Maddox had his first ever school performance tonight, the Winter Gala. I was excited all day about it – I felt like such a parent!
I had measured expectations though. I mean, these kids are 2 1/2 years old. Can you even get them to stand in one place?
Turns out the answer is, kind of. But not Maddox. Much like I did at that age, he would much rather sit in his mom’s lap than partake in any school activities.
But he sure is an enthusiastic clapper!
I am thrilled. I finally have a friend to play video games with. He’s a little grabby at times, and needs some work on his eye-hand coordination. But he certainly doesn’t lack enthusiasm.
Mads has always been somewhat interested in the video games that we’ve played on the computer and iPad, but for some reason he’s completely gravitated towards this game called Kingdom Rush.
I can’t say why it appeals to him so much. It’s a game where you try to stop orcs and bats from attacking your castle by placing defenses along a road. But he loves it!
The two favorite things he likes doing are calling down meteors and placing reinforcements. For the first he’ll look at my quizzicly and ask, “Fire?” I tell him to go for it and he says “Okay!”, touches the iPad to drop the meteors, and yells “FIRE!”.
He still has good manners though. When the orcs and knights fight on the road, he always says “That’s not nice.” He also refers to the game as “Time out” because of all the people hitting each other, and the fact that the only timeouts he has gotten in his life are from when he hits people.
Something weird is happening. Maddox is making us into “outdoor people.” Today we drove out to Plum Island to walk along the Hellcat trail, which went through a series of dune and then marsh. If you had told us, oh, four years ago that we would have voluntarily done this, I would have called you crazy. In fact, there are pictures of me (and my sisters) sulkenly lying on the plankboard trail about ten years ago, when my family went here for a vacation.
Today though, we had a great time. It’s amazing to find such a vast amount of open space in the area.
Maddox loves trails, and always has — he is still endlessly entertained by the simple act of moving forward. A trail just seems to drive him on.
Plus, there were stairs on this trail. Can you imagine being of the age where stairs fill you with happiness and wonder?
I’m also still amazed at his energy. The trail wasn’t strenous at all, but he was halfway running the whole time. He did stop at one point, plop himself down, and request water and raisins.
He made it nearly two miles before he requested a piggyback!
Call to Jon this morning:
me: Have you seen the headphones around?
Jon: I think I saw them hanging in the Christmas tree.
me: Oh, great, thanks – I can see them now.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Apple headphones look just like the our white Christmas light strings.
Possibly, he is just so used to everything in our house plugging in (and being compatible with Apple products), and he figured by attaching the headphones to the tree, it could listen to his iPad movies.
My wonderful sister was kind enough to gently remind me that we haven’t updated Mad’s site in a bit!
There have certainly been some changes in his life recently too. Most notably, Maddox is now in pre-school (or, more accurately, pre-pre-school) at the local Kindercare. And when I say local I mean literally 1.1 miles up the road.
It was very, very tough leaving the wonderful, loving person that Maddox had watching him since three months old. We were so lucky to have her be such an important part of Maddox’s development, but we knew eventually we would want to move him into a pre-school environment — the time just snuck up!
The first day went absolutely fine. In retrospect, that was because he had no idea we’d be leaving for the day, since on our previous two visits we just visited and then all left together. The next few drop-offs though he cried and wailed for his mom, so much so that Leanne ended up picking him up before his nap both times.
I took over drop-offs after, and it was just heart wrenching to drop him off while he was yelling for me saying “No preschool please” and “Please home!” and “Peanut butter!” (the latter being because he figured out if he said he wasn’t done eating, he’d never have to leave home!).
Today marked the first day without a single sad face or sound. In fact, he actually squirmed in my arms to be let down. Also for the past several days as soon as I walked in the room he would say “Had so much fun at preschool today!”
