February 2015
CONOR REMEMBERS A DREAM
27/02/15 00:00
Conor woke up crying at about 4:30am this morning. He has been waking up at this time for months now. Sometimes he can go back to sleep. And other times, he comes crying up the stairs and he climbs up into our bed and happily falls back asleep. This is what happened early this morning. Conor comes up the stairs crying and as soon as he reached the top of the bed, he laughed and fell asleep. When he awoke he said, "Wake up daddy, it's morning time. I was a clothes inventor at the back of my pillow." I said, "What? You were a clothes inventor?" "Yes," he said, matter of factly, "I could see myself making clothes at the back of my pillow." I thought it was such a poetic way of saying, "I could see myself making clothes in my dream". I gave him a kiss and he fell back asleep. I kept thinking of his dream and couldn't go back to sleep. Crap.
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TIME TO VISIT CONOR'S SCHOOL
25/02/15 23:59
Tonight, we were invited to go to school after work, and let Conor show us what he does during school hours. He started Montessori 5 months ago and we really have no idea what he's doing each day. He comes home and we ask how he liked school and he says he doesn't like it. We ask him what he did and he says, 'nothing'. And if we ask him again, he says it's a secret. Finally, we are going to see him SHOW us what he's been doing.
We arrive and walk into his fantastic classroom and we ask him to show us what his favorite thing. He looks around excitedly and doesn't know where to start. His teacher asks him if he'd like to show us his letters. His eyes light up and he proudly walks over to a big wooden box on a shelf. It's really big and he asks me to help him bring it over to the table. So I do. And when we get back to the table, we take the wooden top off the box and there are all the letters. His teacher asks him to find the letter "a" in the box. Conor's eyes are big and his smile is even bigger. And he looks into the box and pulls out the letter 'a'. He's really proud of himself and his teacher reacts like he's the smartest boy on the planet. Her eyes are as sparkley as his are and they're both having a great time. I realized at that moment that he likes the school a lot more than he ever tells us.
I still wonder why he tells us he doesn't like the 'yellow school' but I only have theories, no real concrete evidence. During the 'parent/child/teacher hour, Conor was really excited to have us there and share his classroom. And then he saw a pretty girl and as if he were 14 years old, he forgot all about his class work and glowed as he watched the little blonde-haired Oliva walk from one end of the class to the other. Instead of showing us where the geometric shapes were kept, Conor pointed out where Olivia kept her lunch box. Seriously? The boy is only three years old. Valerie told his teacher what we witnessed and his teacher said that she was having issues with Conor wanting the attention of the older girls in class. She said that she has to tell the older girls to ignore him when he comes up and tries to talk to them. While I can totally understand this advise, it also seems sort of cruel and may be a reason why he doesn't like the school. He has a thing for the girls but the girls are told to ignore him. So just what is that doing for his self esteem or confidence if all the girls ignore him? And why does this have to start so early?
I never thought of this as being something I would have to worry about at his age. I'll have to do more research to see how normal this is. So that's my theory, that he doesn't like the yellow school because the girls are shutting him down and he's hungry for their attention. I wouldn't want to go to school, either. But, then does a 3-year old think like that? I have no idea.
CONOR, LET'S NOT MAKE THIS HARD TODAY
18/02/15 00:14
Conor was putting on his socks and was taking his own sweet time doing it. I tried to help him and he jerked his foot away and laughed. I said to Conor, "Conor, let's not make this hard," and he replied, "Yeah dad, let's do this the hard way." I could flashback to when I was a kid and I could see my dad's belt clicking through the belt loops just as sure as if it were 45 years ago. I had to grin and was glad that the times have changed. I tickled him and put his socks on for him. He grabbed my neck and hugged me. Done.
BOSTON'S BIGGEST SNOW ON RECORD
02/02/15 00:18
February 2, 2015, the biggest snow on record in Boston. 6 feet of snow fell on Quincy, MA. It was fantastic. And debilitating. And messy. I've never shoveled so much in all my life. I mean, I'm from Texas. Bullshit doesn't get this deep. Okay, that's bullshit. It does but we don't shovel it. We just put more on top of it. When I went out to shovel, Conor wanted to come out and shovel. But about 2 minutes into the shoveling, he would announce it was too cold and go back inside. Who can blame him.