Articulation

My wife went to pick up Troy today, so he could get home a little earlier and eat before Miss Ruby came over. She said that when she got there, the school director was in the classroom talking to Troy and another little boy. Apparently, the two kids had had a verbal confrontation, which had upset them both. The director was there when it happened, so she was trying to calm the situation and talk it out.

As my wife was talking to her, the director happened to mention how impressed she was with Troy’s vocabulary and articulation. She said that he speaks very well for a child his age, and he uses mature words to express what he’s thinking and feeling. I have to say that I was very proud to hear this. I guess it has to do with the fact that we talk to him so much, and we talk to him like he’s our age instead of talking down to him. If we use words that he doesn’t understand, then he’ll ask me what it means. I’ll explain it, and at some future date, I’ll hear him use the same word correctly in a sentence. It’s truly amazing. He’s amazing.

God and Demons

Troy: “Dada, was the big guy in the Scrooge movie a ghost or demon?”
Me: “He was a ghost.”
Troy: “Well, what did he turn into at the end?”
Me: “What do you mean?”
Troy: “He changed into something with red eyes and his hand turned into a claw.”
Me: “He was still a ghost.”
Troy: “I think he was a demon.”
Me: “Why do you think that?”
Troy: “He looked like a demon. Didn’t he look like a demon?”
Me: “I don’t know, I’ve never seen a demon before…at least not in his true form. Demons can look like humans.”
Troy: “Then, how do you know if it’s a demon?”
Me: “It’s hard to tell, but demons will try to make you do bad things, and they’ll try to get you to stop thinking about God and talking to God. They’ll try to distract you with other things.”
Troy: “And that’s bad, right? Because we shouldn’t stop talking to God.”
Me: “Exactly! God is loving and kind, and He wants to have a relationship with us and talk to us. He wants good things for us. He’s the exact opposite of a demon.”
Troy: “Are demons as powerful as God?”
Me: “No, but we give them power over us by thinking about them and talking about them. Our heart will follow whatever we spend time on, so that’s why we shouldn’t focus so much on demons. We should focus on God.”
Troy: “Yeah, God is good!”
Me: “Yes, He is.”

Urban Air

We attended Eli's birthday today at Urban Air, or I should say that Troy and I did.  My wife didn't feel well, so she decided to stay home.  The place was pretty cool.  Half the building was decked out with giant trampolines.  The other part was outfitted with a sort of ninja course.  And high above you in the rafters was a rope course.  Of course, our party didn't want to do any of that.  They only wanted to play on the playset...go figure.  When we did finally manage to get them onto the ninja course, they didn't want to do the obstacles, they just wanted to play in the ball pit underneath...again, go figure.  

The kids managed to get a lot of energy out, which was good, but Troy had several nasty encounters with some of the older kids in the ball pit.  He was throwing balls in the air to play, and a couple of them hit the older kids.  They promptly turned around and started hurtling balls at his head as hard as they could.  And even after one of them hit Troy in the eye, they still felt no remorse or guilt.  I chewed them out something awful, and still they didn't say sorry or even look abashed.  Kids nowadays are so rude and disrespectful, it's unbelievable.  Troy didn't have much fun after that.

Reading with Miss Ruby

After our visit with Troy’s potential new school, my wife has been panicking that he will be behind the other kids in his class. Mostly because the actual teaching part of the curriculum doesn’t seem to be all that important to the new teachers he got stuck with this year. Unlike their predecessors, they treat it more like a daycare and less like a school. The progress the students had been making with Reading, Writing, Math, and Science has ground to a halt. We call it the lost year.

Apparently, there are several kids in his class that have been doing this for the past year just to get into the better private schools in the area. Who knew kindergarten was so competitive?! Anyway, when she found that some of them could legibly write their names and read on a basic level, she went into full-on anxiety mode. So, my wife has been looking for outside places that we could take Troy to bolster certain subjects, particularly Reading and Writing.

She happened to mention this to Troy’s babysitter, who just happens to be the amazing teacher he started the school year with, who unfortunately quit due to poor administration at the school. And Miss Ruby told my wife that she actually has a kindergarten prep course that she put together, which she would have been putting the kids through had she stayed at Troy’s school. She offered to share it with Troy, and my wife eagerly accepted. So, now Miss Ruby comes over every Tuesday and Thursday to specifically work with Troy on his Reading and Writing skills.

We are expected to make ourselves scarce to limit distraction, while they learn together. Miss Ruby intermingles learning with playing to take advantage of Troy’s limited attention span and maximize his interest. He seems to be onboard with the idea, and he’s already made some progress. I also continue to quiz him on his letters and sound out words with him during our bedtime book sessions, which I hope is reemphasizing what he’s learning with her. Ultimately, it comes down to repetition…that and desire. He’s got a vast capacity to pick up new things and not only retain them, but apply them. He just has to want to do it.

Warrior's Heart

Me: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Troy: “A warrior!”
Me: “You still want to be a warrior, huh?”
Troy: “Yep.”
Me: “Why do you want to be a warrior?”
Troy: “Because I want to protect you and mama, and I like to kill bad guys.”
Me: “Well, I appreciate that you want to protect me and mama, but you shouldn’t like to kill bad guys. It’s not good to enjoy killing.”
Troy: “But they’re bad guys.”
Me: “I understand, and I understand that sometimes it’s necessary to kill bad guys, but it’s not okay to enjoy it. We shouldn’t want to kill anyone. God doesn’t want us to kill anyone. He loves everyone, even the bad guys.”

