Kelly is Reading and Writing

Kelly (turning 5, 9/25) is showing early interest and aptitude reading and writing.

I just found this example of his writing on the scanner from last month.  After breakfast he asked me if he could write some words.  I said, "Sure what word would you like to write?"  Kelly thought for a second and said, "Bat."

"What letter makes the beginning sound of bat?"

Making the B sound, Kelly replied, "B, b, b, bee!"

And then the kid wrote the letter B, unassisted by me. I told him the next letters were, A and then T.  I coached him a bit with the A but he made the T without my help. "What word do you want to write next?"

Kelly, a rhyming fool, said, "Cat."

He then wrote, as you can see:
CAT
SAT
MAT
ON
MO(M)

He switch back to rhyming with PAT.  Kelly was getting frustrated writing the A in Pat, so I made the A for him - not my best work.  Either way, this was all very surprising to me that Kelly was able to produce this quantity of words.  We read stacks and stacks of books together (we recently finished James and the Giant Peach and are currently working on The Mouse and the Motorcycle), but we've done very little writing work with Kelly.  Whatever writing instruction they are providing at his pre-school, Kelly is picking it up.

For Father's Day, dear Gram Mary sent an early reader type book (we are fortunate that she sends books for almost every holiday) about a boy "helping" his dad.  Kelly, responsible for reading all the "Dad"s, "The"s and a few other common words, made me read the book with him ten times a day for several days. 

After I discovered the site with a random web search, Kelly has enthusiastically been working to complete every phonics drill and prodding me to read every terrible web book on Starfall.com.   The other night when I was putting the finishing touches on a dinner, Kelly asked if I could do the "reading game" with him.  I said I would love to do the reading game but, I'm sorry, we are about the sit down for dinner.  We'll do it first thing after, that will be fun, buddy.  With this disappointing news, Kelly flew into a hysterical tantrum, the likes of which we have not seen from him for sometime now.  What can I say, the kid really loves to read.

The boys love reading, writing, and decorating all sorts of things with stickers.

 

Three Boys = Two Miles of Fun

Last week, Beck, Kelly, Rhys and I had a blissful “boys night.”  While Catherine was hosting another worthy charity function, KRB and I struck out on adventures in the neighborhood.  My plan was to have K and R roll down the hill on their push bikes with B tagging behind on his scooter, I'd hoof it (it's only a five minute walk, at most), and we'd all chow some quality 'zza at the Bonnie Brae Tavern.  As I outfitted Rhys with his helmet, using standard 3 year-old grammatical conventions, he inquired, "You riding you bike daddy?"

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that, Big Boy. 

I usually patrol our neighborhood bike rides on foot, so I can easily position myself for traffic control on street crossings, give Beckett an encouraging word, a push up a hill, or clean off a dirty wheel (Beckett has become irritatingly particular about the cleanliness of his machine and will often stop, yelling while pointing at some minuscule speck, "Dirty, dirty, dirty, daddy!").  On foot, I'm also better able to peel bleeding, howling monkeys off the sidewalk after a minor tumble.  And it is true of late, I have a hard time keeping up with Kelly and Rhys, even at a jog.  I gave Rhys a shinning red Specialized Hot Walk push bike for his birthday and finally convinced him not to brawl with Beckett for control of the scooter.  After only about three weeks of practice on the pushbike, Rhys can handle himself well enough to keep up with Kelly, if Kelly's not in a racing mood.

So, yes! Rhys, I will ride my bike (with the two-boy trailer attached, in case someone melts) with you and your brothers, two, tonight. 

As I mounted up the boys, ready to roll, played a game of bike tag, chasing each other in tight circles in the ally – a sight that would make their grand mothers gasp. After Beckett "helped" me pump up my tires, I ordered full speed ahead and in an instant Kelly, leading the charge, and Rhys, snapping at his heels, where almost instantly around the first corner and out of my line of sight. We practice stopping at alleys and street crossings almost every evening and Kelly and Rhys, my well drilled cadets, did a perfect job stopping and waiting for me to catch up with Beckett at every intersection.  

