This morning Leo was having a hard time and we rushed out of the house to bike to school instead of walking. Leo rides a tag-a-long third wheel that is attached to my bike.
Paul thought biking on the street was easier than the sidewalk or the field, both of which are clogged with people walking to school. So we rode down to Lehigh and Table Mesa and waited for an opening on Table Mesa to turn left. But there are two schools up the hill from this intersection and nearly everyone is turning left from there to go up Lehigh or going up Table Mesa to drop kids off at the schools. So we waited many minutes with no opening. Finally someone who wanted to turn left onto Lehigh stopped to let us go. Although I had recently looked up the hill and not seen anyone coming, I hadn't counted on the cars coming out of the school parking lot and so as I headed across the street, a car breezed past us several inches in front of my bike.
I told Leo to never never do what I just did. I'm still all shaken up about it. Leo said, "Mom you almost got in an accident!" I don't think he realizes we almost croaked.
Leo had an eye doctor appt today. They confirmed very strong red/green color blindness. Oddly, Leo also has a small congenital cataract, which supposedly won't interfere with his vision. And then he is already near-sighted at an age when most kids are far-sighted. They are predicting glasses in six months and every year after that.
Last weekend we visited Jean and hung out with her 4 year old son Mateo. He pulled out a book and started reading it. He pointed to each word as he read it and even had to sound out words like 'picked' because he wasn't simply memorizing the book. I was so impressed, and so proud. Leo was impressed too, "He can read and he's only 4. I am 5 and I can't even read!".
I guess it made a big impression on him, so yesterday he pulled out a book (an old Weekly Reader book from Kristin) and read two sentences. I'm really happy for him. Nothing like peer pressure!
The kids all line up and wave to their parents as they go in for their first day of Kindergarten. I was teary, anxious and nervous and excited. Leo was pretty mellow about it all. I guess it's his fifth school in five years so he takes it all in stride.
Leo sings, "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?" Me, "Spongebob Squarepants" Leo, "Who lives in a sewer under the sea?" Me, "I give up, who?" Leo, "Patrick" Me, "Oh. What is Patrick anyway?" Leo sighing, "A starfish. I have to tell you that all the time. I've told you a million times already."
We're camping at Lake Granby. Leo keeps wanting to play this ridiculous game where he throw two handfuls of gravel above his head and then covers his head with his hands so the rocks don't fall on his head. This is the second night he's done it. Yes we've told him to stop. So Paul finally tells him that if he wants to get hit in the head, Paul will do it for him. Leo says ok. Paul says ok, let me get the hammer. Leo says, "No! Not with a hammer! With a rock!"
I really haven't been pushing this, but somehow I just thought Leo would be an early reader in the Lew family tradition. I figured he'd be a bookworm and smuggling books under the dinner table to read while we had supper.
A couple months ago, he started spelling spontaneously the words "boo", "moo", "dog" and "dots". The latter was off a candy box! Its been coming slowly. Anyway, today at school he showed me a booklet he had made by copying some cards of word families. Like "bat", "cat", "hat", "at", etc. He didn't know what the words were so I explained how to sound them out (I've explained this before). Anyway, it caught on this time and he was able to read 6 pages of word families. We called each page a "level" in gaming language (yeah, I thought he might be one of those game whiz kids who was illiterate) to make it exciting. Anyway, level 6 was attained and we celebrated.
Leo found a couple leeches under a rock and did a little video explanation. I added some clips from this giant beetle grub that Davey found splitting wood. gross and fun - what camp is all about
Leo and his cousin Joylin put on a series of very cute shows last week: the Amazing Chopping Leo, the Amazing Magic Leo. This morning Leo came at us with two straws and a fierce look on his face and announced: "Fasten your seatbelts! It's the Amazing Magic Stabbing Leo!"
Today Leo officially turned five, after having a big birthday bash with 60 of his closest friends a couple weeks ago, and then a mini birthday yesterday because Paul wanted to celebrate before he left for DC this week. We did a few gifts last night, mostly toys from a garage sale and books from the school book sale with a big chemistry kit (for ten-year olds, but I figure, I'm way older than ten now) thrown in because I know he'll love it.
For some reason, Leo opened every gift exclaiming, "this is just what I asked for!" I was pretty stoked, thinking I had done well. Then he opens this one:
Today at the Montessori school, Leo did a special birthday ceremony in which they light a candle that represents the sun and Leo walked around it once for each year of his life. At each year, they would ask about whether he had learned to walk, talk, where he lived etc. (Yup, this is Boulder, where the kids also learn to meditate to a little Tibetan gong)
They had us make a big poster of pictures of his life and he then walked around the room showing everyone his life - in the Zander Lander, sitting on big sculptures at Burning Man, swimming, from his life with big curly hair...
