Example 1: The Craziness
Elijah has been a little crazy lately. Because he's 5. And that's how 5-year-olds are. But a few weeks ago it was getting out of hand. Rob and I talked about it, moved the kids' bed time up about an hour, initiated a new discipline system, and had a long talk with Elijah. All of this has been working well, and the chaos levels are back to manageable.
During the midst of the craziness, though, I reminded myself that he's just a 5-year-old. He gets all jumpy and in-my-face, which I dislike. It makes me instantly upset and I want to pop him one. Not that I do. Sometimes I'll gently bop him on the head, but I try not to do that, even. ... Shortly after I reminded myself that he's just a 5-year-old boy, I bent down to kiss him on the lips. He bounced up into my face and I had to pull away. Instead of getting angry, I said playfully, "I was trying to kiss you!" He shrugged and said, "I bit off your lips." Oh.
(We went to the museum on Saturday. (Don't go on Saturdays. It's craziness.) There was a little boy that was just as spazzy cute as Elijah is. I looked at this little boy and said, "How old are you?" He said, "I'm 5." Yep. ...)
Example 2: The Wii
One day a few weeks back Elijah looked at me and said, "Mom, I'm addicted to the wii. You shouldn't let me play it every day." I just looked at him and said, "Okay." We had already put in place a one-hour time limit per day, but apparently he felt that was insufficient. He then voluntarily submitted to an every-other-day wii playing policy, and wakes up every morning and says, "Mom, is today a day I can play the wii?" And if I tell him it's not a day he can play the wii, he never fights me on it. ... I mean, what now?
Example 3: This Self-Portrait
He was so proud of this self-portrait:
I wrote down what he said about it. "That's me, holding a flower, and my other hand is over here [the hand holding the flower is the one outlined in black]. And that is my underwear; kinda looks like a skirt, huh? And my face is yellow because it's the color of my hair - that's why it's yellow. And I'm kind of blind. And ... that's me. Beautiful, huh?" Totally cute.
Example 4: Parent-Teacher Conference
Mrs. Parker says that Elijah is polite to the other students, that he listens well, sits still, and is serious about his work. He is right where he should be in terms of letter recognition, sounding out words, and counting, and he's already meeting end-of-the-year benchmarks. All this is great.
The only thing Elijah doesn't really do well is coloring. He can write his name decently, he can cut things out beautifully, but he colors like a madman! ... This won't keep him from graduating Kindergarten, but still I thought I would address it with him. So I asked him why he didn't try coloring better. He said, of course, "It takes too long!" Duh.
Example 5: This "D" paper
Every week he comes home with a paper for one letter of the alphabet. Last week it was D. On the front it says "Dd is for" and then has pictures of a doll, a drum, a duck, and some dinosaurs. On the back there's space to draw your own D words. Normally Elijah asks for help, but this time he didn't. Here's what he chose to draw:
The last one I was sure was Desk. But no, it's Done: "There's no person because he's done with his work." Of course.
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