Nate Nate

Strategery

So I'm sitting there with Jonah on my lap, playing Uno as a team.  Normally, he insists on having his own cards, but today we have doubled up to take on Nate.  I'm holding our cards in my hand, but Nate, with his little hands, has his spread on the floor.  It's Nate's turn.  The deck has a blue 5 facing up, so Jonah puts his hand on the blue 9 in our stack, waiting for our turn.  Then he looks over at Nate's cards on the floor.  In the space of 2 seconds, I watch as he scans Nate's cards, sees that Nate doesn't have any blue cards, notes that Nate does have a green 5, figures out that Nate is going to throw the green 5, lets go of our blue 9, and puts his hand instead on our green 2.  You know, since he is now two moves down the road in the game.  One can only imagine the damage he is going to inflict in Vegas some day...

Nate, like all children, generally assumes that he will go first in any game he plays with me alone.  So I was very surprised and pleased the other day, when he generously offered to let me go first in a game of Uno.  Then I looked down and realized that the deck had a blue card facing up, and, again, he had no blue.  So much for sportsmanship.  Then, at the same moment, we both realized that he had a wild card.  "Oh, wait!" he cried.  "I'll go first after all!"

THE CALANDEAR SONGS

JANUARY

VALLEY WINTER SONG

JANUARY

NEW YEARS DAY

TWO DAYS IN FEBUARY

THERES NO LOVE IN FEBUARY

A HAZY SHADE OF WINTER

PRESEDENTS DAY

MARCH

EASTER

APRIL FOOLS

APRIL

MAGGIE MAY

MAY DAY

MAY QUEEN

JUNE

JULY JONES

JULY JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

LABOR DAY BLUES

HALOWEEN

OCTOBER

THANKSGIVEING

VETRINS DAY

NOVEMBER HAS COME

DECEMBER

BOXING DAY

COLD DECEMBER

AIR OF DECEMBER

DECEMBER

Pictures from the Night of the Radishes and Other Winter Nights

 First of all, people, Night of the Radishes is a real thing.  It is a Mexican festival approximately 120 years old or so where the townspeople carve sculptures out of three-foot radishes.  Wikipedia is your friend, folks.  Do not ever question Nate's command of the parts of the calendar that the rest of us ignore.  Now excuse me while I hunt down a Night of the Radishes song to put on Nate's iPod calendar mix (along with each of the months, "New Year's Day" by U2, "Valley Winter Song" by Fountains of Wayne, "Hazy Shade of Winter" by Simon & Garfunkel, "Presidents' Day" by Balance Problems, "April Fools" by Rufus Wainwright, "Labor Day Blues" by Jay Nash, "Halloween" by Matt Pond PA, "Thanksgiving" by Poi Dog Pondering (did you ever think you'd hear from them again?), "Veterans Day" by Dutch Courage, and "Boxing Day" by Relient K.

Second, while I'm doing that, enjoy these pictures from our Night of the Radishes trip to Zoolights and some brother-bonding on the floor:

 

 

 

Daddy posted this.

WHAT ARE THE HOLIDAYS IN DECEMBER

ST NICKELUS DAY

ST LUCIA DAY

LAS POSADUS///FELIZ NAVIDAD

HOLIDAY SHOW

VECASTION

CHANIKAH / WINTER BEGINS

SHABA YEALDA / IRAN

NIGHT OF THE RADISHES

CRISTMAS

KWANZAA

Random Attacks Of Crazy Memory Guy

Scene 1:  Jonah's friend Simi is visting for a playdate; Nate will not stop asking 2.5 year old Simi when his birthday is.  Simi clearly does not know.  Deperate to end the interrogation, I answer with a randomly selected date: "I think his birthday is April 19, Nate."

"Oh," remarks Nate off-handedly.  "In 2008, Simi's birthday was on the first day of vacation and the first night of Passover!

I scurry off to the computer to check this out.  Of course he's right.  Why do I even bother to check?

Scene 2:  A neighbor has given us a giant bag of books, including what appears to be the entire series of the Magic Tree House books.  Nate arranges them in order along every windowsill in our house.  As we are trying to have family dinner under the watchful covers of #s 1-20, glaring down from the kitchen windows, Steve, mulling over the alliterative titles, makes some crack about how #21 must be Thanksgiving Came on Thursday.

"No," Nate replies thoughtfully, munching on a piece of French toast (don't even ask; be glad you do not have to feed a child who only eats 5 things).  "That's #27."

Hours later, I discover, peeking out from under the shades in the dining room, #27.  It is entitled Thanksgiving on Thursday.

Spooky, right? 

Unrelatedly, a random scene of heartwarming sharing.  Jonah and I are at a birthday party for Rhys.  Eva, sitting across from Jonah, mentions that she wants Jonah's cake instead of her own.  Jonah holds up a forkful.  "Here, Eva," he offers.  "I'll share with you."  "Awwwwwwwwww," say all the mommies.