I took the afternoon off so we could go see Toy Story 3 which was great fun. This evening Sami and family stopped by which made the night seem less lonely.
At one point tonight, Leo was saying that in a 150 months he'd be dead. I said, no that is only like 10 years and you'd better not be dead in ten years. How old will you be in ten years? To my amazement, he managed to do the addition. I've taught him addition on his fingers, but I guess he's figured out how to get to bigger numbers now. And while he noticeably disappointed that his new Pokemon book was a 'chapter book' as opposed to a 'picture book' ("this book has a lot of words and not many pictures...") he did try to sound out the word 'screaming'.
Anyway, my little boy's growing up and it's sad and exciting and I'll miss him being so small.
Yesterday, I was getting stuff out of the car when Leo started calling for me, "Mom, come here, I want to show you something!" I can't tell you how many times a day I hear that. I fill my arms with all the stuff from the car and drop it inside the door, and Leo's yelling, "someone spit all over our tree!". I'm thinking about the teenagers up the street, and I realize the entire bush is covered in little spit balls. It's absolutely disgusting. We cut a branch off and put it in a bug jar and determine that it's the nymph of the spittle bug. Today, we brought it to school for show-and-tell. And then Leo explains to me that he knows what the spit tastes like. He explains that he tasted it yesterday to see what it tasted like - "It tastes like boogers! And you know how much I like boogers!"
was a big bash. We had 60 some folks crammed into a little pavilion at Martin Park to have pizza with us and watch Paul do his first birthday party magic show since his high school days. It was wonderful to see all our friends, many of whom we haven't seen for a year since we've been in Hawaii. Paul wowed the audience and us (Leo and I have never seen Paul do a magic show). Here's Paul putting a sword through Leo's neck. Mia (in pink) is standing up, tense, her hands in little fists, watching her boyfriend get stabbed by his father.
I got Leo a slip n slide - I'd seen it as a kid but never used one. I set it up and put him in swim clothes and told him to slide on it. So he sat on the 'boogie board' (a tiny inflatable raft that covers his torso) and tried to slide. I laughed and explained he had to slide on his belly. So he lay down on his belly and tried to slide. I said, no, you have to take a flying leap. He tried to jump and then lay down on his belly. Frustrated and in my full clothing, I took it from him and took a running leap down the slide. I was wearing these thin pants with a really big rivet for a button. The 'boogie board' only covered my chest so I landed on the boogie board and on this rivet which tore a hole in the slip n slide and painfully road rashed my crotch and ended up soaking wet in the little pool at the end of the slide. I was howling in pain, and limping back into the house. Leo didn't really want to try it again after that.
Leo has really gotten into spelling. He's learned families of words, like moo and boo, or dog and fog and bog. Now when he draws, he tries to spell captions for his artwork. Like he drew a ladybug and wrote "LD". At school, he drew a picture of his new fave TV show, Avatar, and wrote "AVT" for the picture of the Avatar guy and "FOR" (backwards) for Fire Nation. Now he wants to teach spelling at his birthday party, before the magic show starts. I'm sure that will be exciting entertainment for the kids!
We went to the Denver Art Museum today. It was a cold, rainy CO day and we expected hail. Of course we hung out in the contemporary art section, until Leo pulled me aside and whispered in my ear, "this art really freaks me out" and then we left.
Tonight I told Leo a story about a kid who goes to an art museum and is sad and walks into this painting of a beautiful, sunny day. He goes into this other world and plays with the kids, and climbs trees and smells the flowers.
Then I ran out of steam and couldn't figure out how the kid gets back home, even though he's now homesick and wants to return home. Leo said, "Oh, that's easy, he goes to the contemporary art museum in that world, finds a picture of home, and goes into that picture to get back home."
Leo was playing with a hand held massage device that had been his toy since he was small. Paul said, "let's try to use that for the purpose it was designed for" and started massaging me.
Meanwhile, Leo wanted dessert.
Paul said, "well if you want a lollipop for dessert, I'll get you one. Here, you take over and give mom a massage". He gave the massager to Leo who proceeded to massage my back while Paul got the lollipops and presented them to Leo.
Leo said, "ok it's your turn to take over. I can't do this all day!"
