Snowy day

The view off our front porch this morning.

On the way home from after-school care, typical reactions when I pull out the camera: Victor strikes a pose, while Anna does something silly. Note that you can see a bit of the new gap in Victor's teeth.

Victor loses another tooth

Victor showing off the tooth he lost at school. I can't believe I didn't think to make him show off the gap he now has in his front teeth.

The pickup was different because Anna stayed home sick. She'd finally stopped being sick early morning but decided to just stay in the bathroom. She managed to get and keep a few bites down in the morning and a few more in the afternoon when she was awake but kept going back to her bathroom nest, where she mostly slept all day. But Caity was at work when the time came to pick up Victor so I bundled Anna up and brought her along.

When we got back Anna was done with the nest and was ready to play — and happy to earn a couple of balloons for being very stoic and listening well throughout the whole thing.

Lord Baden Powell Banquet

First, some art Anna pulled out today.

At the Lord Baden Powell Banquet. Unfortunately Anna started to feel sick — she might have already complained about it before this picture was taken. She was of two minds about going home but eventually we left early (that sounds strange), and probably a good thing, as she was sick on the way home. And then she was sick shortly after going to bed and unfortunately wasn't able to find the bucket (well, pot) I'd given her in time. She was upset about that. I fixed up her bed but she has decided to just sleep on the mat in the bathroom (I gave her a blanket).

Morning silliness

I commonly become aware that Anna is awake when I see her move silently into my field of vision as I shave in the morning. This morning she had kitty and the little pillow that Caity had given her. Of course when the camera came out she had to ham it up.

Victor is telling Anna that there can be nothing on the floor!

In unison: "FART! FART! FART! FART!..." Sigh. They grow out of it, right?

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Yesterday evening (no pictures unfortunately) Anna went to a reptile/dinosaur birthday party. When we came in the reptile guy was trying to find a taker to hold the big black tarantula he had in his hand. Seeing me come in, he said something along the lines of, "Are there any parents brave enough to hold Fluffy?" (the implication being that a previous offer to the kids had not been answered) and came over to me and Anna. Before I could respond, Anna says, "I want to hold him!" And she did. She was very careful, but quite clearly delighted.

Wrapping babies and defending warriors

Anna is trying to wrap herself up like a baby. Just to be clear, while we did swaddle her when she was a baby, we never tied her up!

Meanwhile in Victor's room, I'm told that fierce warriors are preparing to defend against Darth Vader and his stormtroopers. I don't think the Imperial invaders have a chance against this stuffie army. Somehow I think Anna was involved in the invention of this scenario. This room looks like it has already seen a few battles.

Breadboarding

Anna picked out an old electronic circuit cookbook off of my bookshelf this afternoon and said "I want to do this!". With no comprehension at all of what the drawings were about, I think she just wanted to draw in the book since it was an ancient (I bought it when I was 12) amateur hobbyist electronic book that was actually hand-drawn. Always keen to seize those teachable moments, I offered to show her what it was all about. Since I haven't touched any of this stuff for something like a couple of decades, my brain was scrambling to retrieve enough information from archival storage to have her do something interesting enough to generate some interest. The first thing that came to mind was to let her light something up, and these displays happened to be nearby.

Yes, Victor is in this picture in body but he knows he is a single homework problem away from his quota of screen time (something that motivates Victor a lot but Anna not at all), so he wasn't interested in joining in the fun at this time.

Victor was keen to join in after his allotted screen time, and by that time my brain had engaged enough for me to assemble the components for a simple counter circuit (an simpler version than the circuit you can see in the book in the corner). Unfortunately I gave him the nicest-looking breadboard, without remembering why it looked nice and didn't have any melted or burned spots: I never used it because it was awful, in particular inserting anything into the bus strips was nigh impossible. So Victor got quickly frustrated and decided Lego would be more fun.

Anna lasted much longer than Victor (perhaps just because she had a much better breadboard), but eventually decided she just wanted to do art. When she asked about plugging this masterpiece of random wires and resistors in my quick “NO” response was met with “I mean pretend plug”, and she “plugged it” into the cable holder on the monitor that's beside her. I suspect she really wanted to plug it into the wall.

I finished one digit of Victor's circuit myself just to show them that they hadn't been that far away from a circuit that actually did something (wasn't enough time before supper to do the other digit). Not sure what they've taken away from the experiment.

Morning creativity

Anna decided to draw on the mirror this morning (she asked permission first) since I'd fogged it up so much with my shower. It was interesting to see how she wrote her own name right-to-left, starting at the centre of the mirror, and then wrote Victor's name left-to-right, starting at the centre of the mirror. She then proceeded to draw a ladybug and Benny (her favorite stuffie), and Victor joined in and drew a spider and a Jedi.

When I kicked them out and erased the mirror (so I could shave), Victor decided to write a story; here he had just announced that he was on Chapter 2. I'm curious to actually look at what he was doing, I didn't have the chance this morning. The book is something someone gave him on Valentine's day. I only know that the story was about Jedi Knights (surprising, I know). Anna is describing what is in her sticker book, and declaring that she can only trade stickers now, she can't give away any more stickers or she'll run out. In the past, every time the sticker book has come out she has offered me a choice of stickers (which of course I accept).

