One Less Shirt To Wash

You know, there are whole workbooks you can buy these days on developing "scissor skills" for your preschooler to be sure their snipping will be up to social standards. I think we have this particular skill covered in our preschool here at Chez Armstrong as Nib so easily demonstrated here.

Curved lines? No problem. He's got it down. Two years old and he's a crack shot with a pair of snips and Mommy has less laundry too! Forget those chi-chi workbooks. Who needs 'em?

Crutches No More

A is off his crutches, although not quite back to normal, which is a very lovely thing. No more fear of stairs, no more terrifyingly slow crosswalk use, no more jamming them into the mini-van like another slim, metallic person, and no more A tripping everyone in sight with his dastardly go-go-gadget metal arms....just kidding on that last one. :) It is very nice though. The others are real gratefulnesses and we are so glad to have life a tiny bit more usual again.

The weather has been lovely but I hear that a tropical storm...morphing into a hurricane is slowly working its way up the coast. Time to hunker down. I need to post our ancient metal fireplace insert on Craigslist and then have the chimney cleaned so that we can have fires on the hearth again while we sit huddled with a stack of reads. Ru is getting better and better at reading but it is a mysterious skill almost entirely confined to his "reading book" where I've been working with him.

He is just starting to experiment with muttering sounds under his breath in a forgotten corner of the house or in the inner reaches of the minivan when he thinks I am not listening. His brow puckers and he makes little staccato attempts at sounding out an advertisement for Reese's cups or the latest volume of Asterix and Obelix from the library. Its a tenuous dance. I love watching him teeter on the edge of discovering the world of print but I hate to let him wait too long or miss the opportunity when he doesn't accidently make it work for himself. How much to push and how much let it be organic? The age old question. Just how unschooler am I?

This morning I lost Nib for a bit and then finally he answered  my shouts and came tripping brightly down from the second floor. It took until lunchtime before I figured out what he'd been up to. We had a "picnic" lunch on the kitchen floor together (Mommy laziness trick!) and I noticed he'd neatly address stamped the soles of his feet. If ever lost....he'll be no problem to return...as long as he's turned upside down and examined barefoot.