My sweet Lucas, today you are FOUR years old!
In the last few weeks and months, so many of our family and friends have commented on how much you’ve grown up recently. You’ve lost your pudgy toddler stance and are now growing long and lean like your oldest brother. Your face is still sweetly soft, but most faint traces of the baby you were just yesterday are melting away. In this last year, you’ve moved from a crib to a bed and given up your soother — both a little later than planned, perhaps, but you can blame it on a mother who was not ready for you to grow up so quickly.
Lucas, you are a quirky fellow and an affable companion. We spend most Wednesdays together, just you and me, and I enjoy your company immensely. You are bright and observant and soak in the world around you. You are also extremely patient about having a lens pointed at you every day of your life. 
This year in September you will start school, but you can already write your own name and you recognize numbers up to ten and most of the alphabet. We have to keep reminding ourselves that you are only three four, as you seem far beyond your years. The product of having two older brothers, perhaps?
You love crafts and art projects, but above all else you love to draw. You sit for surprising lengths of time each day churning out drawing after drawing of puffles from Club Penguin or Mario and Luigi or even the members of your family. Your figures are clearly recognizable, and you add details like skies and clouds and grass and flowers. I’ve been utterly charmed to watch you mimic Tristan, selecting a DVD box or a book and propping it in front of you and then painstakingly copying the pictures you see. At FOUR years old! (Oy, the amount of paper we recycle, as I try to hide your daily dozen or so sketches between the sections of discarded newspaper in the recycle bin! We’re endlessly grateful to Papa Lou for the reams of unused letterhead he has donated to your perpetual art studio!)
You’re a sweet and agreeable child, and one of my favourite peccadilloes of yours is a cheerful “Sure!” (which sounds more like “shore!”) when I propose something to you. One day before Christmas, we were in Costco and stopped for lunch. It was crowded and we shared our table with an East Indian woman who was quite taken with you. When she leaned in and asked if you would like to marry her little three-year-old granddaughter (“with hair down to here!” she said, pointing to her waist) I thought you would simply blush and turn away as you’re still not overly fond of strangers, but you gave her your best smile and that endearing “Sure!” You melted both our hearts!
You spend four days each week with your friends Maryke and Matthew at “Nana” Heidi’s house, and you have never once complained about going. You enjoy touring all the neighbourhood playgroups and drop-ins and storytime at the library with Nana Heidi, and through her you’re becoming a well-known Manotick figure – people I don’t know stop to say hi to you in the grocery store!
You love video games as much as your big brothers do. You introduced ME to Angry Birds, and you love Super Mario Kart too. Your favourite TV shows are Max and Ruby, Dora, Toopy and Binoo and lately Harry’s Bucket of Dinosaurs. You also love your books and bedtime storytime, and I think you prefer having Daddy read to you because you can always talk him in to one, two, three more books.
Lucas, I feel like I haven’t even scratched the surface of what makes you so adorable. This is a big year for you, as you head off to school in September. I watch your growing independence with bittersweet pride. It seems mere days ago that the whole of the Internet waited with excitement for the arrival of the Player to be Named Later. You’re not a baby anymore, but you’ll always be my baby, even when you tower over me on some not-too-distant day.
Happy birthday, my darling Lucas! We love you very much.
My dear, darling Simon,
You, my middlest boy, are eight years old today. Of course, in your own mind you’ve been eight years old for at least as long as your older brother was that age. You may be the only eight year old boy I know who is dipping his toes in the ‘tween years!
My sweet Simon, you continue to be the family ham. You have a flair for drama, for humour, and for performance. You are warm and generous and like to see people happy. You impressed all the grown-ups in the family immensely just this weekend at your birthday party, when you offered completely without prompting to share the two months of Club Penguin memberships you received with your older brother, knowing that he wanted one as badly as you did. You are truly a kindhearted, generous soul.
School seems to come easily to you, as does making friends. Your last report cards contain nothing but praise. You also seem to think and speak way beyond your years. You are argumentative and challenging when it suits you, and relentlessly curious. While I know these traits will do you very well in the long run, I do have to admit that they’re occasionally exasperating to a parent. 
The thing I most admire about you, Simon, is that you accept everyone as your peer and your equal. Whether conversing with an adult, a younger child or a teenager, you simply assume that you are friends and that you will be accepted as an equal. I think a lot of people could learn a lesson or two from this! On the same token, you do occasionally need to be reminded that you are NOT an adult and not privy to every conversation that happens between adults, and have been chastised for cheekily calling teachers by their first names.
