From Aiden

Hello. This is Aiden and I am selling chocolate for my school. My teacher Mrs Prichard says that we should ask our family if they want to buy it. The money from selling chocolate will pay for activities at my school. If you want chocolate please tell my mommy. Thank you. From Aiden.

That was Aiden's idea. He came home with his fundraising materials and said that he wanted to write a letter to all of the family members to let them know that his school is selling chocolate as a fundraiser. So, in case any of you are looking for some yummy chocolate to fill your Easter baskets with, we've got it!  They've also added a new solid milk chocolate bunny to the list for this year, which we will definitely be using for Easter treats. Every item is $6 and the money is supposed to be in by Monday, Feb 27 with orders being delivered on March 22. If you're interested, send me an email at carrie.mint AT yahoo DOT com and I'll email you the list of chocolates that they're selling.  We bought some from a neighborhood girl last year and they are oh so delicious! Thanks for reading Aiden's sales pitch!

Married

As Aiden is getting older, we're having more and more serious conversations.  Sometimes, they're more serious for him than they are for me.  I had such a hard time keeping a straight face as I had the following conversation with him.

Aiden: My girlfriend Michelle broke up with me.
Me: Oh!  How do you feel about that?
Aiden: It's fine because Lena said she'd be my girlfriend.
Me: Well that's nice.
Aiden: But then Lena broke up with me.
Me: Oh my!
Aiden: Now Joanna is my girlfriend and I hope she doesn't break up with me because I REALLY need to find someone to marry.

I somehow successfully managed to keep from laughing or even smiling, but did have tears welling up in my eyes from holding it in.  I'm not sure why Aiden feels that kindergarten is the time to find your future spouse, but I did spend a few minutes explaining that he might not find who his future spouse while he's in kindergarten, so he doesn't need to have a girlfriend at all times.  That a lot of people don't find who they're going to marry until they're already a grown up and that's ok.  He appeared to take it under consideration, but I don't think it will make any difference.  I think he likes having a girlfriend.  Although at this rate, he's going to have "dated" all the females in his class by the end of the year.  It's funny to see how six year olds interpret being boyfriend and girlfriend.  They simply agree to be boyfriend and girlfriend and then go about their normal school activities with no change in behavior towards each other.  It's just hilarious to me that Aiden is on a spouse hunt, but I'm happy that his "break ups" didn't seem to upset him too much.

Karate and Dance

We've had a busy week.  Mostly good, although I had an alarm clock malfunction yesterday that caused us all to oversleep and Aiden was 30 minutes late for school (lesson learned: When you find a fancy, normally expensive alarm clock on clearance, ask yourself WHY it might be on clearance...).  Two of our activities this week included Aiden beginning karate and Nathan continuing his dance class.  Aiden REALLY enjoyed karate and provided the next three classes go well, I think we'll be looking into an actual karate school for him.  Nathan finally participated in his dance class.  Apparently the trick was to buy him new shoes that light up when he walks.  He was quite excited to dance and make his shoes light up.  We'll see if Nathan wants to do any other classes after this series is over.  But we did sign him up for preschool for this coming fall at the same school we were a part of for three years before.  We are looking forward to seeing the Creative Children's Center family again in September and I am looking forward to having a few hours each week to myself!

Without further ado, here's Aiden's first experience with karate:

 He's in all red, practicing his stance.  The class was supposed to be capped at 8.  The parks dept didn't cap it until 12 kids had signed up.  The teacher has a lot of kids to handle!

 Learning to block.  I was actually really impressed with what she taught them.  She even taught them the Japanese words to use with their movements.

 The kids got to practice on each other.  They all actually did very well and no one went wildly whacking at anyone else.  And the teacher did a good job with trying to match kids with other kids their own size (the ages in the class range from 5 to 9).

 Aiden loved it and was a little disappointed that it happens just once per week.  

 In Nathan's dance class, he finally participated but kept turning around to make sure I was still sitting outside the door.  Silly boy.

 Bouncing is so much fun!  He still stayed a little further back than the rest of the class, but at least he did more than just stand there.

 As you can see, it's mostly girls.  There is one other boy (named Aiden), so at least Nathan isn't the only boy in class full of frilly dresses and fairy wings.

Conga line!  They were so cute!

It's nice to see the boys enjoying themselves and being active with other kids.  I felt like we really toned our activities down during the fall just to try to adjust to a brand new school schedule.  We were all ready to be more socially active.  I was hoping to get some more mom fellowship in with other moms during the classes, but it's proving to be a little difficult.  Most of the parents in the karate class are dads or grandparents, and the moms in the dance class all have girls and appear to have formed their own clique from knowing each other previously (and my attempt at introducing myself didn't go well, as they were surprisingly standoff-ish).  The mom who has the only other boy in the class did start a conversation with me yesterday though, so we'll see how that goes.  It's times like this when I wish my college friends who have kids didn't all live in Philadelphia/Jersey/New York.  I'll expand on this fellowship subject more in a future post, as there is plenty more to say.

For now, it's just nice to get out and start doing stuff again now that we're used to kindergarten and the scheduling that comes along with it.

Check Up

At Nathan's check up today, we learned that he is just about perfect!  No real concerns and the minor things that I brought up sounded totally normal for a four year old boy in the pediatrician's opinion.  Good to know!  Having a second child - especially one of the same gender as the first - is a little difficult sometimes because I tend to compare Aiden and Nathan, when in reality they are very different boys.

Nathan is 36 lbs (49th percentile) and 40 inches (40th percentile).  My little boy!  He is right at the height limit for his convertible carseat, so we will be buying him a big boy booster seat like Aiden's!  While Aiden could switch to a seatbelt positioning booster seat, I feel more comfortable keeping him in his 5 point harness booster. Once he gets a little older, the 5 point harness can be removed and we can use it as a seatbelt positioning seat until he's ready for no more booster seat.  We'll be buying Nathan the same seat and he couldn't be more excited to be in the same seat as his big brother!

He was given a vision test during his appointment and he barely passed.  I was wondering when John's bad vision was going to show up in one of the boys.  We are interested to see how the next two years go until he gets his kindergarten vision screening through the school district.  While Nathan would look super cute in glasses, I hope we can wait a little while longer before he needs them.  It's obviously inevitable though.

Other than that, everything went fine.  He also had his 2nd dance class today and he actually danced!  I took some pictures and also have some pictures from Aiden's karate class, so I'll be getting those up here soon.  It's nice to see both boys enjoying their classes.