At the moment, miraculously, I feel the least anxious that I have felt in months! We sent our son back to daycare for about a month, and then a few days before Thanksgiving, I decided to pull him out again. We told him that he would stay home with me for at least two weeks after Thanksgiving and for two weeks after Christmas, but in reality, I am prepared to keep him home all through December and mid-January if the local COVID numbers don't look good. I was really hoping that his daycare families would be cautious for Thanksgiving, but he came home the week of Thanksgiving to let me know that most of his friends were planning to go over to someone's house for Thanksgiving dinner, and that one of his daycare families kept one sick and coughing twin at home while sending the other one to school. The combination of those two pieces of news was just a wee bit too stressful for me, so I was honest with my son and asked him if he would feel alright if we kept him home even for the few days before Thanksgiving. He responded brightly, "Sure," much to my relief and surprise. So, back to being holed up with just our sweet and screamy little family, for a little while. Even though my kids are loud and needy and they suck up all of my energy, I really enjoy having both of my kids home. We have had a rare stretch of sunny, dry weather this week, and my son was able to get back on his pedal bike for the first time in about two months. This week, he has been riding his bike, while I push his little sister in a trike stroller, to go to a park a mile away from our house. It's a decent ride because it's uphill to the park and downhill back, and because he was out of practice, the first day I had to push his bike uphill for the last few blocks leading up to the park. After the first day though, he has been able to make it there and back, and is quickly re-gaining his confidence on the bike. (We don't have a fancy bike for him. Actually, the bike he rides is heavy, rusted, and very basic. It has back-pedal brakes and no gear-shifting, the handlebar looks quite worn, and I got it for free. So, I empathize when he finds the hills challenging and thinks hopping on and off the bike is cumbersome, but I also think it builds... stamina?!) We usually spend most of a dry morning getting to the park, playing, and getting back. I do squeeze in a short math lesson every few days, mostly to keep him thinking mathematically. Speaking of math, L is doing very well with visualizing quantities under 10, which makes this math mama very proud! For example, if I show him a picture of 7 dots, he can quickly tell me that he sees 7 dots, because he sees 3 and 3 and 1 more. I am starting to work with him on making subtractive statements like, "I have 7 dots on my card, and you have 2. I win this round (of War) because I have FIVE extras!" With only a little bit of help from me, he also has learned to skip-count by 2's, up to 10. He says, "2, 4, 6, 8, 10!" and actually understands what it means to count by 2's, so I am now trying to add on a bit more, to encourage him to skip-count by 2's up to 20. Recently, he looked at our scrambled Advent calendar and re-arranged the drawers to be in the correct order. He also told me that he counted there to be 12 Advent drawers on each side of the train, which made a total of (he counted) 24 drawers, "because 2 and 2 make 4!" It is so fun to hear him making his own mathematical observations, even though he would probably not peg himself as being particularly mathematical. We have also been continuing with our Chinese lessons, which happily only last about 5-10 minutes per (week)day. I alternate daily between doing 1 or 2 new characters out of the Sagebooks, and just doing review. When we review, L either fishes out the characters to form a sentence that I dictate, or he reads sentences that I create. I think we are up to about 35 characters now that he recognizes, and the best part is that he is still enjoying it! We are moving at the right pace for both him and me, and 5-10 minutes is just the amount of focus I can get from him at the end of a day, with his rambunctious sister running around. (See below - picture from about a month ago!) Lastly, I am a proud mama today of my son, because he learned to zip up TWO of his jackets by himself. He did those two zippers each once yesterday and twice today! He also recently learned to put on his socks without stretching them out. He's just emerging to be a big kid all around. So proud of this kid! Now, if he could just be consistently nice to his little sister...
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About MeBorn in Asia, I have spent more than a third of my life living outside of the U.S. thus far. I currently reside in the Pacific Northwest with my techie husband and two biracial children. Categories
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July 2021
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