We rolled down the hill to the Bonnie Brae shopping area in record time and were having so much fun we sped right past the Bonnie Brae Tavern, our planned pizza stop.  After crossing University Blvd. at a safe crosswalk with a light, miraculously, Kelly and Rhys pushed right past Bonnie Brae Ice cream, bustling, as always, with a summer afternoon crowd forking over $3 a scoop for their house made creamy goodness, without whining or even asking with please and sugar on top, if we could stop for so much as a taster spoon.  When we reached the strip of old shops on South Gaylord Street, a few blocks later, Kelly and Rhys made a mad dash down the street dodging window shoppers and zigzagging around clods of restaurant goers.  In a snap they put a half-block gap on Beckett and I, at a stroll. 

Watching Beckett parade down the South Gaylord like a triumphant quarterback in a post-Superbowl celebration, smiling and squeaking, “HI!” at almost everyone reminded me of his mama - best friend to all.  Delighted by the friendly little toddler easing, expertly, on down the road – smooth as oil - on his scooter, I grinded and nodded hello to the strangers Beckett set alight with chuckles and smiles.  

B and I caught up to K and R at the corner at the far end of the block where they dutifully waited, then we all ducked into a little diner called The Local.  The Local offers the most extensive kids menu I have ever seen and breakfast fare is served all day - breakfast for dinner boys!  This was a huge ride for my little trio of tiny urban adventures.  I was interested to know how far we traveled to The Local.  After a few clicks and keystrokes, Google maps plotted and measured our circuitous route: 1.0 miles! 2.0 miles round trip!  Both Kelly and Rhys did the entire distance, unaided, on their bikes.  In order to cross Bonnie Brae Blvd. at rush hour, I snatched up Beckett and forced him to ride in the trailer, but my little man pushed his scooter all the way home, the up hill leg of our amusing two miles of fun. 

Sorry the formatting and paragraphing problems.  The page editor blew a gasket when I added the photos and I can't seem to fix it. 

Please stay tuned for "Our Summer Vacation, Part II: Halitosis and sleep deprivation in Purgatory".  I'm working on it.  Read Part I: Upholstered Roadkill by clicking here!  

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Our Summer Vacation, Part I: Upholstered Roadkill

6/3/11

Over the winter Catherine and I were talking about the upcoming year, making decisions about travel and schedule.  We decided to keep things simple (unusual for us) this summer and not fly back to Michigan.  So, of course, a few weeks later, Catherine booked us at a great place in Montana in June.

I got all huffy and lathered up and gave a speech about Colorado, the amazing place we are fortunate to call home and my diver deep desire to share her beauty with my boys.  I may have also crossly muttered something about not understanding why we should drop two grand on airfare to Montana when we have the bounty of the Colorado Rocky Mountains less than a day’s journey away.  So, my lovely wife, took a deep breath, gave me a look of death (she was rightly annoyed after I had given a half-hearted green light to the initial Montana idea) and graciously agreed researched other vacation options in the Centennial State.  She called the timeshare exchange operator and located an available week at a condominium at the Purgatory Mountain Resort, near Durango, the first week of June.  Thanks honey! A road trip to Durango was just the ticket.  I’m excited. She was excited, too.  

Months later, vacation day loomed.  Almost unexpectedly, our vacation started tomorrow and we were clamoring to put a bow on work tasks, pack up the troops, and hit the tarmac for our seven-hour ramble to Durango.  We, in this instance, is Catherine (an ageless beauty), Kelly (4), Rhys (weeks from his 3^rd birthday), Beckett (22 months), Anna, our Colombian au pair, little old me, and my big new mountain bike (3 mos.).  Our gang and compliment of gear for a week long vacation in the mountains would not fit in one vehicle, not even our cavernous Honda Odyssey.  Plus, we were meeting Catherine’s father, Joe, and his girl friend, Taylor, Catherine's brother, Jeff and his girl friend, Rachel, in Durango - two cars then.  Kelly, his "Pillow Pet", named Crash, my bike, and I drove point, while Catherine followed with boys number two and three, and Anna.

