Nate Nate

Yes, There Are Two of Them

A little Halloween-night head-to-head round of Name That State (by its outline): 

Robot Parade

The boys had a great Halloween this year.  Nate's school held a Halloween parade and pageant.  Here are the kids massing for the parade :

  

Jonah joined the parade as Spider-Man:

    

After the parade, each kid got on stage to introduce himself and his costume.  Most of the kindergarteners mumbled, and Andrea and I were a little afraid Nate would get stage fright.  I don't know why -- the kid may not like crowds, but he loves a microphone.  He walked right up, spoke directly into the microphone, and practically shouted, "my name is Nate and I am dressed like a Robot!":  

  

Here's Jonah watching Nate: 

  

Trick-or-treating also was tremendous fun.  It will not surprise regular readers of this blog that one of our Halloween rituals is Nate telling us what the addresses of the next few houses will be, but this year he really got into the rest of it, too.  The kids would run to every door and ring the doorbell.  Every time, Jonah would yell "trick or treat" without waiting for the door to open.  Without fail, Nate would gently remind him, "not yet, Jonah."  Then the door would open and Jonah would grab a handful of candy and leap off the porch.  Nate would pick through the offerings looking for Kit Kat bars, and if he didn't see what he wanted, he would say "I don't like any of this candy" and turn around and walk away (later in the evening we were making some headway getting him to say "thanks anyway," but we couldn't get him to pollute his candy bag with, say, skittles).  By the end of the night, Nate had a good 15 or 20 pieces of candy and Jonah's bag was too heavy for him to carry. 

Then the boys helped us dish candy out to the soggy trick-or-treaters (smaller crowd this year than last year because of the rain).  Jonah tends to give one small piece of candy to each kid; Nate's m.o. is to dump the biggest handful possible into the bag -- exactly the opposite of when they are receiving, instead of giving. 

(Posted by Daddy.)

Lemonade Tycoons

Here are Nate, classmate Michael, and Jonah practically minting money by selling lemonade in the late afternoon in the last week of October:

(posted by Daddy)

I AM ASKING FOR THE LIBICURE BAG ANOTHER NIGHT

PLEESE CAN I BRING THE LIBICURE BAG BACK ON TUESDAY CUSE I NEED TO SEE THE 1ST ONE ON A WENSDAY OR A THURSDAY?

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage

Apparently Jonah Butler has become quite the ladies' man.  When Bubbe and I came to pick him up from school the other day, he was holding hands with Jessica, with whom he is apparently in love.  "Jonah, what did you do at school today?" "I held hands with Jessica!  I played with Jessica!  I sat with Jessica!"  When asked who he would like to invite to his upcoming-ish birthday party, Jonah voted "Jessica!"  When asked who else he would like to invite, he immediately replied, "Nobody else! Just Jessica!"  Apparently he thinks I have rented a gymnastics studio so he can have a really cool one-on-one date.  Just like on The Bachelor!  Despite his deep love for the new Jessica (who is coming over to play this afternoon, to Jonah's great delight), he has also been spotted holding hands with, hugging, and being named boyfriend by, several other girls in the class.  It's all very sweet.

Jonah has also discovered another new love.  After years of listening patiently while his brother read to him, Jonah has decided that the time has come to branch out on his own.  He's been asking me to read every sign we see for a while now, and, thanks to Professor Quigley, he's long enjoyed making the sounds of all the letters.  In the past few weeks, he's asked constantly for us to write out 3- and 4-letter words for him to sound out.  And in the past week or so, he's been starting to really get the hang of it.  Never one to pass up a chance to play with letters, Nate has taken to the project with unmatched enthusiasm, writing out tons of words in the "-at" family and "-og" family, spelling words for Jonah to sound out orally when we're in the car, and cheering and clapping excitedly for each word.

The guys also finally, finally started swimming lessons yesterday, and weren't we proud and surprised when Nate was brave enough to jump in, go under, and try all the other things that were asked of him?  Both guys had a fabulous time and were very excited.  When Teacher Tim asked if they had had swim lessons before, Nate informed him that we all went swimming in Lake Tahoe on August 18th, 19th and 20th. 

After swim lessons, we took our bikes over to a school playground with a big 50 states map, where Nate enjoyed riding his bike from state to state in descending order of admission, from Hawaii to Delaware, and Jonah showed that his state recognition skillz include knowledge of where they appear on a US map, as he rode to a bunch of states that I called out.  Turns out that he can easily find Washington, Maine, California, Texas, Florida, Michigan, Alaska and Hawaii, New Mexico (?), and "Barack Obama Illinois!"

We are kind of a weird family.

Pumpkins, Pumpkins, Everywhere!

Hooray for our annual visit with Bubbe to the pumpkin farm!