You continue to be a fussy eater. You like what you like and you are stubborn when you don’t like something or you think you might not like something. You have finessed the “I can’t eat any more, my stomach hurts” excuse when there is nothing left but vegetables on your plate. You like spicy food and love that Daddy occasionally lets you drink pop with your dinner. Your favourite dinners are tacos, pizza and (sigh) McDonalds. You also like the idea of cooking and baking, and have asked to make your own lunch or breakfast several times, and you asked for and received an Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas. You, my boy, are a child who was born to break stereotypes.
Your friends are Alexander and Mason and Olivia, and of course all of your big brother’s friends, too. You like Club Penguin, Super Mario Brothers, Pokemon, the Wii and the DS. You love to play board games and card games, but you also love your “Puffle” stuffies. You are less enthusiastic about active, outdoor games, but you are a much better sport about getting out and moving than you used to be, especially if there are other kids about. This year you joined Beaver Scouts and seem to love it, perhaps in part because Daddy has signed up as a Beaver leader to help out. I think we’re both relieved that we decided against enrolling you in hockey this year.
Sweet Simon, your endless warmth and affection more than make up for your occasional sharp temper and impatience with your little brother. You’re on your way to a larger-than-life personality, and it’s delightful watching you grow up. It’s also wonderful to simply spend time with you, and we love you very much.
Happy birthday, Simon my love. I wish you every dream your heart can wish — and with your creative imagination, there is no end to the possibilities that may bring.
Tristan just asked me if he could read Lucas a bedtime story, instead of being read to by Beloved.
These are the moments that make it all worthwhile. Blogged because I want to remember this one.
I‘ve been having too much fun with the boys to be blogging much through the holidays, but I’ve been missing all of you. I didn’t have anything particularly interesting to say, until I overheard this snippet of conversation just a few minutes ago and thought it was the perfect note on which to end 2011, as we settle in to watch a movie with the boys. (Either the second instalment of Harry Potter, but I don’t want to usurp the book we haven’t read, or the second movie in the LOTR trilogy. I’m leaning toward LOTR, as Tristan is quite concerned about Gandalf’s fate after having just finished Fellowship of the Rings a few nights ago.)
So, the conversation I overheard. Ahem, yes.
Boy, to his brother: “Did you know that when you get married, your testicles turn into babies?”
Brother: “Well that’s another reason I’ll never get married. I want to keep my balls!”
And with that, a happy new year to all of you. Let’s hope 2012 bring all of us more than our share of joy, laughter and moments filled with wonder.
xo Dani
One of the great pleasures of my day is reading out loud to the boys at bedtime. Beloved and I take turns; one night I’ll read to Lucas and he’ll read to Tristan and Simon, and then we’ll switch. Lately, Tristan and Simon and I have taken to sharing some of the reading – they’ll read a page or two each, and then I’ll read the rest. It’s been a great way to (a) keep them engaged in the story, (b) share the love of reading and (c) monitor their reading progress.
We’ve been all over the map with our book choices, from JK Rowling to Dave Barry to Judy Blume, and we’re always looking for new suggestions, so I thought I’d share some of our recent favourites. By the way, I called this post “five great books to read aloud to boys” intentionally — while I’m sure that many girls (myself included!) would enjoy these books, I think it’s a little harder to engage boys in reading and these ones have done that well.
1. Peter and the Starcatchers - Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson
This is a wonderful book to read out loud – the language just flows, the dialogue is engaging, and the story is a real page-turner. When I was reading it to the boys this summer, they’d ask me to start reading a little earlier than usual so we could read more, and we’d sit on the porch in the receding light to enjoy it. It’s a quirky, imaginative twist on the Peter Pan story, written by humourist and columnist Dave Barry. There are three more books in this series, and I look forward to working our way through all of them.
2. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing - Judy Blume
I read this when I was Tristan’s age, back when I devoured everything Judy Blume had written. Although some of the references are a little dated, the boys loved the interaction between 9 year old Peter, his pesky younger brother Fudge and their baby sister. There are now five books in this series, and we worked our way through all of them this summer. Simon especially seemed to love the antics of Fudge – more than one allusion from Fudge to Lucas was drawn! This one is impressively engaging for a 40 year old novel.
3. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
I tried to read Lord of the Rings several times in my life. I’d pick it up, put it down. Pick it up, put it down. I loved the mythology (I taught myself Tolkien’s rune alphabet when I was in highschool and used to write notes to friends using it) and loved the movies, but the books — ugh. I just couldn’t get through those pages and pages of Hobbit geneology. But The Hobbit itself? Love it. It’s the perfect quest novel – a diminutive hero, mythical and mysterious creatures, battles, treasure. What more could a young boy want? We’re about 1/3 of the way in right now, and although Simon was a little reluctant at first, I had them both sitting on the edge of the bed last night trying to figure out the riddles that Gollum and Bilbo were trading. (Tristan dropped my jaw by figuring out a few of them as I was reading, and then made up his own rhyming riddle on the spot!) Did you know Peter Jackson is filming a version of the Hobbit? It’s due to be released next year.
4. Percy Jackson books – Rick Riordan
I can’t personally testify to these books, as its Beloved who has been working through them with the boys since last Christmas. All three of them love the series, based largely in the world of Greek mythology. In fact, Beloved and I have occasionally bartered for more reading time when he was reading Percy Jackson and I was reading Peter and the Starcatchers — we each wanted to know what was going to happen next in our respective stories.
5. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
We read the first book in the series earlier this year, and the boys loved it. I know the books get darker as the series progresses, but I find the first few books to be perfect for where they are right now. Given that it takes a month or so for us to read the average novel (I had to renew Peter and the Starcatchers three times from the library and still incurred a few days of late charges to wade through all 480 pages, and that was an easy read!) I figure by the time we work our way up to Deathly Hallows the boys will be in their teens anyway! I’m trying to read them each book before we watch the movies, but they’ve already seen The Chamber of Secrets — I’ve got some catching up to do!
Clearly, we have a fondness for science fiction and fantasy in our reading material! So, Christmas book-giving season is nearly upon us — what books are on your kids’ wish-lists this year? (Stand by for five more book recommendations for the preschooler in your life!)
August was marked by much anxiety about sports. I googled, I asked friends online and IRL, I blogged, I tweeted, I wrung my hands in anxiety. To hockey or not to hockey, that was the compelling question.
Do you like how I just turned hockey into a verb? If ‘friend’ can be a verb, so can hockey. And we, as a family, have decided not to hockey. At least, not yet.
When I realized that I was projecting many of my own innermost anxieties about social acceptance and peers onto the situation, I realized I had lost all perspective and sought the opinions of others. (The irony does not escape me that even in this, I seek external approval for my actions and validation of my decisions. Don’t judge me.)
There were many factors that informed our decision to not hockey, and many voices. On the pro-hockey side there were those who shared their own childhood hockey experiences, those who loved being a hockey parent (see, if hockey can be an adjective as well as a noun, surely it can be a verb as well!) and those who saw hockey as a natural right of passage for their sons and daughters. On the con side, there were those who expressed reservations about the cost, the culture and the violence. Annie of PhD in Parenting wrote a post that helped me crystalize my own reservations – read it here, because it’s worth seeing the other side even if you’re a rabid athletic supporter.
I was so torn that I first registered and then a week later de-registered one son from our local minor league team. The money and the time commitment were just too great, and I couldn’t rationalize the benefit against the costs. When I told said boy that we had in the end decided it was best for our family that he not play hockey this year, he looked at me mildly with this thoughtful brown eyes, shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Okay.’ For this I lost hours of sleep.
The absence of hockey gave us room for activities for two boys. One will join Beaver Scouts, something I find endlessly delightful. And, it’s around the corner on Thursday evenings instead of all over the eastern half of the province at wildly unpredictable times. The other was given a choice of activities, and he chose — be still my heart — guitar lessons.
There was more googling, more researching, more consultations. A school was chosen, a guitar was acquired, a teacher was hired, a time slot was secured. In the end, the total cost for the first year of lessons and the guitar may yet exceed the cost of the damn hockeying.
And you know what? I am happy with that. Moreso, I am delighted with this turn of events. We are artsy, musical people. (Well, Beloved and Papa Lou are musical. Me, not so much. Despite seven pathetic years of school band, I remain largely tone deaf and unencumbered by any sense of rhythm whatsoever.)
Here’s five reasons why guitar lessons trump hockey playing:
1. We do not risk growing out of this guitar in mid-season.
2. Guitar lessons do not take place at 6 am on a Saturday, or in damp, dank 12C arenas.
3. There is little to no risk of a concussion in guitar lessons.
4. Other parents do not yell angrily at your child during guitar lessons. (Although the jury is still admittedly out on whether we will yell angrily at our own children in the act of encouraging the practicing of said guitar lessons.)
5. Chicks dig guitar players.
We start our first lessons this week. I can barely wait!