Catherine and I were both stressed about the prospects of confining Kelly, Beckett and Rhys in a car for the better part of a day.  Our trio are all great little guys but they are all still very young and can behave like unbridled, green, swap land imps when they get tried, hungry, and bored - a certainly in triplicate on this road trip.  We imagined endless harmonic waves of screaming, a meltdown in high def, 3-D. While the Odyssey was armed with a cache of new DVD’s from the library for entertaining Beck and Rhys during the long highway run, I gambled and chose to run a video free environment for Kelly.

We thought the drive from Denver to Durango would, at best, be wasted time the kids and adults could endure together and then we’d carry on with our mountain vacation.  The road trip, it turned out, was an unexpected pleasure, giving me the rare, no, unprecedented opportunity to spend seven uninterrupted hours with Kelly, my startlingly bright, perpetually inquisitive four year-old son.  With the bustle of day-to-day life, work, and the demands of his two little brothers (and his mother), the drive from Denver to Durango was the longest time Kelly and I had ever spent together, just the two of us, father and son - an unforeseen gift of quality time.

At first, Kelly wasn’t talking much, so I a started a game of count the cars, a game, which, turns out, at 10 a.m. on a major Denver highway, is supremely difficult.  I suggested we pick a color.  Kelly picked white – still too hard.  We needed a color that Kelly could count at a reasonable measure and I could count without the fear of driving off the road, so I offered up blue - manageable but we still were hitting double digits in just a few miles.  Next, we tried yellow - rare but not as rare as you’d think if, like we were, you’re counting delivery trucks and boxes-on-wheels, the Ryder trucks.  Anyway, count the cars petered out by the time we hit Genesee and I could still see Denver’s skyline in the rear view. Oh super-pooper crap, this is going to be a long trip, if Kelly was already bored.

Genesee just happened to be a place I’d taken the boys on numerous “Daddy Adventure Days” to sled, create snow people, stomp in the woods, and observe the local heard of bison.  As we neared the bison viewing area, I quizzed Kelly, “Do you remember what animals live near here?”

“Ohhh, the buffalo.”

“Yes, right, the buffalo, the bison heard lives just at the top of this hill.  Remember when we’ve stopped to look at them this winter? Do you think they’ll be there today?”

“Yes, I remember them and the poop.”

“Oh, well.  It looks like the bison are somewhere else today.”

Kelly replied, “Where did the buffalo go?” 

And his questions did not stop for the next seven hours.  Questions - astonishing questions - continuously formed the meaty depths of his developing brain and, as mile after mile ticked off the odometer, like the swollen river on our 9 o’clock for much of the trip, the questions flowed mightily out of his articulate mouth.

We talked about everything. For the first half of the trip, everything included the vast swath of Colorado’s high country Kelly could see, perched on his monkey-faced booster seat, from the passenger-side window.

“Look, a waterfall!  Where does the water come from?”

“Look the tunnel.  I’ve been in this tunnel.  Why did they make this tunnel?  Couldn’t we just drive over the mountain? How do you make a tunnel?”

"Look birds. What kind of birds are those? How do birds fly so high?"

From mile one to 385, Kelly, like Catherine’s favorite Sunday evening call from the Lupis Foundation telemarketer, regularly pinged me with the question, “Are we in 1^st place?”  Our first-born son, has a serious case of ECS (eldest child syndrome) and, as a symptom, is constantly concerned about his comparative position in the pecking order.   On rare occasion, when I had to inform him we were “a close 2^nd””, I felt, for one of the first times in his young life, like I was seriously failing him as a father.  No, not really. Well, maybe, this statement has a shade of truth, but, damn, that Honda Odessy has geddy up on the highway and Catherine’s not shy about putting her foot down, on the gas pedal or otherwise.  Sorry, son.