Jonah was a big fan of the lima bean tub, rolling around and burying himself with abandon.  Nate, happily, was also a big fan; he was even willing to lay down and let us bury him.  Unfortunately, no one thought to inform Jonah that you can't actually cover someone's mouth with beans.  The next thing we knew, poor Nate was gagging and choking on beans, and even as he sputtered, Jonah continued to joyfully pitch beans into his mouth.  Nate was an excellent sport about it, agreeably returning to bury his feet and legs again -- after carefully reminding me that he did not want to bury his mouth -- after a minute or two.  He was also quick to forgive his bro:

 

   

Back at the ranch, we have also been getting an early start on our Halloween cookies, the better to learn early that the cheapie frosting is not necessarily a good idea:

Some guys are a little neater than others:

   

 

Finally, from the Department of "He's his Brother's Brother," here's something we learned while playing Fifty States Bingo today: Jonah knows approximately 50% of the states by shape.  Not that we should have been surprised, given the amount of time we've spent on states puzzles, states bingo, and states magnets, trading cards and books, but it is really something to be playing bingo with a guy still on the minus side of three and see him go, "Oh, I have Michigan!" and then place his marker right on the Michigan square.  Cool. 

Adventures and Verse

Daddy here.  Jonah and I went for a short walk yesterday afternoon.  "Do you want to go to the secret stairs?" I asked, referring to the stairs that go from the end of a cul-de-sac up the side of the hill to the street above.  For Jonah, this was the cue to begin an adventure.  "Atchewally!" he said, "first we jump! on the triangle.  Then we go the secret passageway!  Duck your head!  Like this!  Now we are out!  Now we unlock the trap door.  I have the key!  [Makes key sound; lifts trap door.]  Oh!  It is the secret stairs!  Now tiptoe!  TIPTOE TIPTOE TIPTOE!  We did it, Daddy!"  Repeat as many times as it takes to go the two blocks to the stairs.  Though this may not sound that exciting, it is impossibly cute when you're actually doing it. 

Nate is harnessing his imagination too.  He had filled several sheets of typing paper with writing, so I chased him around until he would show them to me.  One had a transliteration of a Hebrew song he sings; his guess is probably better than mine so I won't try to name it.  One had the words to a poem Nate learned in class about the month of October.  And the third had an original poem -- uniquely Nate-like in its dual bossiness and zen simplicity: 

    THE MOON IS UP

    NO MORE TALKING

Happy Days Are Here Again!

Well, not in terms of the global financial end-of-days thingie, but at least here on the domestic front!  After weeks of our friend Nate behaving himself beautifully for 7 hours at a stretch at school and then melting down like the Nikkei every single night, he suddenly seems to be back to his old good-natured self.  He's sharing with Jonah, he's listening to us, and he's even downright cheerful.  Hooray!  I am not going to lose my mind after all!

Nate is also taking quite an interest in his religion, what with the start of Sunday school.  He can often be heard wandering around the house singing various songs to himself in Hebrew, which totally cracks me up.  He was very excited to go for services for RH and YK and even lasted for the entire 20 minute kids' service today.  Things are looking up!

Jonah is spending his days picking up Nate's tricks.  The other day he insisted on doing his own Sudoku.  Staring at a blank piece of paper, he mused, "Hmmm...dis one already has 3, so it must be 5!"  He has no idea what that means, but if you plunk it into the middle of the right conversation, it could work.  He also likes to parrot whatever Nate is saying, even if he doesn't know what it means.  "Undutwacatsank!" he said the other day.  "???" we said.  "Undutwacatsank!" he repeated enthusiastically. We got it: "Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq."

Too bad he didn't get to huit.  Nate breathing "Hhhwwwwhhheeeeat" is one of my favorite things ever.

Two Little Puzzlers

Lots of big events around here.  Grandpa Toshi and Grandma Debbie came up for Uncle Kenneth's parents' weekend, and everyone was thrilled to have the SoCal branch of the Hs in town.  Jonah particularly enjoyed turning everyone on to his kittycat game.  Incidentally, it turns out that the only thing cuter than a 2 year old spending all of his time pretending to be a kittycat is a 2 year old with kittycat ears and a tail, as we discovered earlier today.  Will post picture soon!

So Jonah: puzzles!  He loves 'em!  It had been a while since we'd tried doing any floor puzzles with him, but we've recently been getting out our old friends the Melissa and Doug solar system, vehicles and USA puzzles, and Jonah is having a blast.  It turns out that he's quite good at them; he picks out a section from the picture on the box, gathers the pieces that are the right colors, and then assembles it section by section.  Who knew we would have two puzzle guys?  Maybe they'll be a team or something.

And so Nate: Sudoku?  Who knew?  Apparently everyone who reads this blog other than me, but man, is he good at it.  It started out with me showing him how to do it, and about a day later, it ended with him going so fast that I could barely keep up to check his work.  There's something extremely satisfying about watching that "click" moment happen for Nate, and plus now we have a whole new way to entertain him if we ever, say, need to fly to Europe.  Or Mars.

Also from today: hilarity ensued when Jonah and I went to Nate's school to read a couple of books to the kindergarten class.  First we read Flat Stanley, during which several kindergarteners confessed to having once been flattened themselves via various household mishaps.  Interesting.  Then we read Grace Campbell for President, a book I highly recommend in this election year.  Before we started the book, I asked, "Does anyone know who our President is?"  In one voice, the entire kindergarten class beamed and shouted, "BARACK OBAMA!!!!!"

Gd, I love the East Bay.