Simon the Roller Coaster

The one thing that has remained constant with Simon is that he is constantly changing -- both his personality and his hair! He was born with copper red hair. It was the second thing I noticed. (The first was that he was actually breathing. Thank GOD.) I think of this as Simon's fighter phase. He overcame so many obstacles -- you've got to be a fighter when you have surgery on your second day of life.



We next move in to Simon's bald phase. Simon is a pretty docile baby by this point. Easy going a good sleeper but a real Mama's boy. He pretty much will only be happy with me and Duane is an unacceptable option.






Next comes what I like to refer to as SImon's glory days. To start with he has the MOST beautiful hair anyone on the planet ever had. It is golden blonde with just enough wave to look perfectly tousled at all times. I would just stare at it in the sunshine. With his two big dimples and blue eyes he was a poster child. Everywhere we went people stopped me to tell me how adorable he was. He was also so sweet and docile at this age. Just a pleasure to have around.



Well, the hair changed and so did the personality. Here came the terrible twos and BOY were they rough with this one. One minute he was a sweet little angel the next minute a horrible monster. He would randomly attack other kids at the playground. I had to hover over him at all times to make sure he didn't hurt anyone. I was always a little happier when he went after the big kids because that was so much better than when he picked on the toddler girls. As for his hair, it pretty much stuck up in every stinking direction no matter what I did to it.



At about 2 and a half we gave him a homegrown buzz cut. At least this way I didn't have to fight him through hair combing and hair washing every day.












3 finally came along and the hair is a little more manageable as is his personality. He can be so sweet and so funny but he also can be really whiney and is having a hard time adjusting to really not being a baby anymore. I just got through with his first preschool parent teacher conference. Apparently his behavior at school doesn't in the least resemble his behavior at home. He never whines or complains. He's the first to help (?) AND get this two different Mom's have come up to me and said what a sweet boy Simon is and how he plays so nicely with their daughter and I quote from one of them "not like the some of the other boys in the class." Well, there's hope for anyone then!

Ike the Scientist

Ike was born with a scientific mind. He is an amazing problem solver. When he was 18 months old he got a Tonka dump truck for Christmas. He was happily loading it up in the living room when he stopped short with an epiphany. As fast as his fat little legs could go he pushed the dump truck to the baby gates in the kitchen and scaled the baby gates.

Ike loved tools from a ridiculously early age. He got a toolbench for his 1st birthday but those were pretend tools. He wanted the real McCoy. His first actual sentence:

I need more tools.

This is Ike at about 17 months helping out with drill that I really hope has the safety on.

In some ways Ike sometimes comes across as unsympathetic because he can always see things from a rational scientific standpoint. A few months ago Duane hit a small bump in the road and for some reason, he told the boys he ran over the neighbor's cat. (Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, eh?) Simon got all upset but Ike simply looked out the back window and said,"I don't see the remains."


Ike surprised both me and his preschool teacher by developing his own technique for figuring the sums of small numbers.

So the big question of the day at our house is how does a very smart, very clever, not overly mature 5 year old boy do in a regular kindergarten?

So far we're hanging in there but the jury is still out. We've had several notes home, met with the principal once, and the teacher more than a few times.
The issues:

1. Ike gets bored and then starts getting in to trouble.
2. When he does get in to a project he wants to keep working on it instead of moving on to the next topic after the allotted time.
3. The girls are getting on his nerves (his words -- and I think this is actually very common in kindergarten.)
   

Anyhoo - we'll see if he can manage the year and hopefully adjust in to 1st grade at his public school next year.