Tuesday

Jonathan is really into counting right now. He will say, is 30 a big number? (We are supposed to say yes.) And then he will count right up to 30. He gets it just right, except for instead of seventeen he always says eleventeen. Dave corrected him in front of me the other night, and I got a little hostile because I think it is the most adorable thing ever to hear him say "Eleventeen..." He will figure it out soon enough. Can't we hold onto the cuteness a little longer?
He came home from preschool today singing that song, "Skid-a-ma-rinky-dinky-dink, Skid-a-ma-rinky-do" (don't know the official title, I think it was from that show with the elephant? anyone know what I am remembering?) The one that goes, I love you in the morning, and in the afternoon, I love you in the evening and underneath the moon... He told me he was singing it because it was Valentine's Day Week at school. I started singing along with him and he stopped, and looked a little disturbed. He gets a little wierded out when I know stuff that he just learned at school. I think he thinks it is all new knowledge and no one else should have access to it. He asked me today, How do you know all this stuff? Pretty soon he won't be impressed with how much I know. He will want to impress me with how much he knows (elementary Jonathan), and then we will move into him wanting to impress me with how little I know (teenage Jonathan).

Anna is starting speech tomorrow. She will spend 20 minutes twice a week with the speech teacher who comes to her preschool. They use one set of forms for preschool through twelfth grade, so a lot of the paperwork I had to fill out was really irrelevant to a 3 year old, like has this student ever been placed in a juvenille correction facility? Some of the questions made me really sad for other kids and families out there. Like questions about whether the child is homeless or not.
I think it will be a blessing and a curse when the other adults in her life can actually understand her. Right now I think it is saving me a lot of embarassment that most people can't understand most of what she says.
She is so funny, though. In a way her teachers are missing out on just how brilliant my child really is ;). Yesterday she came up to me, holding a highlighter up, and said, Mama, Is this a permanent marker? She wanted to know if she was allowed to use it or not. I spent about 30 minutes last week scrubbing the armchair in our living room, and a large amount of that was flourescent yellow highlighter stains. I did get it out, eventually. So my answer to Anna: No, it is not permanent, but you may not use it!