Either way, Kelly, Crash, my luscious big cherry red and white mountain bike (she’s so delicious I sometimes urn to link her dirty bottom bracket) reached the Eagle exit in first place.  This time I had a question, “Kelly, do you remember who lives, here, in Eagle?”

“Yes, Aidan, Alex and Antie Steph!  Can we wave to them?”  And Kelly started waving, sweetly, to his life long buddy, Aidan, and his little sister, who he might have a thing for. 

I waved along, too, smiling at my little boy and his generous heart.

Fifteen minutes and twelve questions later, I was telling him about Glenwood Canyon and how the river use to be way up at the top, up there, and over a very, very long time the flowing water eroded the rock away the river, cut into the rock and made the canyon.

“What’s eroded mean?“

“Good question.” And I took a stab at explaining this complex, eon-long process as simply as I could.  Kelly seemed to understand exactly what I was explaining and, as I concluded, he even synthesized a brief summary of my lesson on erosion. 

“Do people climb these mountains?" Kelly’s questioned.  “How does a mountain climber get a rope up there to climb it?”  We talked a little bit (because I only know a little bit) about top-roping and lead climbing a mountain.

After we cleared the 8-mile long 40 M.P.H. construction zone clogging Glenwood Canyon, I revved her back up to speed.  Conferencing with mama behind us, it was too early for lunch in Glenwood, but Rifle, another 25 miles down stream, would be an ideal place to grab a quick meal before pressing on to Purgatory. 

It was noon, we were loosing elevation and the temperature was climbing on Colorado's Western Slope.  I, being a cheep ass, in a long line of cheep-asses, ignored the A.C. and rolled down some windows and deployed the sunroof to ventilate the truck.  Kelly loved this maneuver.  The rush of wind in his face made him smile.  Then, he stuck his hand out the window.  A grin then a giggle bubbled through him as the turbulence from our 76 mph dash to Rifle pushed against his hand, moving it up down and all around.  Kelly’s usual position in the minivan is in the way back next to an inoperable window, so, maybe, he’s never really had a chance to do some proper hand flying.  Sorry, son, I have failed you, yet again.  He, of course, asked why the wind moved his hand.  We discussed aerodynamics, as Kelly’s hand knifed the wind.

Kelly’s laughs and giggles flipped without benefit of a warning shot to a bowel-flipping sheik (unfortunately, a common occurrence in many tales of thy three sons), “Pillow pet!!!!!! Pillow, pill, pill, pillow peeeeet!”

The hard road had just given Kelly another unexpected and cruel lesson in aerodynamics.  He, apparently, wanted to let his dogie Pillow Pet, Crash, have a turn sticking his head out the window.  It did not go well for Crash.  The wind grabbed Crash and, before Kelly knew what hit him, his beloved pillow pet was tumbling down I-70 at 76 mph. It took me a few seconds to decipher Kelly’s hysterical wailing and deduce what had happened to good old Crash - upholstered road kill, lost forever.

“Oh, Kelly.  I’m so sorry. You can’t stick things out the window.  It’s just a pillow.  We can get another one.”

“Get pillow pet. Get pillow pet. Get pillow pet. Get pillow pet!!!!!! Cra, cra, cra, Craaaaassh!!!!”

“Oh, honey we can’t turn around or stop on the highway. It’s too dangerous. We’ll get you another one,” replied with as much calmness and sympathy as I possessed.          

My phone started buzzing four seconds after Crash was rudely sucked out the window.  Catherine had seen a flash of something fly out of our window and was concerned.  I answered the call with Kelly still full-on freaking out behind my right ear.

“What was that?”

“Pillow pet is gone.”

“That was the pillow pet?” 

“Yes.”

“Tell him we’ll get him another one.”

 “I did, of course.  I’m gona let you go – gotta situation here.  See you in Rifle.”

Our Summer Vacation, Part II: Sleep deprivation and halitosis in Purgatory, coming soon!