Connor is Four: 2009

Monday, December 28, 2009

Dec. 27: Connor vs. the Ice Cream Cone

planning his strategy of attack

flavor: strawberry

method: slow and deliberate

The winner? Connor dominated, with only a few bites left untaken.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Dec. 25: Christmas on the Beach

Joe and Connor built a sand castle with the nice beach toy set left by Santa. (at Bahia Balandra)

Can you see the finished product?

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Santa spread

Santa apparently stopped by and left a few more goodies, as seen above. In the candy stocking interestingly are a number of chile-flavored candies - not the sort we are familiar with in the U.S. It's strange to get spicy when you're expecting sweet.

Baja: Dec. 24

Lunch @ BK: chicken fries!

a cool car parked along the malecon

Batman! This is one of Connor's Christmas gifts/souvenirs. These were being sold downtown near the craft center.

Baja: Dec. 23

enjoying a strawberry paleta (frozen fruit bar) outside La Fuente, a favorite stop along the malecon

Coke, the Real Thing (there were no other beverage choices for children at this taco stand)

No complaints here!

Oreo eyes! Can you tell that Connor is enjoying a lot of treats while on vacation?

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Live from Baja! Connor's photo journal

New wetsuit! for snorkeling

listening to music in the kitchen

on the camp's playground

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Connor's Puppet Show

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Dec. 2

Who Dat? indeed. Connor in an interesting ensemble one morning before school. Thanks to Hub & Emily for the cool new T shirt! + hat from my childhood and scarf made by my mother

Nov. 22

Mason's 5th birthday party at City Park- it was chilly! (pictured: Riley, Mason, Connor, and big sister Shelby)

Nov. 18

Father-son bonding

Nov. 16

The look he is going for is mohawk. What do you think? He was disappointed the next morning to see that it wasn't permanent.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Snow! (Dec. 5)

Yesterday, south of here, Meemaw and Poppa got snow! (somewhat rare in central Mississippi) Poppa sent these pictures for Connor.

I think that the grandparents in Michigan only recently had their first snow of the season. (Send me a picture and I will post it.)

Happy holidays!

New Skills ...

Connor: Mommy, I know how to spell volcano!

me: O.K. ....

C: V - A - L - L - C - A - N - N - O

me: That is very close. Very good job.

C: No, I spelled it.

me: Yes.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Expecting Snow?

Connor just asked, "Mommy, am I old enough to play snowball fights?"

I said, sure. I'd like to see him try to form a snowball. Of course, the first hurdle to get over would be snow in Mississippi (I won't hold my breath for that).

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Connor is Reading!

As a result of what he's learned at school (and not anything I taught him), Connor can now use letter sounds to sound out simple words. Last week I brought home a "phonics word-ending game" called Python Path, and he is having fun with it. At school they have only learned the short vowel sounds; I had to teach him about the "silent e," and he totally got it.

(My experiences teaching middle schoolers have conditioned me to not expect learning to occur so easily, so I am constantly surprised when Connor picks things up after only a single explanation. It's just short of miraculous to me.)

Helping a novice learn to read really drives home the inconsistencies in the English language. There's care and rare, but they don't rhyme with are ...

After he sounded out and read "rake" (using his new silent e skills), I told him he was reading. "But I can't read BOOKS yet," he replied.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Numbers

At school Connor is learning to write. Here he is practicing his numbers: he wrote the first line by himself, I wrote the second as a model, and he wrote the third.