Recent Stephen-isms

Don't ask me what he's doing here. I thought it was unusual enough to warrant a picture though!

***

Stephen said a couple days ago: "When I'm ten, Oliver will be four and then he can go to preschool! But first he'll need to have potty training. And maybe karate training."

***

Last night, I met with Stephen's teacher for parent-teacher conferences. She had plenty of good things to say about his behavior and progress. She was impressed with his vocabulary in particular, adding that when the class does a game where she calls out a letter and each student needs to come up with a word beginning with the letter, Stephen always thinks up a word no one else has. 

Also, he's doing well in math. He might be 3rd percentile for height, but he scored 99th percentile on the standardized math test.

Sweet things

Stephen has been on a high since his birthday... Building salt-powered robots and magnetic vehicles, lego creations galore. 

Stephen poses with his "ultra-sonic raider" -- which probably took him 8 hours to build in two sittings. After he finished, just before bedtime, he declared "See! That didn't take very long!" Joe and I did not help him build this absurdly complicated Lego model that required TWO fat instruction books and SIX separate bags of Legos. 

Oh, so on to sweet things. 

 Sweet thing No. 1: Rocky has been praying at bedtime lately. He used to always demand that I pray over him, but now he'll do it on his own. His pray begins traditionally enough with "Thank-You God for my family..." then quickly becomes Rockam's retelling of all the things he may or may not have done or experienced or thought about that day. "for Nockam and Seeven and Aah-ver. For Mama and Dada aaaaand Fish-swim For Joshua's house and eating dinner and Wegos and Wego Star Wars and Wego Ninjagos.... and dolphins and fa-mingoes and octopuses."

There's always an assortment of wild animals thrown into this stream of consciousness. Anyway. I love the way he prays. I might have to make a "Thank You God" book for Rocky.

Sweet think No. 2: Stephen is still resistant to the idea of praying aloud at bedtime. But we do usually have a little chat before bed to discuss his high and low point. I've been knocked out with a horrible sinus headache for 5 days (feeling a little better today, as evidenced by the fact I'm finally blogging again) and so I didn't put the boys to bed for a while. After our "high point/low point" discussion, we had this conversation:

Stephen says to me, "Mom? Are you still sick?" 

Me: "I'm getting better."

Stephen: I wish I could catch all your germs.

Me: "Why would you want to do that?!" (thinking he wanted to stay home from school and play with aforementioned toys)

Stephen: "Cuz if I could catch all your germs then maybe you would feel better and not be sick anymore."

Me: (fighting back tears) Awww, bud, that's the nicest thing. But even if I gave you my germs, it doesn't mean I wouldn't be sick anymore. And I want you to be healthy."

Stephen: "Oh, OK."

Sweet thing No. 3: Oliver has finally decided drinking out of a sippy cup is indeed awesome.

Spaghetti nests

Stephen says while picking up pieces of raw spaghetti noodles "I'm picking up spaghetti! You're taking a picture of me!"

Earlier he was making a birds nest out of the noodles. When he finished, he was so pleased with himself that he began running back and forth between the living room and kitchen singing:

I like nests!
I like birds!
I like bird feeders!
I love my mom!
I love my dad!
I love my little brother!
I love my Legos!
I like my computer!
I like my kitchen!
I like my house!!


It was very cute :)

I have a lot of work to do, Mommy

Poor Stephen, neglected while his mom does her online tutoring.

"Ahh pyoo pyoo! Ah potty"

Rocky has a new habit of wanting to jump out of the bath tub to sit on the potty. After he's seated on his throne, he promptly requests "book"...

So far we haven't had any real success with this method, but he sure has a lot of fun.