We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
March and April 2004
May and June 2004
July and August 2004
September and October 2004
November and December 2004
Blogs we read:
2007-01-31 - 16:49
And so, winter finally arrives.
Jack was quite right when he announced a few weeks ago that winter had finally arrived! As a family, we are thrilled. Every time we see snow falling, we cheer and Jack has taken to announcing to everyone that we Smith�s like winter! 
The ground is covered with a couple of inches of snow now and the temperatures have lingered near -7�C for a couple of weeks. The snow has been too cold and crispy to make a snow man, but it looks beautiful, and is light and fluffy when Jack and Rod go out to shovel it and it�s just enough snow to look lovely without causing traffic headaches. It looks like it plans to stay quite cold for at least another week, so there won�t be any snow men, but maybe we can get ourselves outside to sled before it all melts away. (Snow never lasts all that long in Michigan�)
First antibiotics
Of course, all this really cold weather, combined with Jack weaning completely a couple of months ago has meant a workout for our immune systems. Everyone is keeping the party indoors, for the most part and that would include us.
When we were at Fantasy Forest a few weeks ago, a little boy not 10 feet from us was very sick � it took him a half hour to stop vomiting long enough to get to his car and get home. �Poor kid� we thought. Followed closely by �Uh, oh. Batten down the hatches�.
Sure enough, three days later, out of the blue, Jack got sick. One moment he seemed fine, and the next he was clearly not. (�Aha�, so that�s why that little boy was out and about when he was so sick!�). We did our best to keep our germs to ourselves and it all passed very quickly, except that Jack continued to be cranky and irritable. He kept claiming he was going to vomit�though he never did. After a week, when he was still irritable and hard to get on with, and had given up eating and drinking to the extent that he was dramatically thin and pale, we decided that although there was no fever and no really obvious symptoms, it was time to take him to the doctor.
Another �Aha� moment.
Rod and I both suffered a lot of ear infections when we were growing up. Our older kids were no stranger to ear infections either. We have been delighted that Jack to almost age 4 without one! But now, he had his first ear infection � and it was bad enough that he went immediately on antibiotics.
This was Jack�s first course of antibiotics, too. He�s been a remarkable healthy boy. Sad to say, he has the same reaction to antibiotics that his father has. They make him grumpy. Yep, even grumpier than he was with the ear infection. sigh It�s been a challenging 10 days.
On the bright side, Jack has been excellent about reminding us to give him his �orange medicine�, and he�s only missed one dose. That has to be some kind of record � I don�t think I have ever been a party to the care of anyone who didn�t miss at least a quarter of the doses and extend the ten days to two weeks. And he seems to be feeling immensely better.
New progress
And, I suspect that we�ve mentioned before an interesting pattern that we�ve noticed.
When Jack gets sick, he seems to �incubate� more than germs � he also seems to incubate ideas. Every recovery from illness for Jack brings with it a big developmental milestone.
Months ago I mentioned that although Jack�s grasp of facts was good and perhaps a bit above average, his manual dexterity was so poor that he couldn�t grasp a pencil well enough to reliably make a visible mark with it. That didn�t concern me until I realized that friends his age were starting to draw pictures and write letters of the alphabet � not, erphaps, recognizably yet, but write they did. Jack had no interest.
We did some investigation and started introducing games to Jack that would develop his manual dexterity and then we started working on worksheets (which he loves!) as soon as he could get some kind of mark onto paper pretty much at will.
He made slow and steady progress and as his hands got stronger, he showed more interest in �writing� and drawing. For many months, his �signature� (applied to worksheets and art projects) was a sort of sideways, meandering �J�. No sign of representational art, but he was reasonably enthusiastic about messing with colour on paper, and I was content.
Last night, all three of us, Rod, Jack, and I, were sitting at the craft table. Rod was giving me a hand with a project and Jack was putting stickers on a sheet of construction paper. At some point, he evidently had �switched gears�, and was fiddling with a marker.
The next thing I knew, Jack was piping up �Look Mamma! I writed my name!�
I glanced over, ready to say something encouraging but neutral when I realized that he *had* written his name. The whole thing. In letters that anyone could recognize! (Well, ok, the �k� might have been an �x��or a �t�, but it wasn�t bad. In context, it was clear.) I squealed and told Jack that I had no idea he knew how to write real letters and I made the fuss I had been withholding. (He knew that was coming. He looked so pleased! ) After a few minutes and a hug and a kiss, I went back to my project and he went back to writing.
But Jack�s bag of tricks wasn�t used up yet.
A few minutes later, he asked me to �write a girl with a (pony)�tail��. I did, and he watched with care as I crafted my embellished stick figure. The he took the pen � and he drew a person! His first, ever! It was the expected figure for a little guy his age - -a head, with eyes and a mouth and arms and legs sticking directly out of the head. It was beautiful! (I�ll see if I can scan it and post it here this evening.)
Wow! We all went back to work on our own projects, but every now and then I glanced over at Jack and he was working hard with a serious look on his face. He drew face after face with variations and he experimented with writing other letters. My input was no longer required.
I am so proud of my boy!
Continuum parenting
Rod is a natural at Continuum parenting.
I know I�ve mentioned Jean Liedloff's work before and our interest in the parenting style that it spawned.
For me, it was a natural extension of my instinctive parenting style. Up to a point. It works beautifully with cooking, with house keeping, and with any number of other active, more or less traditional activities. I was, however, perplexed about how to bring it into other, more cerebral pursuits.
Not, Rod.
I am hoping to get my brilliant husband to hold forth here about how he has done it, because I see the results more than the process. I know he has used continuum theory (or what he gathered of continuum theory from my nattering) to help Jack to discover arithmetic, using Cuisenaire Rods, a deck of playing cards, a set of dominoes, and a counting board.
It�s amazing to me! They together at the able, noodling with one or another �toy�, and Jack is discovering arithmetic for himself! Not sure how he does that, but I am impressed. Jack is lucky that Rod is at home with him, doing the teaching. Rod is obviously a"natural".
He has also used it to help Jack to get to the point that he can sit at the other end of the table while Rod does a reading and can (more or less) entertain himself. That�s one I really want to learn!