Update: OH, the step in front is there because Anna announced she didn't need it anymore this morning, she can reach her light switch without it. And she proceeded to demonstrate, no jumping required, just a bit of tippy-toes. The light switches in this house are mostly rather high, notably higher than the standard encouraged (but not required) by ESA (the Electrical Safety Authority); she's been able to reach standard-height light switches for some time.

Homework

When we got home Victor announced he had homework and got right down to it; I didn't have to say anything at all. He doesn't consistently have homework but he knows he has to get his homework done before he gets to do fun stuff.

Anna read the library book she'd gotten that day while Victor was doing his homework. She's really just looking at the pictures; she's starting to be able to read but not enough to actually follow a story by herself.

Morning balloon colouring

Anna convinced Victor to colour some balloons with her this morning. I was feeling a little nervous about this, because I know how Anna is very careful with the permanent markers (anything else will just come off of the balloons) but Victor hadn't used them and I didn't know how careful he'd be, and having them doing it together certainly increases the chances that one of them will forget to be careful. Victor did ok but the floor now has a couple of dots on it where he dropped a marker.

Happy faces

After Victor spread mustard on the bread slice for his sandwich, he picked up the slice and took a bite. I think he was on autopilot, he'd just eaten a piece of toast. I fell victim to the same issue, as for some reason I cut his sandwich into four, just like I'd done to his toast, rather than just two pieces as I normally do. Running out of bagels clearly threw us both off our game.

On the way to school, we noticed that someone had drawn a happy face in the snow on one of the cars we went by. Victor and Anna had to do it too... on every single car we passed afterwards. Victor, of course, would never take off his mittens, because then he'd be cold.

Anna, on the other hand, needed a precision smiley face, and so had to take off a mitten. Strangely enough, this made her hand cold, every single time.

After school, there was a birthday in Anna's kinder group in daycare, and each child ended up with a balloon creation. Victor is holding Anna's here, a flower with a ladybug. I though that was pretty cool. In typical Anna form, Anna also ended up with an extra balloon creation, the hat that the guy making the balloons was wearing. It's not that she demands extra stuff, it's just that people seem to end up convinced that she should have it. She's going to be dangerous when she's older.

While supper was cooking Anna found some foam stickers from Valentine's day. She decided that she and Victor should show me their love by putting all the stickers on me; these are the stickers that Anna stuck on my arm.

Victor decided that it'd be better to stick his sticker on my desk in front of my keyboard, because then I'd be reminded every day.

Art coming home

This came home in Victor's backpack; I complimented Victor on it and he told me how it was all about the circles, rectangles, triangles, and squares.

I suspect Anna did this at the daycare (recently she's always been at the art table when I come in).

Victor connects 4

At least, he won the game that I watched him play when I arrived to pick him up at daycare.

Yesterday he was playing chess, but they were just started (Victor had captured a knight and a pawn, his opponent had captured three pawns) so Victor had to forfeit.

Victor trying to catch a snowflake

On the way home from daycare Victor was lagging behind and bobbing around. I asked him what was up and he said he was trying to catch a snowflake. Then I was trying to take a picture but he kept his back to me. When I asked him why he wouldn't turn around, his answer was logical enough: "But Dad, the snowflakes are falling this way." Of course he was correct, I hadn't noticed that the snowflakes had a very clear horizontal direction. So I went back to the other side to get this picture.

Note that you can see Anna hanging out in a puddle in the background while she waits for us to get going again. Did I mention that Anna loves puddles?

Anna loves puddles

No puddle is too small to be worth jumping in, but she was delighted to find this one at the end of the driveway.

Morning

Random images from the morning routine today...

Anna found a balloon that she hadn't drawn on yet, so she remedied that situation while I shaved. Once she was done she decided that since Victor didn't have any balloons, she'd give it to him.

Victor making his sandwich for school after breakfast.

Skating!

I took Victor and Anna skating for their first time today. Now, I have no idea how to teach people to skate, I was never taught, just figured it out for myself. So I figured I would just give them standard balance/stability advice for pretty much any sport and see how they did: "Keep your knees a little bent to give you better balance reaction and keep your balance forward so that you don't fall backwards, it hurts less to fall forwards." They both took some hard falls but seemed to have a lot of fun.

Anna did great, pretty much what I had been considering the "best case scenario": she had fun, she got comfortable standing around and moving slowly on her skates, and at the end she was having fun with me pulling her around at an intermediate speed.

Victor was awe-inspiring: after a small amount of hand-holding, he was off skating back and forth on his own, having a blast. Does this look like a someone skating for the first time?

The incentive was that every time they went between the snow banks they had a free shot on me with a snowball. They thought this was awesome. It was adorable that they were both very careful to only hit me in the snowpants. I remember fondly the no-holds-barred snowball fights of my youth (not that there were many of those in the temperate climate where I grew up), but appreciate that they are both sensitive enough to be so careful without having been given any such restriction by me.