A Boy and His Blog

Archive for November, 2009

Owen turned four-and-a-half this past weekend! It just so happened that, the week before, we were at a store looking for a card to buy for Owen’s friend’s birthday, when Owen spotted a card he liked very much. The card had a robot on the cover and a big “4″ written on it. Owen came over to us nearly in tears, because he said he would like to get that card for his birthday, but since he already turned 4, it was too late. (We had forgotten to buy Owen a card back on his actual birthday) We secretly bought the card for him and sent it to him, along with $2 inside. When the card came in the mail, coincidentally on his half birthday, he said: “It’s kind of like it’s my birthday!” We took him to the store and let him spend his money on candy.

Owen is back in preschool and doing really well this year. He still goes Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and on Monday and Wednesday morning he goes to a friend’s house to play with their little girl while Mama is at class. We also often go to the play/study room at Mama’s college and Owen plays with other kids there. He is doing very well playing with others and learning to make friends.

Owen was a robot for Halloween this year. We made his costume out of a cardboard box, painted it silver, and glued several things onto it to make it look robot-like. We gave him ducts for arms too. He looked for cute, and very uncomfortable. He was a trooper though and wore his costume to a Halloween party at Mama’s college, to a Halloween party at his preschool, to the mall to trick-or-treat and then at home through the hallways of our apartment to trick-or-treat. He even won the costume contest for his age group at his school! He was much bolder this year about getting candy, and wanted to keep knocking at doors at our apartment when we got home.

Owen decided to get his hair cut short recently by Aunt Diane, and it is shorter than it has been since he was one years old. He is also getting really tall! We measured him on the board we keep track of his height on and he has shot up a couple inches since he turned 4. He has started doing simple addition, like 1 + 2 or 2 + 2, and I’m not sure where he learned it. He just tells me, “Mama, 2 and add another 2 is 4. He also has finally figured out that letters all have sounds, and he can match the sound to the letter by hearing the sound first. Before, he could only match sounds when hearing the letter first. But now, he will say, “ca – ca – ca is c”, instead if “c goes ca”. It took him awhile to get that down, but I noticed him saying the sound and then matching a letter to it recently. I think that is probably a pre-reading skill. It is interesting watching him learn these things on his own with hardly any instruction. He is also still loving board games. He likes Push Over, Sorry, Candy Land, I Can Do That (Dr. Suess), Hi-Ho Cherry-Oh, Mancala, Master Mind, Dominoes, Pacheesi, Go Fish and Uno.

A few and cute and funny recent things he has said:

One day I left to go class and Owen shouted out, “Mama! where is your homing device?” I told him I had it on me and it would lead me right home to him in just a couple hours

A couple of weeks ago, Mama was in one bathroom getting ready for a wedding reception, and Daddy was in the other one. Owen had to go to the bathroom and, seeing that both bathrooms were occupied, decided to pee off the balcony. He was very proud of himself and told us about it immediately after we got out of the bathrooms. He showed us how he leaned against the railings and just peed from three floors up. “It was like a sprinkler,” he said.

On Friday and Saturday nights, Owen gets to watch his favorite show (Inspector Gadget) on the laptop before going to bed. He sits at the dining room table, and he usually has his stuffed bear, Hop-hop, sitting next to him. The other day, as Daddy loaded the show for him, Daddy asked: “Where is Hop-hop, did you forget him?” But Owen explained that the little Rubik’s cube he had sitting near the laptop (a trinket he got at his friend’s birthday party) and that that cube is, in fact, a machine that makes it so that Hop-hop can watch the show from Owen’s bedroom (via some kind of satellite hook-up, I guess).

The other day we were in the car and Owen and said, “I know about electronics, and robots, and planets and their rocky core, but there is one tricky thing I don’t know about… how can all the planets stay up in space and not fall down?”

He has also come up with a theory that when you get to the last number it loops back around and starts at zero again. When he was three, at the grocery store one day he looked at me with this perplexed look and said, “Mama, do the numbers just keep going?” I told him they do indeed, and he has struggled with the concept in infinity ever since.

He asked Daddy the other day, “Do mosquitos have a heart?” Daddy said, “yes, I think so”. And then Owen said, “then why do they have to drink peoples blood?”

He also recently asked, “how did the first person get borned if he was the first person?”

Owen also really loves geography. He does the United States puzzle on his own now. He has a special nickname for just two of the states; North Carolina and South Carolina. He calls North Carolina mosquito because it tapers off to the west and I guess he thinks this looks like a mosquito. He calls South Carolina chocolate chip, because it looks like a chocolate chip.

And finally, here is our annual trip to the apple orchard and to the renaissance festival this year:

Ever since I got my iPhone Owen has been taking pictures. His favorite subjects are his own feet, Mama and Daddy making silly faces, parts of the cat, and select portions of our messy house.