Shoes

Today, he tied his shoes for school with absolutely no assistance from me. Fortunately, he thinks his Chucks are harder and said I could still help him with those. *whew* Guess that keeps me from being totally obsolete.

This has been a long road for him. He has a hard time working through something that he doesn't "get" the first time through. That made the many week process of shoe tying a very long and frustrating experience. He's got it now, though.


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Legos

Corin and Legos is like Ryanne with books. Both are far beyond their age levels, ability wise.

Corin has had a few sets for 4 & 5 year olds. He typically finishes them under an hour. He's currently working on one that's 7+ and it's taken him 1.5 hours with probably another 30 minutes to go and has been a totally independent process. The 9+ set he worked on took him a couple of days, but he also made some substantial errors. (Fixed by mom and dad, but they did keep him from progressing and required some maneuvering by us to fix.)

I haven't been able to figure out if it's sheer number of pieces that makes it take longer or if it's actual building difficulty. Pieces definitely makes for a longer process, but there's some correlation by Lego to piece counts and age range as well and I don't totally understand that.

Books are easy. Raw page limits are the answer for now. This Lego thing is going to take some work.

Sir talks a lot

Corin talks. A lot. Nearly incessantly. The bonus of being in the car with him is that there have been some real gems.

He keeps asking where Chrys has stashed the cats' "glitter" box. Chrys says that does make him feel a bit better about changing it.

Tonight at dinner he was observing the healing progress of his road rash.
"Some of it has turned to skin. You guys are a genius."

Good to know that our son has observed what our friends noticed many years ago. We share one brain. Guess some things never change.


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Religion

Corin has gone to a mother's day out that is housed by a church for 3 years. While not heavily religion based, they do have a weekly bible lesson and there is always one song in their programs about g-d or jesus or something. I don't fight it. I think it's good for them to be exposed to those things. I firmly believed he was too young to really get caught up in it so I wasn't worried.

One day, Ryanne was in the back seat pretending to be a zombie. Her intent was to scare her brother. Unfortunately, he had no idea what a zombie was. He asked me.

I explained that it was someone who died and then came back from the dead.

"Ooooohhhhhh, like Jesus. They told me about that at school."

Yes, son, Jesus was a zombie.

Picking a family

Corin was telling me tonight that when he was a baby, he decided that I should be his mom and he would be my kid. He said he really liked me and wanted to be in my family. I asked him if he really liked daddy and Ryanne, too.

Apparently, it was just me. He did concede that they are ok to be stuck with, though.

Two wheels != No brakes

I have been growing increasingly frustrated with taking Corin to soccer on his bike. He is painfully slow. Tarl inflated his tires and that got better, but really he was starting to get careless with training wheels and was going to end up hurting himself.

So...Corin has learned how to ride pretty well without his training wheels. He spent a weekend playing with Ryanne's 12" bike and was getting pretty stable, but couldn't start unless he got a rolling start from the top of the driveway.

Tarl took him riding and the bike fell over, but he managed to get free.
"Very good, son. That's called ditching. Can you say ditching?"
"Bitchin'"

We put him back on his little bike and he learned to stop and start without falling over. He seemed to have a handle on it.

We took him to soccer. The way home has a large hill to get to the tunnel that goes under a busy street. He's done it dozens of times, knows how to slow down, etc.

Apparently two wheels means he doesn't have to slow down anymore. He slammed into the wall. He bruised his face from forehead to chin. He bruised other things I can't post to the interwebs. He was a mess.




Good news is that he got back on the bike after a few minutes and rode home. He insists on walking down that hill now. That's my cautious little guy.


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Spelling

Gamma Ree has gotten the kids balsa wood airplanes. Corin was playing with his when I picked him up on Friday. As Gamma went to take it, he directed her to write his name on it so Ryanne wouldn't use it.

"It's C-o-r-i-n. Don't forget."

Sibling brutality

From Chrys:
"We were playing Star Wars...and I had the light saber"

And that's when she hit him in the face with the snow shovel.

There was some blood. Dr. Aunt MK says it's not broken. Still looks a little sore.



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