ETA: Jonah opens Ants in the Pants for the second night of Hanukkah (great game, by the way; our whole family is now addicted).  "Nate," I say, "you picked this out for Jonah at Target, remember?"  "Yes!" replied Nate.  "Jonah, I picked that out for you on November 29!"  Scurry scurry scurry to date book.  Sure enough.  How does he do that??

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Las Posadas/Night Of The Radishes

Who knew there were so many holidays in December?  Nate is dissatisfied with observing only two of them and is insisting on celebrating everything from St. Lucia Day to Boxing Day.  The more the merrier, we say, especially when the holiday show is as cute as this:

 

 

We were again thrilled to see that Nate has developed a love for the stage.  He wasn't wild about the craziness beforehand, when the entire school inhaled a mass dose of sugar and then bounced off the walls for an hour (although Jonah was perfectly happy to hang with the big guys), so we took a little break from the action to catch up on our Frog and Toad, together with the adorable Gracie:

 

(No, Jonah doesn't actually tower over the two kindergarteners (this picture is something of an illusion), but it's pretty close.)

But once it was time to get on stage, Nate was all in.  He eagerly ran up with his friends and enthusiastically went through the "It's Snowing!!" medley, along with a very gesture-filled rendition of Tender Shepherd.  He also insisted on staying through the entire Lower School performance, which was looooong past Jonah's interest had waned, which is why Jonah and I spent about an hour roaming the halls, but it was all in all an excellent evening.

We were also thrilled to have a very special visit from our very beloved friends Sophie, Tessie and Maisie.  Nate had visited the big girls in Denver when the three of them were turning 2, long ago at this point, and they had not seen each other since.  Jonah, who is particularly fond of older women, was in hog heaven.

 

Though he was initially shy, Nate allowed himself to be coaxed into having some fun too:

   

 

And, in a true December miracle, we even managed to get a couple of family pictures in.  In typical H family tradition, we got one with Child No. 1 smiling, and the other with Child No. 2 smiling.  Thus, we present two shots:

  

and, take 2:

   

Happy Chrismukkah, everyone!

The Abridged Version

In the car yesterday, I recognized the middle of a 30 minute nonstop Christmas music marathon on 94.5 as a good a time as any to launch the topic of "it's nice to enjoy Christmas, but sometimes it makes people feel left out if they celebrate something else in December."  About halfway through my civics lesson, Jonah suddenly piped up: "The king said it's not ok to be Jewish."

"WHAT???????" I squealed.  "WHO TOLD YOU THAT????" 

"Teacher Amanda!" Jonah remembered happily.

And then I realized: they'd read the story of Haunkkah in preschool, and Jonah retained it and related it to my droning story.  And was actually willing to admit to having done something in school.  Cool!  "So what did the Jews do?" I followed up casually.

Jonah thought about it.  "The Maccabees!"

About four hours later, in the middle of brushing his teeth, he added, "In Hebrew, it's hanukkiyah."  [The Hebrew word for what we Americans call a menorah, which I'm pretty sure just means lamp in Hebrew.]

In other Jonah news, he measured a whopping 39 and 3/4 inches (95th percentile) and 34.5 pounds (75th) at his three year checkup yesterday.  A giant!  He was also diagnosed with an "excellent disposition," which is true for all hours of the day except those between 2 and 6 am.

In Nate news, the holiday show is approaching, and man, am I excited.  I've been catching snippets of all kinds of holiday songs emanating from his room these days.  He is also very insistent that we celebrate Kwanzaa and is attempting to convince me that his entire class celebrates it at home with their families.  Time for Mommy to hit Wikipedia for some Kwanzaa festivity ideas.

In My Day We Called It a Knuckle Sandwich

Nate, trying to get a reluctant Jonah to follow a seemingly arbitrary instruction:  "If you don't do it I'm going to be very disrespectful." 

Cracking Up Mommy

Tonight I got home slightly later than usual and spent my first ten minutes or so in a mad flurry of bedtime-ready-getting and Sudoku-assisting.  While I was flying about, Jonah was hard at work with the stack of shiny brand new letters he got for his birthday.  When I came to check on him, he proudly showed me his work.  He had spelled out what he wanted me to get him:  DarU MIlK.  A/K/A, Dora Milk (milk in a Dora sippy cup), spelled phonetically.

Then it was Nate's turn to bring the unintentional funny.  Walking into his room to cajole him into his pajamas, I found Nate singing a song about the months while doing a slow, careful, and unmistakeable Macarena.  

And getting one last one in under the wire, I just went to check on the guys.  As I tucked Jonah's sleeping bag around him, he stirred slightly in his sleep and said, "Cheese.  Cheese." 

Man of Letters

Jonah asked me, "How you make a D, Daddy?"  So I told him, "line down, big bubble."  We practiced it once on the Magna-Doodle, and then I let him do it by himself.

"Duh," he said.  "Aaaaaaaa.  Duh."  And there it was, without any help:  "DAD."  So I ran to show Mommy and Nate, who were reading a bedtime story in our room.  And then, while the three of us were cooing over him, he took the Magna-Doodle, and below "DAD," while mouthing "muh - aaaah - muh," he wrote "MOM." 

Suitably proud of himself, I think: