Matthew:
Apart from the nasty virus things going on with him he is doing great.... well I assume he is... everyone says what he does is typical of his age. He is becoming very competitive with the kids he plays with... it's all about who saw what first and who can jump the highest or run from a to b the fastest. When one of us picks him up he wants us to run so he beats the other one of us to the house, or car, or where ever. He is more and more fascinated with words, he is forever asking us "how do you spell blah?", He can spell his name, 'daddy', 'mummy' ( although someone point out to us...that's great, if you live in England but here it is 'mommy' )... and the word STOP. He is forever berating me when I don't come to a complete stop at a stop sign and tells me the police man will give me a ticket. He also checks to make sure that I have two hands on the wheel and are holding on tight ( I have no idea where that comes from ). We have bought a book on teaching your child to read ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671631985/sr=8-1/qid=1148254932/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-7871768-8554450?%5Fencoding=UTF8 ) and when school has finished this summer ( next week in fact ) Margaret is going to start the book with him. I sometimes find myself listening intently to him speaking. It amazes me how he is learning to pad out his sentences with the right words so that they now sound correct... all these little extra words we put into sentences without thinking, a lot of them not really necessary for the meaning of the sentence as I have learnt since kids don't use them and parents totally understand what the kid is saying. But his speech is so much more 'correct' ( if that is the right word ). You can totally see how a kid who grows up around adults speaking incorrect english is going to carry on that fine tradition.
I remember a while back reading about Bill Crosby having a real go at the African American community here about their lousy english. He was trying to point out that to raise themselves as a race they need to stop with the ebonics and slang and speak properly... as he rightly pointed out, you don't see professional people ( lawyers, teachers etc ) speaking like that. Maybe the Maori should take a leaf out of his book.
Matthew has one more year of preschool and then he goes to school for real! Wow, I feel like if I blink again he will be a teenager. In about 6 months time Margaret and I will have to start working on what school he is going to. People round here actually go and talk with the heads of schools and check it all out before applying for their kid to go to a particular school.
Matthew is big into role playing when he plays now. When Margaret or I play with him now he wants to make stories up about fires and earthquakes and then we drive the police cars and fire engines to the 'fire' and put them out. The police catch the baddy and we put him in jail... all good fun :-).... at least for the first 30 times.
A friend of his from preschool had her grandparents look after her a couple of weeks ago for a week and we had her over for a couple of afternoons to give them a break. She calls her granddad 'poppy'. Matthew made me feel really bad a few days ago. We were playing and he was role playing that one fireman was the 'poppy' of another fireman. Then he stopped playing and looked at me and said "Daddy, do I have a poppy?". I nearly bought tickets back to NZ there and then.
Adam
Matthew seems to have more of my personality...more mellow. Adam has Margaret's temper! If you take something off him that he wants or move him away from somewhere he wants to be then you'd better look out. He will throw the most god awful fit about it. It's quite funny sometimes, you take something off him, he starts his fit and if you try and give it back to him he will bat if away with his fist out of temper. Matthew does not like being hugged or touched very often. He will tell you to get off, or to stop it.... this is Margaret. Adam loves hugs and will often just come and lay his head on your shoulder and sigh, or give you a kiss..... that's me. Right now Adam is just in the most super toddler CUTE stage. He smiles and laughs for no reason. He flirts with women anywhere. He is babbling nonsense... no words yet. He loves playing at the train table and pushing cars around and 'flying' planes in the air. His fine motor skills are leaps and bounds ahead of what Matthew were at this age... he has been using a fork and a spoon since about 11 months.
oh well, back to my test cases...
No comments:
Post a Comment