Snow Day

Well, we got a freak "snow storm" today, which really just amounted to a light dusting of white on the grass.  But it was enough to entice Troy and I outside for a snowball fight.  The only problem was that the snow was so fine that it was hard to pick it up.  And if you did manage to make a pea-size snowball out of it, it would disappear into a puff of smoke the moment you threw it.  The only way to truly get it to stick was to slap the other person with it.  But we had fun playing outside anyway.

Love of Reading

When I walked in to pick Troy up from school today, I found him sitting in the reading corner with a little girl from the two-year old class, reading a book. Troy had the book on his lap, walking through each page and sharing the story with her. I’m not sure if it was the actual story, or if he was making it up as he went along, but he was “reading” with confidence, and she was eating it up. Of course, I suppose she had to trust him, because she couldn’t read it to call him out on it anyway. Every once in a while, she would point to something on the page to ask a question, and Troy would patiently pause his reading and formulate a reply. When the little girl saw me, she told Troy that his dad was waiting for him. Troy told her, “It’s okay. We’re going to finish the book first.” And he did. It was the cutest thing to see him sharing his love of books with a younger kid.

Mirror Writing

Me: “What is that?”
My Wife: “Troy was writing his name.”
Me: “Why is it backwards?”
My Wife: “I don’t know, that’s what he does now. He might be dyslexic.”
Me: “It doesn’t look like dyslexia, because he’s not interchanging the letters. He’s literally writing it completely backwards, like if you were looking at it in a mirror!”
My Wife: “I know, it’s weird.”
Me: “Well, maybe he has a future painting words on the front of ambulances!”
My Wife: “Or writing in Arabic!”

Poopie Head

Me: “Troy, when you finally get a cell phone, I’m going to put your number in as ‘Poopie Head.’”
Troy: “What?!”
Me: “Yeah, then I can say things like, ‘Hey Siri, call Poopie Head’ or ‘Send a text to Poopie Head’ or ask her to ‘Read the texts from Poopie Head.’”
Siri: “You have new messages from Poopie Head, would you like me to read them?”
Me: “I can even have your contact picture be a photo of you with poop on your head!”
Troy: “No, dada. There will be no Poopie Head!”

iSpy

This school year, they have been working with the kids to recognize and write letters and numbers. Troy does okay spelling and writing his first name, but we noticed that he’s not as confident with most of the other letters. So, my wife and I have each employed different methods for practicing letters with Troy.

She got a magnetic board for her office that has magnetic letters in the shape of animals. Every time Troy wanders into her office, she’ll go over to the board and spell something with him, usually his name or three-letter words. She’ll practice both uppercase and lowercase letters with him until he gets frustrated or bored.

I on the other hand decided to make it a game at story time. Every night we read a book before bed. Before we open the book, I’ll say, “I spy with my little eye a…” and then I’ll pick a letter in the title of the book. He has to point to the correct letter. If he’s stuck, then I’ll show him the answer. I then will pick a word in the title, and we’ll phonetically sound out each letter in the word and then read it all together. The idea is for him to both practice recognizing the letters and figure out how to put them together to form words. Then, to be able to apply sounds to the individual letters to learn how to sound out whole words.

He actually looks forward to the game. If I skip it one night, he’ll make me close the book and do it first. He has even started to call out letters for me to find. I really can’t wait for him to start reading and writing. I know it will open up a whole new world for him.

Gamer

For the first time in years, I sat down today to play a video game while Troy was taking a nap. When he got up, he came upstairs and found me slaying demons. He asked if he could play too, so I handed him the controller and showed him a few buttons to press. He was a natural! Skeletons, demons, ghosts, witches, Minotaurs, possessed trees, wizards…you name it, all fell beneath his power attacks and sword swings! I was so impressed by how quickly he picked it up.

What If?

I walked into the daycare today to find the teacher icing a scrape on Troy’s hand, asking the other teacher if he needed to write up the incident. Since I was there, he simply told me about it instead. I asked when it had happened, and I was told just three minutes before.

Three minutes before, I was sitting in the parking lot of the daycare talking to my mom on the phone. I began to wonder if I had wrapped up that call with her a few minutes earlier, if I could have prevented Troy from getting hurt at all. I know it wasn’t my fault that he had gotten hurt, but it seemed like a Sliding Doors kind of situation. Could I have prevented it, if I had made a different decision?

Nerf War

My mom got Troy and I some Nerf guns for Christmas, and we finally opened them today.  In the ensuing Nerf War that took place, I found out two things.  1) Troy couldn't hit the broad side of a barn door if he was standing two feet away from it.  2) I have some God-given gift for shooting a Nerf gun.  I couldn't miss.  Even when he tried running around the room to make it harder on me, I still nailed him every time.  I was leading him and firing where I knew he'd be seconds after I fired.  And I can fire, reload, and fire again in a split second.  I could get off six shots before Troy even got off one.  In fact, the only true issue that I had was running out of ammo.

So, to even the playing field a little bit, I built each of us a barricade out of cardboard boxes.  That way, Troy could hide behind it and make it harder for me to hit.  Harder, but still not impossible.  I found out that I could ricochet the dart off the wall and around the boxes to hit him on the other side.  I'm not this good with a real gun, so I'm not sure why I'm so good with a Nerf gun (maybe the lack of recoil).  I give all the credit to playing first-person shooting games on the computer all these years.