good conversation I had with Scott about my hopes and worries.  But mostly, my mind was elsewhere. And then there was the birth.  I should have known that it would be a totally unique experience and that it would prepare me for this totally unique child. Needless to say, I'm crazy about the little guy. ...

ABCs

A couple of months ago I was trying to encourage Soren to draw. For 15 or 20 minutes every afternoon, we would sit at the coffee table with paper and pencil. I would draw stick figures and doodles; Soren would watch, his own paper untouched. After a couple of days repeating my usual pictures over and over, I ran out of ideas and started writing the letters of his name. One day I wrote and drew pictures of all the things I could think of that began with S: Soren, snake, superman, spider, stars, etc. The next day we focused on the letter O. It gave me ideas for drawing, which kept Soren entertained even if it wasn't fulfilling its original purpose. A couple more weeks went by and I didn't put any effort into reinforcing the letters. So I was very surprised when, one day while reading a naptime story, he pointed to the page and said very distinctly, "ess". He was, in fact, pointing to an S. And he was very excited about it. So, instead of reading the book, we sp...