Nick's Life: October 2011

Halloween was short this year, as Nick puttered out early after just one block of hiking with Brandi and the neighbors. He has more fun handing out candy from our stoop, anyway. He recruits kids by yelling out to the street, "Come get some chewies from the CandyMaster! (that would be me.)" Then he likes putting candy in their sacks, by the handful. He still didn't hand out as much as one little girl who started shoveling candy from my caldroun to her bag by the fistfuls, until I grabbed her hand and told her, "That's enough honey... three handfuls is more than a couple." Nick and I ate popcorn as we passed out candy, and he even tried to give away my popcorn; I told him the kids don't want it, then a group of teenage girls ate half my popcorn. No pictures of his costume - he was Super Why again for the second year in a row (by choice.)

School has been up-and-down, with him and the teachers at odds more and more. When I asked him one day how many times he got a 'timeout' at school, he raised his hand and started extending fingers like he might run out of digits if he didn't keep track on his hand. Good grief. When I ask what happened at school, he runs me in a do-loop anyway with no real explanation. The kids seem to love him, but the teachers aren't sure what to do with him. Although, he and I started doing 'homework' each night after dinner, and some nights he'll do letters and words for an hour. And he's learning a ton, both socially and academically. From our observing, it seems like he's following the actions of some other kids, but not sharp enough to not be the one getting caught. If he can just steer clear of trouble. We shall see. And, finally got some school pictures.

Still attracted to gadgets. He's moved on from taking tons of pictures to shooting tons of videos. He calls out, "Action" and "Cut", and it's kinda funny. They're mostly stories about trains, but what else would we expect? And we got iPhones this month, which he loves playing games... and not kid games. He plays 'Plants vs Zombies right along with his mother.

As we measure him on the wall at Grandpa's, he's barely 1/8 inch shy of my height at 5 years old, so he's growing at the same pace as me. (Then again, Joanae is measured on that same wall, and she was nearly the same height, too, and she just stopped growing somewhere along the way, so you can never tell.)

- Jason